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Monday, March 14, 2022

21st Century Banana Wars


Silverfiddle Rant!

George Bush--and latterly, Obama-Biden Democrats--have done the equivalent of the following: Cosy up to nations or peoples living in very bad neighborhoods and encourage them to poke their dangerous neighbors in the eye, maybe stick their tongues out and brag that they are friends with the US.


I agree with retired Army Colonel Douglas Macgregor, who said something to the effect that if we become friendly with a nation that sits next to a more powerful, and perhaps dangerous nation, we should help that nation work out a modus vivendi.  Our empty promises did not work for Georgia or Ukraine, while failed projects like Libya, Syria and Afghanistan lie bleeding.

We cannot protect the whole world, and we should stop acting like we can, most especially in light of our horrible string of failures since WWII. 

United Fruit Company - Eastern Europe Branch

Obama-Biden imperialists (and, we could argue, the Clintonistas and Bushites) have sparked their very own Banana Wars in Eastern Europe (Maybe we can call them the Pipeline Wars...)  

Obama's State Department ran its own business investment brokerage out of the Kiev embassy, linking up well-connected global elites with preferred Ukrainian Oligarchs.  If a Ukrainian leader got out of line and started gumming up the money-making, they plotted his ouster.   

Now Ukraine has learned that buddying up with Democrats and their preferred foreign lobbyists and investors is just as dangerous as buddying up with Republican chickenhawk warmongers.  

Americans have learned, thanks to Senator Rubio questioning State Department poobah Victoria Nuland, that... 
“uh, Ukraine has, uh, biological research facilities. We are now in fact quite concerned that Russian troops, Russian forces, may be seeking to, uh, gain control of [those labs]” (Glenn Greenwald)
Echoes of Iraq
The gullibility of our ruling class and its media minions to Ukrainian information operations is no confidence-builder either. No one can blame Ukraine for trying to convince the West to join its fight – its survival is on the line. But we can blame our best and brightest – ugh – for believing every too-good-to-be-true story. There’s a sucker born every minute, and a bunch of them will eventually attend Harvard.

No, we’ve sacrificed enough to the foreign policy screw-ups of Ivy League incompetents. Who got us into the Vietnam War? Who got us into Iraq? Not a lot of guys with high school diplomas, but those guys got asked to fight those wars. The same is true here. I see a lot of Twitter tough guys with the yellow and blue flag in their bios and not a lot of them seem to be accepting Ukraine’s appeal for fighters and enlisting in the Bill Kristol Brigade. (Kurt Schlichter - No Sacrifices for Ukraine)
The next quote from George Soros calls to mind Dennis Prager's statement that if he found an article in the New York Times that agreed with a position he held, it would force him to rethink the position.
We can only hope that Putin and Xi will be removed from power before they can destroy our civilization. (George Soros - Vladimir Putin and the Risk of World War III)
Finally, Bill Maher (a dangerous turncoat rightwinger, in the eyes of the progressive left) lampoons Americans who view international events through their parochial political lenses. 
"Don't make world war 3 all about you," Maher said as he got into it. "Watching the reactions to war in Ukraine these past few weeks, it's become obvious that America in this age suffers acutely from a particular disease of the mind, which is: Everything proves what we already believed and everything goes back to the thing we already hate."

All issues today: Pandemic, war, whatever, become a stress test for our reflexive partisanship," he continued. "Can you take a vastly complex situation that is 100% not about your thing and somehow still make it about your thing? Our answer is, 'watch me.'"
What say you?


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31 comments:

  1. The Ukraine has also opened a new front against Russia in the meme wars...

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  2. The Bible is clear that in the "end of days" there would be wars and rumors of war. This is what we are seeing now, more so than ever in all of history and times.

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  3. Let us not forget all the money that has been made by the Bidens', in particular Hunter Biden because of years of dealing with Ukraine. My question is what do the Bidens' stand to gain from this war?

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  4. We should give the Ukrainians nuclear missiles ;)

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    1. Comment loosely referring to how we spirited out nukes from Ukraine, Kazakhstan, etc after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

      Of course, those nukes were part of the Soviet nuclear C2 program and were useless in any military way. Good only for terrorists to drag them somewhere and create a dirty nuclear event.

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    2. The Russians have trouble getting their missile tests to not fall down go boom.

      We've seen their nukes (trash), we've seen their tanks and planes and ground force equipment (Iraq, also trash) and we've seen their currency (trash)

      The Patriots have scouted NFL defenses all around the league.

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  5. The United States is not well-served by its political class (political party has nothing to do with it) or the Rolex Watch crowd that populates Foggy bottom. But they are in charge and the rest of us are only along for the ride. There is no reason at all for anyone in this country to assume or expect an intelligent decision from anyone inside the Beltway. This predicament should continue for the next 2,000 years ... or until the American people wake up and start electing government officials who have the nation’s interests at heart, or on the 12th of Never, whichever occurs first. The problem is that there is no agreement about what is in our nation’s interest — which is why we have national leaders ... except that we don’t. Herein lies the problem. The last president to rally the nation was Reagan, or according to some people today, “Who?”

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    1. Reagan armed the Contras of Nicaragua, and by some accounts may have done so in some shady ways. He could take a nap, because he knew his people who know people could get things done.

      One of the nicest things France has done for us besides amazing beef stew recipes and publishing Alexis de Tocqueville was to call us a "hyperpower."

      We shouldn't have taken that as an insult.

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    2. But we are a hyperpower. No one can deliver a wicked meme like the Americans!

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    3. I could not agree more Mustang. Absolutely right and well said. Even if I live inside the beltway I am not drowning, in fact, thank God I know how to swim because the rest of these folks are beyond knee deep! They are drowning!

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    4. Ollie North was also the first indicator that America had of its' "IC Deep State" problem.

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    5. Victoria Nuland calls coup's now and nobody inside the beltway blinks an eye.

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    6. I remember the good old days when Bush invaded Iraq and ducky was squawking on and on about the Neocons and PNAC. Nuland's husband was a co-founder... and beamish is still their no.1 cheerleader.

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    7. ...as for me, I hate to say this but, "Ducky, you were right all along."

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    8. Ducky looks better and better as the years go by.

      He introduced me to Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi.

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    9. I suppose that ducky's whine just needed 20 more years in the barrel to dissolve most of its' bitterness.

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    10. beamish is still their no.1 cheerleader.

      You're all leftists now :P

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    11. " There is no reason at all for anyone in this country to assume or expect an intelligent decision from anyone inside the Beltway. "
      What if the decisions are intelligent and deliberate, just not suited to our purposes, but someone elses?

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    12. @ Joe: "Ollie North was also the first indicator that America had of its' "IC Deep State" problem."

      In the 80's the MIIC dressed up its agenda in a handsome Marine officer.

      Now, the cloak it in "selfless" state department "public servants"

      Says much about how times have changed...

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    13. Last time I checked, Davos wasn't a Congressional or Senatorial district.

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    14. I think victory in WWII may have been the worst influence on our form of government possible. We should have let the European powers keep their colonial empires and let Ike go back to his Gettysburg farm.

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    15. The taste of Empire was too sweet. It corrupted everything.

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    16. Last time I checked, Davos wasn't a Congressional or Senatorial district.

      Money isn't speech, yo. ;)

      Democrats have learned what Republicans have known all along. If you oppose American foreign policy you are anti-American. ;)

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  6. The problem is that the people who do the voting do not suffer from the banana/pipeline wars. The families of those who die in them suffer, but with an "all volunteer" military, that amounts to only 1% of the nation's population.

    The wars are far away and have no effect on our daily lives. Further, our economy, which is based on producing the engines of war, thrives and employment depends on the continuance of wars to keep that production high.

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