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If indeed, they are trying to get rid of the old man, by levering the laptop from hell, I wonder what is the plan for his replacement? Honestly, I have no idea. Surly, not Kamala? Who else? I really don't see anyone. How about you?

Krunoslav 9 Mar 30
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3

My guess is that the Hunter laptop news is part diversion from the economic crisis and foreign policy disasters of the Biden administration and preparation for the Biden family crime syndicate becoming an issue in the midterms. Lame stream media isn't reporting the obvious ties between Hunter's crimes and Joe. If Republicans take the House and Senate some will surely want to impeach Biden. It's good propaganda to throw Hunter under the bus and falsely distance Joe.

Still Biden is probably going to be too senile to be even a puppet for the establishment before his term is up. They don't want Harris so they will prop him up as long as possible. Harris it seems is just a way to scare people off wanting Biden removed.

wolfhnd Level 8 Mar 30, 2022

could not agree more

1

Interesting, didn't hear about this guy, but the wiki page makes him look like the right type, policy wise he checks the boxes. Is he well known outside Kentucky?

@Krunoslav

Not that I'm aware of, but he checks the boxes, looks normal and hasn't made a shit ton of stupid remarks that have gone viral.

@govols Fair point. I guess he still has time than.

1

Washington wants regime change in Washington.

It would not be unusual for a regime change and get Biden out. He has been good for some, terrible for others since in office. I imagine not everyone find him useful. I know neocons want to have him start a war with Russia and want it to be overt. So guys like Antony Blinken, Victoria Nuland ,and people like that who are close to Biden and around him and want him to start a war.

There are people who want him to push "progressive policies" like Green New Deal, CRT, open borders etc.

And there are people who might see him as too wild with his dementia and comments. Making too many people ask too many questions about too many things. Certainly calling for regime change, sanctions on Russia, were not all welcome.

So I'm sure necons are using the laptop and ties to dirty deals in Ukraine to pressure Biden to start a war. But I'm also sure there are people who want to replace him with someone they can sell to masses more easily as a moderate or something like that while they operate behind the scenes. You know how Biden was running on being a moderate. lol

"Washington wants regime change in Washington."

At this point its almost a tradition in America lol. I was curious so I searched for it. Domestically. off course regime changes internationally, no one does it better and more frequently than United States. Domestically, they may not be as Byzantines, but they are not far off. Probably because the whole system is so corrupt they don't need to do what Byzantines did.

List of United States presidential assassination attempts and plots

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Assassination attempts and plots on the president of the United States have been numerous, ranging from the early 19th century to the 2010s. Four sitting presidents have been killed: Abraham Lincoln (1865, by John Wilkes Booth), James A. Garfield (1881, by Charles J. Guiteau), William McKinley (1901, by Leon Czolgosz), and John F. Kennedy (1963, by Lee Harvey Oswald). Additionally, two presidents have been injured in attempted assassinations: former president Theodore Roosevelt (1912, by John Flammang Schrank) and Ronald Reagan (1981, by John Hinckley Jr.). In all of these cases, the attacker's weapon was a firearm. This article lists assassination attempts on former presidents and presidents-elect, but not on men who had not yet been elected president.

Many assassination attempts, both successful and unsuccessful, were motivated by a desire to change the policy of the American government and were undertaken by rational men.[1] Not all such attacks, however, had political reasons. Many other attackers had questionable mental stability, and a few were judged legally insane. Historian James W. Clarke suggests that most assassination attempters have been sane and politically motivated,[1] whereas the Department of Justice's legal manual claims that a large majority has been insane.[2] Some assassins, especially mentally ill ones, acted solely on their own, whereas those pursuing political agendas have more often found supporting conspirators. Most assassination plotters were arrested and punished by execution or lengthy detainment in a prison or insane asylum.

Since the vice president, the successor of a removed president, shares the president's political party affiliation, the death of the president is unlikely to result in major policy changes. Possibly for that reason, political groups typically do not coordinate such attacks, even in times of partisan strife.[3] Threats of violence against the president are often made for rhetorical or humorous effect without serious intent,[4] while threatening the president of the United States has been a federal felony since 1917

[en.wikipedia.org]

@Krunoslav
It would not be unusual for a regime change and get Biden out.

Biden / Harris IS Regime change

He has been good for some

when

I know neocons want to have him start a war with Russia and want it to be overt.

I often agree with you but this assertion is absurd

There are people who want him to push "progressive policies" like Green New Deal, CRT, open borders etc.

already doing that

So I'm sure necons are using the laptop and ties to dirty deals in Ukraine to pressure Biden to start a war.

a second absurdity in your comments here

"Washington wants regime change in Washington."

Already done when the 2020 election was stolen

List of United States presidential assassination attempts and plots

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Assassination attempts and plots on the president of the United States have been numerous, ranging from the early 19th century to the 2010s. Four sitting presidents have been killed: Abraham Lincoln (1865, by John Wilkes Booth), James A. Garfield (1881, by Charles J. Guiteau), William McKinley (1901, by Leon Czolgosz), and John F. Kennedy (1963, by Lee Harvey Oswald). Additionally, two presidents have been injured in attempted assassinations: former president Theodore Roosevelt (1912, by John Flammang Schrank) and Ronald Reagan (1981, by John Hinckley Jr.). In all of these cases, the attacker's weapon was a firearm. This article lists assassination attempts on former presidents and presidents-elect, but not on men who had not yet been elected president.

Many assassination attempts, both successful and unsuccessful, were motivated by a desire to change the policy of the American government and were undertaken by rational men.[1] Not all such attacks, however, had political reasons. Many other attackers had questionable mental stability, and a few were judged legally insane. Historian James W. Clarke suggests that most assassination attempters have been sane and politically motivated,[1] whereas the Department of Justice's legal manual claims that a large majority has been insane.[2] Some assassins, especially mentally ill ones, acted solely on their own, whereas those pursuing political agendas have more often found supporting conspirators.

Most assassination plotters were arrested and punished by execution or lengthy detainment in a prison or insane asylum.

John Hinkley is the only exception I know of - but of course he tried to kill Ronald Reagan-most hated Republican until Trump came along

Since the vice president, the successor of a removed president, shares the president's political party affiliation, the death of the president is unlikely to result in major policy changes. Possibly for that reason, political groups typically do not coordinate such attacks, even in times of partisan strife.[3] Threats of violence against the president are often made for rhetorical or humorous effect without serious intent,[4] while threatening the president of the United States has been a federal felony since 1917

[en.wikipedia.org]

@iThink "I know neocons want to have him start a war with Russia and want it to be overt.

I often agree with you but this assertion is absurd"

Why do you think this is absurd? Explain your position.

By the way it is not an assertion. Its a policy. Where have you been living? For crying out loud even Biden him self read the cheat card they have him and doubled down on it.

Lindsey Graham, called for assassination of Putin. And by the way, he was there during regime change in Ukraine in 2014. Along with John McCain and others. Who is sending weapons, logistics, Intel, laying about everything related to conflicts, funding bio-weapons in Ukraine, using it as piggy-banks, and using same approach to bomb or kills just about every regime that might be a threat in the world. Just lately, Yugoslavia, Libya, Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq etc. As for Ukraine, well I guess you don't know much about US role in it.

Have you got any idea who is Victoria Nuland and what she has done? Have you read US forign policy doctrine? And why CIA was training Nazis there?

I'm sorry, my friend. It is your assertion that is absurd, because it is not true. Everyone can see it. But I'm curious what possible arguments you have to defend the position that neocons in America do not want a war. They always want one and they depend on it for their jobs. Its been like this for many decades. Its the forign policy of the USA.

But hey, read their own doctrine, track down their own quotes and interviews, see for yourself.

Here is the only sane libertarian left talking about it during Trump era. Trump was surrounded by these vultures and so is Biden.

Trump's national security adviser John Bolton has made it his mission to spark a war against Iran, and he was part of the apparatus of building the false case for the disastrous 2003 U.S. war against Iraq

To no one’s surprise, it was Trump’s national security adviser John Bolton who ordered the updated plan. Bolton has made it his mission to spark a war against Iran, and he was part of the apparatus of building the false case for the disastrous 2003 U.S. war against Iraq. So hawkish is Bolton that in an interview with Foreign Policy in 2007 he said, “Once upon a time, we knew how to do clandestine regime change. We need to reacquire that capability.” As the Times pointed out, Bolton’s new review of military plans to attack Iran is reminiscent of preparations made ahead of the 2003 Iraq war. Clearly Bolton is chomping at the bit a little over a year since he accepted his position at the White House.

[commondreams.org]

Except Biden and other politicians in US from Pelosi to Karry etc have their sons milking the tit of Ukraine for a long time. Hell, you have Biden himself braging about Ukraine and how they control it. You have the Laptop from Hell now. What else do you need, and all this from the same people you know are corrupt and you agreed with me on everything but this? Nobody sane wants this war to escalate, but wake up and smell the neocons.

Ron Paul Says Neocons In Trump Administration Pushing US Conflict With Russia – OpEd
April 19, 2017 Adam Dick

By Adam Dick

Libertarian communicator and former presidential candidate Ron Paul examined President Donald Trump’s foreign policy regarding Russia in an in-depth discussion last week with host Sophie Shevardnadze on the RT show SophieCo. Paul says in the interview that he had been pleased with Trump’s campaign statements supporting improving United States relations with Russia and expresses concern about the Trump administration’s sudden shift away from this objective.

Seeking to explain the reason for the shift in policy toward Russia, Paul points to Trump’s lack of a “firm set of principles” regarding foreign policy and the presence of neoconservatives who “have a great deal of influence” in the Trump administration and who oppose being “more open and friendly with Russia.”

While neoconservatives may have had much influence on Trump recently, might that change? Paul suggests there is potential for more big swings in Trump’s foreign policy. In addressing the potential for further escalation of US military attacks in Syria, for example, Paul says, “I don’t think Trump has a precise position, and it changes depending on which advisor he might have talked to recently.”

In addition to US relations with Russia, Paul, who is chairman of the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity, discusses in the interview additional aspects of US foreign policy.

Paul says that, as it has through history, the seeking of war profiteering, such as for the military-industrial complex, plays a significant role in promoting war or promoting “a sense of war and conflict to make an excuse to build more and more weapons.”

Read a transcript here.

This article was published by RonPaul Institute.

[eurasiareview.com]

Do you think Marco Rubio and Victoria Nuland just happened mention biolabs in Ukraine, for no reason whatsoever? lol

We can get a rough idea of the US political elites’ involvement in the military biological activity in Ukraine if we rely on open sources as well as leaked documents. Below is an attempt to reconstruct the chronology of this involvement, though not a comprehensive one. There are many gaps in this truly diabolical plan that are still to be filled.

‼️1991 – the US launches the Nunn-Lugar programme for the former Soviet countries to control/eliminate Soviet weapons of mass destruction including bioweapons. The Pentagon's Defence Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) was named as the programme’s main executor.

‼️1993 – the Ukraine-US Agreement on the Prevention of Proliferation of WMD is signed.

‼️2005 – an additional protocol is signed to the agreement between the Ukrainian Health Ministry and the DTRA on the prevention of the proliferation of technologies, pathogens and know-how that can be used to develop bioweapons. This is the start of the transfer of the Ukrainian military biological potential into US specialists' hands.

‼️2000s – large US military-industrial companies are engaged in military biological activity in Ukraine.

‼️2005-2014 – Black & Veatch Special Projects, a DTRA contractor, builds and upgrades 8 biolabs in Ukraine instead of eliminating military biological infrastructure, as was originally claimed. One of the facilities, a biolab in Odessa, has been financed since 2011 for the study of “pathogens that can be used in bioterrorism attacks.”

‼️2007 – US DoD employee Nathan Wolfe founded Global Viral Forecasting Institute (subsequently - Global Viral), a biomedical company. The mission stated in the charter is non-commercial study of transborder infections, including in China.

‼️2009 – Rosemont Seneca Partners is established by former US Secretary of State John Kerry’ stepson Christopher Heinz and incumbent US President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden.

‼️2014 – anti-constitutional coup d’etat in Ukraine.

‼️2014 – Hunter Biden joins the Board of Directors of Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian energy company.

‼️2014 – Metabiota, a private commercial organisation specialising in the study of pandemic risks is detached from Global Viral. Neil Callahan and John DeLoche, employees of Hunter Biden’s company Rosemont Seneca Partners are appointed to the board of Metabiota. Global Viral and Metabiota begin to get funding from the US Department of Defence.

‼️2014 - Metabiota shows interest in Ukraine and invites Hunter Biden to "assert Ukraine's cultural & economic independence from Russia".

‼️2014 - Metabiota and Burisma Holdings begin cooperation on an unnamed "science project in Ukraine".

‼️2014 - Metabiota, Global Viral and Black & Veatch Special Projects begin full-fledged cooperation within the US DoD programmes.

‼️2014-2016 - Implementation of Metabiota and US DoD contracts, including a $300,000 project in Ukraine.

‼️2016 – US citizen Ulana Nadia Suprun, a descendant of Ukrainian Nazis, is appointed Acting Health Minister of Ukraine. The US DoD and Ukraine’s Health Ministry cooperation programme is greatly expanded.

‼️2016 – an outbreak of swine flu among Ukrainian Defence Ministry personnel guarding a biolab in Kharkov, Ukraine; 20 dead.

‼️2016 – former US Assistant Secretary for Defence Andrew Weber is appointed head of Metabiota’s global partnerships department.

‼️2016 – EcoHealth Alliance, a Global Viral founder Nathan Wolfe’s structure, is engaged in the study of bat-transmitted coronaviruses at the Wuhan laboratory, China.

‼️2016 – the DTRA and Ukraine’s Health Ministry extend the contract after getting approval from the Ukrainian Defence Ministry.

‼️2019 – the COVID-19 mutated bat coronavirus pandemic begins with an outbreak in Wuhan.

‼️February 24, 2022 – launch of the Russian Operation Z in Ukraine.
‼️February 24-25, 2022 – rapid elimination of strains in biolabs in Ukraine.

‼️March 8, 2022 – US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland openly acknowledges the existence of US funded bioresearch centres.

@iThink "Biden / Harris IS Regime change"

I suppose it depends on how you look at it. The deep state and systemic corruption in Washington did not change much during Trump era, they just lost, officially a seat of a president, but most of the regime with any real institutional power was intact, and when Trump was removed they can continue. I do agree though that election was stolen and Trump was elected by the people. I just don't think that regime in a sense of institutional power it has, changed or would have changed with Trump. Same people with same schemes and same level of corruption was there before, during and after Trump presidency. Even most of the people who chose to be "his" people, were neocons and rhinos that stab him in the back first chance they could. It was a change in the presidency, and illegitimately so I agree, but I think the regime as a whole did not change much. Biden would be much deeper involved with the regime than someone like Trump, so technically Trump was an outsider, and Biden is insider. Biden has been in the DC one way or the other for half a century and fails upwards, and only way to do that is if you make sweet deals with corrupt people.

@iThink The Neocons' Primary War Tactic: Branding Opponents of U.S. Intervention as Traitors

By rehabilitating neocons and elevating them as thought leaders, liberals live in their framework. Thus are opponents of U.S. involvement in Ukraine deemed treasonous.

Glenn Greenwald
Jan 26

One of the most bizarre but important dynamics of Trump-era U.S. politics is that the most fanatical war-hungry neocons, who shaped Bush/Cheney militarism, have become the most popular pundits and thought leaders in American liberalism. They have not changed in the slightest — they are employing the same tactics they have always invoked, and for the same causes — but they have correctly perceived that their agenda is better served by migrating back to the Democratic Party which originally spawned their bloodthirsty ideology.

The excuse offered by Democrats for their embrace of neocons — we did it only as a temporary coalition of convenience to oppose Trump — is false for many reasons. This unholy alliance pre-dated Trump. In 2014 — long before anyone envisioned Trump descending down an escalator on his path to the White House — the journalist Jacob Heilbrunn wrote a New York Times op-ed entitled “The Next Act of the Neocons.” He predicted, correctly as it turned out, that “the neocons may be preparing a more brazen feat: aligning themselves with Hillary Rodham Clinton and her nascent presidential campaign, in a bid to return to the driver’s seat of American foreign policy.”

Full Article: [greenwald.substack.com]

.............................................

Robert Kagan’s Jungle Book of Forever War

December 13, 2018|

10:19 pm
William Ruger

The Jungle Grows Back: America and Our Imperiled World, Robert Kagan, Knopf, 192 pages

Robert Kagan is a formidable figure in our country’s foreign policy establishment. He has been at its center for decades, from working for Jack Kemp and Secretary of State George Shultz during the Cold War, to his emergence in the post-Cold War era as arguably the leading intellectual advocate for a foreign policy of “benevolent global hegemony”—what scholars call “primacy.” Unsurprisingly, he was a co-founder of the Project for the New American Century and a prominent early advocate for war with Iraq in the late 1990s, well before 9/11.

Today, Kagan is an influential scholar at the Brookings Institution, a columnist at The Washington Post, and a member of the U.S. Department of State Foreign Affairs Policy Board. Despite being known as a neoconservative, his appeal spans party and ideological divides. Indeed, Kagan’s 2016 support for Hillary Clinton showed his willingness to cross these divides himself in terms of electoral loyalties.

As a writer and public intellectual, Kagan has skillfully crafted historical narratives and strategic assessments supporting his overarching neoconservative vision for U.S. foreign policy. His 1996 Foreign Affairs article with Bill Kristol, “Toward a Neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy,” still resonates today as a concise hallmark statement of that approach to America’s role in the world. With a long list of prominent books and articles following in that vein, it is little wonder that Andrew Bacevich called him “the chief foreign policy theorist of the neoconservative movement.”

Kagan’s newest book, The Jungle Grows Back: America and Our Imperiled World, fits nicely into his corpus. It is a spirited defense of the “American-led liberal world order” by one of its most cogent and articulate advocates. It is part curated history, part philippic for his preferred strategic vision for the United States. In this small volume, Kagan argues that the enlightened order America created after World War II has allowed for much progress in the world. But this order is not natural, and its great benefits have been “made possible by the protection afforded liberalism within the geographical and geopolitical space created by American power.” To Kagan, this liberal order is “fragile and impermanent,” requiring constant care by its architect and beneficiary, the United States. He sees the liberal order as being “like a garden, artificial and forever threatened by the forces of nature.” Thus “preserving it requires a persistent, unending struggle against the vines and weeds that are constantly working to undermine it from within and overwhelm it from without.” Otherwise, the jungle will “grow back and engulf us all.”

The problem with the book is its reliance on some questionable historical and contemporary assessments, not to mention that it fails to really make the case for the necessity and desirability of the liberal order in today’s world.

Kagan begins The Jungle Grows Back by noting that the last 70 years of peace, prosperity, and the expansion of democracy and respect for individual rights have been an exception to the historical norm. Far from being the natural course or inevitable, this progress required something special and unique: that a liberal democratic country like the United States, with so many geopolitical and economic advantages, rose to international prominence after World War II. Not only that, but, as Kagan argues, American leaders were willing to use their great power at this special moment in history to act differently and to create a new and unique world order.

Rather than merely defend its narrow national interests, the United States created a liberal international order that it would take responsibility for upholding and protecting. Kagan argues that this approach wasn’t, as some might argue, directed at the Soviet Union or anyone else in particular (though he admits the rise of the Soviet threat made it easier for Americans to accept it even as the strategy became more difficult to implement). Instead, “its chief purpose was to prevent a return to the economic, political, and strategic circumstances that had given rise to the last war.” Thus, Kagan believes this internationalist approach was rooted in a realism about the nature of geopolitics in the 20th century and a realization that the world was a jungle that required “meeting power with greater power.” American leaders had learned from World War II that they had to adopt a new approach to the world, one that created, in Dean Acheson’s words, “an environment for freedom.” To do otherwise would be to let disorder reign or for others to order the international system to the detriment of American interests and values.

Kagan believes that the 1920s and 1930s taught us a lesson. Like advocates of foreign policy restraint today, many Americans between the world wars wanted to avoid overseas quagmires and worried more about economic problems at home than geopolitical troubles stirring abroad. They also worried about what the costs might be of getting back into a great power conflict. Indeed, rather dismissing them as “isolationists,” Kagan admits they were trying to act based on what they thought was realism. But Kagan—and the generation that won World War II and created the post-war order—believes that history proved the anti-interventionists wrong.

At this point in the book, Kagan provides a pretty standard internationalist history of the Cold War period. U.S. policies and troops had transformed Germany and Japan—indeed, Western Europe and East Asia as a whole—without worrying others inside the liberal order because the United States had effectively ended military and geopolitical competition. This hegemonic order was installed without provoking fear or revisionism because other countries trusted the United States “not to exploit its superior power at their expense” while creating and facilitating benefits for others. In short, Kagan holds that we deterred and reassured. But he is a fair enough observer to note that the United States was willing and able to break the rules as necessary, and our support for liberal democracy wasn’t always consistent.

Kagan then moves to discuss the decline of the Soviet Union. He notes, however, that the Cold War struggle wasn’t really the most significant thing about this era. Instead, it was “the growing power and reach of the liberal world order.” He also repeats the argument that our post-World War II approach to the world was “a general strategy for dealing with the world and avoiding the catastrophes of the first half of the twentieth century” rather than a response to the Soviet threat. This is key to his argument because it helps him justify why it needed to continue once the Soviets were gone.

Moving forward into the post-Cold War era, Kagan explains why he is alarmed over what he sees as the jungle growing back. He notes that presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton continued the older liberal world order since both believed that the United States still bore “international responsibilities” and had to be its “primary defender.” And he argues that they pursued it with “no more or less” arrogance or overbearingness than we had pursued the Cold War. But, to Kagan, there were real problems on the horizon. This included growing criticism of America’s role in the world, more questions about its cost and necessity, and the self-inflicted wounds of the 2000s, including Iraq.

Kagan then moves into philippic mode, warning, “History is returning. Nations are reverting to old habits and traditions.” And just when the United States needs to step up, the old consensus has broken down and a new consensus view has emerged, seeing the last 25 years as a “disaster” that has led to “calls for restraint and retrenchment.” Kagan proceeds to point out ominous signs in extended discussions of Russia, China, Japan, Europe, and the American home front. The reader can sense the message that is coming, something we heard before in the 2000 book Kagan edited with Bill Kristol, Present Dangers: “Everything depends on what we do now.”

Kagan doesn’t disappoint. He ends with a call to reject the siren song of the “new ‘realism’” and reaffirm our commitment to the liberal world order. Most of what Kagan believes is required is within the economic and diplomatic spheres. He argues that we need to get back to our “deep engagement” with Europe, address “democratic backsliding,” and renew our embrace of trade and international institutions. Unsurprisingly, Kagan also calls for more muscle to maintain our dominance. Thus, Americans need to increase spending on what he considers to be an underfunded military and demonstrate “the willingness to apply that power, with all the pain and the suffering, the uncertainties and the errors, the failures and follies, the immorality and brutality, the lost lives and the lost treasure.” Otherwise, the jungle will grow back at our peril.

Critics of U.S. foreign policy are unlikely to find Kagan’s defense of the status quo approach compelling, but his book is not without its virtues. First, Kagan’s discussion of restrainers past and present who have challenged the value of liberal hegemony is remarkably respectful and gentle compared to the standard treatment. He stresses that it is wrong to refer to those who ask questions about our active involvement in the world and want to return to “normalcy” as “isolationists.” Curiously, though, he does fail to cite any seminal works of restraint in the text or endnotes.

Second, Kagan does not try to pass off Vietnam and Iraq as aberrations or errors of doctrinal interpretation that better thinking within the theoretical construct could have avoided. Instead, he admits that Iraq, like Vietnam before it, “followed naturally from a foreign policy doctrine that successive administrations had embraced and justified.” He carefully acknowledges that we “will never know” if we can pursue such strategies as he advocates without “costs and failures.” Indeed, he writes soberly, “we must consider the possibility that the price paid may have been unavoidable in a real world in which failure is as much a part of the human experience as success, that even successful strategies include error and disaster, that even the most positive outcomes are not without their negative aspects.”

Of course, this means that if we are to follow Kagan’s instructions and defend the basic operating system of American foreign policy, we are going to commit “sins of commission” every once and again. Indeed, forever—since Kagan argues that “pushing the jungle back from the garden is a never-ending task.” An Iraq every generation might be the cost of doing business.

But we must not forget who must pay for this business and the sins it requires: our troops who fight and are often wounded, and in thousands of cases die on the battlefield; our families and communities that suffer from frequent deployments; American taxpayers who are left with the bill. Not to mention the costs imposed by our interventions on those we are ostensibly trying to help: innocent lives lost, property destroyed, and millions displaced.

Another problem is that Kagan’s discussion of the Iraq war’s causes underplays its revolutionary nature. There is much talk of the dangers of Saddam and WMDs, but the war was much more about remaking the Middle East itself through a revolutionary project of regime change and democracy promotion. Rather than realist, it was radical and avoidable.

Kagan also understates the importance of the Soviet threat to the depth of American commitments abroad and the willingness of Americans to pay steep costs for the liberal order in the Cold War era. This is key to his case for defending that order today because it relies on the notion that we are capable as a nation of supporting an approach that isn’t about meeting fundamental national interests in the face of a hegemonic struggle.

But the most important problem with Kagan’s argument is that, regardless of whether the creation of the liberal order was necessary after World War II, he fails to convince that it is truly necessary or desirable today. He also fails to seriously grapple with whether natural shifts in the world make such an order unreasonably difficult to maintain no matter how hard we try. Instead of a careful consideration of American interests and a tight and specific argument about how certain means meet those ends given today’s threat environment, we get general arguments about the need to be tough, to pay costs to uphold milieu goals, and ominous imagery about a jungle overcoming our nice but unnatural garden. It doesn’t engage with the toughest arguments about whether a single people like us, with a small share of global population and wealth, can infinitely desire and afford to provide all these public goods in the system without undermining the things we are trying to protect and support in the first place: our safety, our financial health, and our way of life. In other words, it doesn’t handle the problem that our specific part of the garden could desiccate by the costs and efforts of pulling weeds and cutting down the jungle. And the last 25 years of the frequently cited 70 years of the liberal order don’t make me sanguine that this is a path through the jungle that we can safely stay on.

William Ruger is a U.S. Naval Reserve officer and the vice president for research and policy at the Charles Koch Institute. Previously, he was an Associate Professor of Political Science at Texas State University, and an adjunct assistant professor at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas-Austin.

[theamericanconservative.com]

@iThink Who is married to Robert Kagan? Victoria Nuland. Who is she?

Gonzalo Lira - Victoria Nuland (live)

I suggest if you are going to call my comment absurd you at least some proper way to back it up, because by all accounts, it is your comments that looks absurd.

The Duran : Sanctions, regime change in Russia, then focus on China

@Krunoslav now that you have explained who and what you mean by the word "neocons" (which in the beginning were something akin to Conservative light" ) I agree with you fully.
Just need to let it be known that anyone who identifies as a "neocon" is NOT in any way shape or form a "conservative"
There can be no argument about the Socialists (formerly known as Democrats) are indeed and have always been warmongers.

@Krunoslav I thought it was absurd before I knew what you meant by "neocons"

@iThink Yes. I agree. neocons are not what you might call conservatives.

Basically both so called neocons and neoliberals are globalists, because they think there should be only one group of people, them under some world organization like UN or something like that that controls every other country.

Neocons think that world is spit into good and bad guys, they seem themselves, incorrectly as good and moral and therefore there is only room for their "liberal democracy", meaning unrestricted world domination, Necons are al bloodthirsty warmongers that mostly haven't been in any actual war, but have close times to war proffers. And so they think they have the moral right to use US military and other covert means of regime changes in the world to make sure no other nation rises that can challenge US hegemony. They are responsible for most of the wars in the world.

Neoliberals, are less war focused, but share the same basic ideas except they don't think so much in terms of war, as much as in terms of expanding big corporate power internationally. The Soros and Facebook, and Google types. Amazon and Walmart types.

Neoliberals and neoconservatives are far away from conservatives and liberals, but they have some common roots, in a distant past.

Pretty good explanation about liberalism is something I found in a book.

The neoliberal offensive

As alluded to in earlier chapters, one of the most prominent misrepresentations of liberalism has been the introduction of the term ‘neoliberalism’. In this case an ideological variant dons the mantle of a rival in order to clothe itself in rhetorical respectability and even to wrest ground, deliberately or unwittingly, away from established liberal versions. Neoliberals tend to see the world as an immense and potentially unencumbered global market, in which the exchange of goods for profit overrides other aspects of cross-national relations. Individual understandings of neoliberalism will of course differ. But in general terms, being a liberal is understood by neoliberals to characterize the free individual agent, alone or in conjunction with others, as being above all economically assertive. The defining features of that assertiveness are to maintain and develop the economic power inherent in capitalist production and transactions, to open up new areas for investment, and to benefit from the plethora of goods available for consumption. Neoliberals subordinate social, political, and cultural spheres to a professed self-regulating economic market and their principles are supposed to inspire the ways all social activities are run.

In terms of liberal morphology, neoliberals confine the core liberal concept of rationality to maximizing economic advantage. They do away with any idea of natural sociability and minimize mention of human individuality as the end of social progress. State power is mainly marshalled to guaranteeing trade and commerce, not to creating the conditions for human flourishing and well-being. Instead the unfettered power of the market is unleashed, so that the liberal concept of constrained and accountable power is circumvented. It is retained mainly to protect entrepreneurs in going about their business, while sidestepping the aim of a genuinely free market that could unlock the economic energy and inventiveness held to be intrinsic to all individuals. In its most recent forms, neoliberalism champions a world in which huge multinational corporations and mega-banks increasingly control and dictate the way we live, fostering an imposed and conformist managerialism. Instead of regarding economic intercourse as a means to the furthering of political ends such as peace and international solidarity, it sees political institutions as a framework arrangement for securing the efficiency and financial prosperity of the private sector. Liberal universalism has been replaced with neoliberal globalism; the ethical permeation of individuals has been supplanted by the economic ingestion of territory. Even governments themselves are predominantly recast as investors and facilitators of trade, rather than deliverers of welfare or social justice. Only when financial crises erupt do governments make efforts to regulate the world of banking, but that is done with a relatively light touch.

In promoting the notion of a self-regulating market, neoliberals approach conservative terrain. One of conservatism’s key features is a belief in the extra-human origins of the social order, reflecting sets of rules that derive from the divine, the historical, the economic, or the ‘natural’. Neoliberals provide a self-assured economic version of the naturally balanced system. In that version, attempts to direct and coordinate human effort can trigger catastrophic intervention when ‘natural’ economic rules are flouted. Hayek’s inspiration is evident on this point. In terms of liberalism’s layers, neoliberalism has been decoupled from its closest antecedent, layer two market liberalism, which nourished a moral vision of markets as a part of a civilizing endeavour, emphasizing individual talent not corporate power. There are few vestiges of an ethical mission towards a fair society among neoliberals—instead, levels of social inequality have been rising under neoliberal policies. And there is little commitment to engaging the engines of progress in the quest for human self-improvement. The welfare-state role of layer four is whittled away or handed over to private organizations. The constitutional arrangements of layer one, with their safeguarding of individual space and liberation from tyranny, are retained but effectively redirected towards free competition among powerful and vastly unequal economic players. In sum, neoliberals do not possess the minimum kit to be located squarely at the heart of 21st century liberalism. Put more forcefully, the complex morphology of liberalism is shattered and becomes barely recognizable.

  • Liberalism A Very Short Introduction by Michael Freeden 2015

Most of GOP in america, is full of neocons or those that don't oppose it. And DNC has planty of neoliberal types. And so for most of the outside world, weather democrats or republicans are in office, forign policy did not change nearly as much as domestic policies did.

@Krunoslav I am in total agreement

@iThink Great. Me too. 🙂

@Krunoslav I think you would make a great President!

@dmatic Thank you for the words of confidence, but I do not think I would want the responsibility, and also the world of politics is so corrosive to moral character that I would probably have to assassinate my own moral character to have a change of surviving in that pit of vipers.

To quote Machiavelli;

““It ought to be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. Because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new. This coolness arises partly from fear of the opponents, who have the laws on their side, and partly from the incredulity of men, who do not readily believe in new things until they have had a long experience of them.

“For, besides what has been said, it should be borne in mind that the temper of the multitude is fickle, and that while it is easy to persuade them of a thing, it is hard to fix them in that persuasion. The vulgar crowd always is taken by appearances, and the world consists chiefly of the vulgar.”

"Any man who tries to be good all the time is bound to come to ruin among the great number who are not good. Hence a prince who wants to keep his authority must learn how not to be good, and use that knowledge, or refrain from using it, as necessity requires.

"Everybody knows how commendable it is for a ruler to keep his word and live by integrity rather than by cunning, and yet experience shows us that rulers with little regard for their word have achieved great things, being expert at beguiling men's minds." ― Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince

"A prince must be a fox to spot the snares and a lion to overwhelm the wolves. Those who rely merely upon the lion's strength do not understand this. Therefore, a prudent ruler cannot keep his word, nor should he, when it would be to his disadvantage to do so. If all men were good, this rule would not stand. But as men are wicked and not prepared to keep their word to you, you have no need to keep your word to them."

"Those best able to imitate the fox have succeeded best. But foxiness should be well concealed - one must be a great feigner and dissembler.

― Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince

....................................

That being said, I have worked hard on my moral character and I would find it harder still to try and keep in in the world of politics.

If we were living in time of kings, I would be more inclined to try my luck in that, but in the world of republics, the system is corrupt, and its design that one man cannot change it, so I am not convinced I would be able to make a difference. Or at a very least the benefit I would make, would cost too much on personal level.

If I was a king, that I might have a better chance since I would have absolute power in absolute monarchy. And that might be a chance to actually fix some of the problems of society.

They say; "Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Someone else said, power does not corrupt, but it does attract the corrupted. And I guess that is the trick. How to have the power, but not be corrupted by it. I suppose you must come with pure hearth to begin with.

"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power." ― Abraham Lincoln, 16th president of the United States

“Of all manifestations of power, restraint impresses me the most.”
― Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian War

“The measure of a man is what he does with power.”
― Plato

@Krunoslav Brilliant answer! And it proves you to be a great candidate. history shows, too, that there were good kings and bad ones. Personally, I have come to hope in the Kingdom of God coming to earth, with His Son, Jesus, as its ruler. His character has been tested to the full and He overcame all the temptations of power and corruption! Men have proven incapable of ruling themselves and others, justly, for over 2520 years!

@dmatic That's true, every once in a while there is a Just and competent king that transforms on average, the society for the better. Most are living of that achievements and corrupt it, but every once in a while...

2

Good question, do the dems have any popular candidates? The only one that has a fanclub I can think of is AOC 😬. Obviously not at the moment, but I could see them pushing her up in the future.

Tom81 Level 8 Mar 30, 2022

AOC? Damn. There is a horrific though.

@Krunoslav it is but it kinda makes sense. She would get tons of votes purely based on gender, age and ethnicity as well as pushing her woke and 'green' agendas. And she would make for an easily controllable meat puppet due to her low intelligence and high corruptibility.

@Tom81 I can't argue with the description of her, but presidential elections are pretty big thing. Also I think she would have to go on debates and the democratic party would have to nominate her as a candidate. Not sure how that would work. I hear she is not exactly universally liked in DNC. Also I just remembered they have that Pete Buttigieg, although I think he is not well liked either. Barney probably would not work at this stage of the game. I'm running out of ideas. lol

@Krunoslav well...if Biden's 'election' is anything to go by, you don't have to campaign and the media will control debates in the chosen one's favour. Leave it to Dominion to decide who wins.
But who knows, leftists are notoriously cannibalistic.

I have no doubt there are some good viable candidates being held back in order to avoid public scrutiny.
Biden is clearly unable to fulfill the duties of the office and there will be no trouble moving him off the board...I'm a little worried about how they will get Kamala Harris to step away.

@iThink "I'm a little worried about how they will get Kamala Harris to step away"...
🤔...laser pointer?
I think she'd easily and happily step away given a bit of cash and a cushy position. I think the harder bit would be making it seem legit and like she wasn't an empty sock puppet in the first place.

@Tom81 LMFAO! laser pointer - perfect!

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