We had the Milo Moment. We're coming out of the Jordan Peterson Moment. It seems we are entering the Tucker Carlson Moment.
Tucker's been taking a rapier to conservative tropes, free trade, tax breaks for businesses, etc etc. Nowhere has he been more effective, or righteously vicious than in foreign policy.
Tucker Carlson wants to know why Max Boot and William Kristol are still on TV and what makes them so smart, anyway? He unloads upon the duo like a sinner reformed, which he is. Carlson quotes Boot's words, written after 9/11:
“Once we have deposed Saddam, we can impose an American-led, international regency in Baghdad, to go along with the one in Kabul,” Boot wrote. “To turn Iraq into a beacon of hope for the oppressed peoples of the Middle East: Now that would be a historic war aim. Is this an ambitious agenda? Without a doubt. Does America have the resources to carry it out? Also without a doubt.”
That's certainly what we thought. We believed in 2003 that by say 2008 Iraq would be free, the Iranian Mullahs overthrown in a revolution and the PLO sidelined.
Carlson points out that after Iraq Boot called for regime change in Iran, Pakistan, North Korea, etc etc.
William Stroock dot blogspot dotcom stands by our support for liberating Iraq. It was the right place and 2003-2008 was the right time to fight Islamic terror. Would Iraq or the world be better off with Saddam in power? And besides, we won.
The difference between ourselves and Boot, Kristol, etc is we've had enough.
[Yeah, but knowing what you know now would you still favor the 'liberation' of Iraq, as you say?-Ed]
Last week we took note of Tucker Carlson's explosive interview with Ralph Peters and Max Boot. Here's the episode with Boot, which is the more important of the two:
Boot is an intellectual. He writes books. He has a fellowship and a fancy pants foreign policy think tank.
Watching this clip one gets the impression that this was the first time in decades Boot's been challenged. He didn't do very well, did he?
Over at the National Interest we have an interesting article on the episode. Basically, Carlson was once a hawk but not anymore.
See, speaking as a neocons myself, the problem is your always looking for the next enemy. I subscribed to William Kristol's The Weekly Standard from the first issue. All through the late 90's they were ginning up China as the enemy. Now you have to remember something. During the Reagan Administration the people running the state department were neocons, guys like Wolfowitz and Pearle and Abrrams and a host of others. With the Soviet Union gone these guys had nothing to do.
Whether or not the Iraq campaign was wrong or worth it no longer matters. Ten years ago now we were finally winning via the Surge. For our part we are far more interested in the mechanics and details of the Iraq campaign than the arguments for and against. We think the evens of 2006-2008 are fascinating. We will go on record again as supporting the liberation Iraq, still.
The point is we have learned. Syria is basically a smaller version of Iraq and when it comes to intervention we have no stomach for it. That said we don't think a few tomahawk strikes on the Syrian air force are a big deal.
But it seems Boot and company are eager to get into Syria. Worse, they think Russia is the great existential threat. Just like China in the late 90's, the neocons must now gin up Russia as the enemy. Look, Russia is not our friend. We are not best buddies. We're never really going to get on. We rivals, we're adversaries. That doesn't make Russia an existential threat. What the hell do we care if Putin is monkeying around with Ukraine? Besides, Putin is killing a lot of ISIS terrorists, isn't he?
Since the war began, Bull Feathers had remained open
24 hours a day. Located down the street from the Cannon House Office Building,
the owner felt it was his patriotic duty to remain open so congressional staff
had a place to unwind after Congresses marathon sessions. Besides, he was
making a small fortune.
The
time approached midnight as the Vice President's chief of staff sat down at a
table in the back corner, far away from the chattering young congressional
staffers. The chief watched in amusement. Young people dropped shot glasses into
beer classes and chugged. One young man did a Jell-O shot from between the breasts of a young woman, the pair shouted 'bipartisanship!'
and high fived. The chief wasn't surprised by the display. His
colleagues at the District's major universities, George Washington and Georgetown,
reported that students were skipping class, ignoring course work and generally
enjoying themselves. A certain fatalism had set in amongst the young, he had
noticed, a consequence, he supposed of being raised on tales of nuclear
Armageddon. He wondered what he would do if he were twenty years old.
The
chief finally saw the rest of his party. The under secretary of defense walked
past the gaggle of young drunks and sat down. The two shook hands.
'Bill,'
the undersecretary said, 'Thanks for meeting me here.'
'Not
at all, Paul,' Bill replied. He pointed to his drink, 'Want one?'
'Sure.'
Paul
flagged down a waitress and ordered a whisky.
Bill
nodded to the young people at the bar and said, 'You think they know something
we don't?'
Paul
smirked, 'I think they're acting like young people.'
Bill
shook his head. 'The whole city is paralyzed. Those who haven't left town stay
indoors. It took me ten minutes to get here from my house in Northern
Virginia.'
'I
think those kids,' Paul nodded to the bar again, 'are using this as an excuse.'
Bill
sipped his drink and shook his head. 'I think if you had seen movies like The Day After as a kid, you might be
fatalistic about the war.'
'Eh. I
saw On the Beach as a kid.' Paul
sipped his drink. 'Business?'
'Business,'
Bill agreed.
'Tell
me, what does your boss think about the war?'
'He
doesn't,' said Bill. 'The Vice President is grateful that the President has
found a role for him.'
'I
think inviting him to the NSA meetings is the right thing,' Paul said. 'I know
the president insisted, in case something happens to him, he wants Quayle up to
speed.'
Bill
nodded.
'Let
me ask you, what does the vice president think should happen next?'
Bill
laughed. 'So that's what this is about.'
Paul
nodded.
'The
Vice President is not in the policy loop and he hasn't expressed one way or the
other what he thinks should happen next.'
'Do
you know what transpired at meeting at St. John last week?'
'No.'
'Thatcher
wants to invade Eastern Europe.'
'Jesus.'
'So
does Kohl.'
'They're
serious?' Bill asked.
Paul
nodded.
'What
does the president think?'
'He's
cautious as you know.'
'Is
that bad?'
'I
didn't say it was bad. Just that he is cautious.'
'What
do you think?'
'Think
about this, Bill, and Thatcher made this point at St. John. What if the war
stops, the Soviets recoup, and we have to do this all over again?'
'Mmmmm,'
Bill said in thought.
'What
if it's like 1918 and the Soviet Army feels it's been stabbed in the back?'
'I
see where you're headed.'
'Now
think about this, and I think you'll agree. What if we win the war decisively?
What if we took away the Soviet's ability to wage war on the west?'
Apropos of yesterday's post about Tucker Carlson vs Ralph Peters and Max Boot, let's imagine the United States never liberated Iraq. What would the Middle East look like?
President Bush basically ends the war with victory in Afghanistan.
-In 2017 American forces are still in Afghanistan fighting the Taliban and al-Qaida.
-The 'Arab Spring' still happens. It happened organically within the Arab world and independently of anything the U.S. did.
-Mubarak is still out in Egypt with the same Brotherhood to military rule we have today.
-The Iran situation is unchanged. They are still working on nukes. Iran is still partnered with Hezbollah.
-Re Israel, there is every reason to think the 2002, 2006, 2009, and 2014 wars still happen.
-Because we have the Arab Spring we still have the rise of ISIS.
Really, the great question here is what does Saddam do? We think the most likely Saddam scenario is:
-Sanctions lifted.
-when the Arab Spring comes Iraq is plunged into a massive civil war like Syria but on a larger scale.
-Iran backs the Shia in Iraq.
-The Gulf States back the Sunnis and Saddam.
-The US backs the Kurds.
So we think the Middle East is still in turmoil but many of the details are different.
By the Way, World War 1990: Operation Eastern Storm has Saddam invading Kuwait. One of the things we will deal with in the final novel is the implications of a world where Saddam is the king of the Middle East.
Via the incomparable Ace, we have two interviews by the equally incomparable Tucker arguing with Ralph Peters and Max Boot about Russia and Iraq.
We are with Tucker on Russia, we just don't see where Putin is a threat. What do we care if he messes with Ukraine? We're perfectly happy that he blew Chechnya to smithereens and quite pleased with his actions in Syria. Basically the interests of Russia and the U.S. are temporarily aligned.
Now Max Boot wanted to remove the Mullahs in Afghanistan, Saddam in Iraq, Qadafi (pick a spelling, I don't care) in Libya, and Assad in Syria. And here he is trying to recast Putin's Russia as the Evil Empire of 1985. It is as if he never learns.
Look folks, we're an unrepentant Neocon at least on Iraq. We think the liberation is was right and good. We lost 4,500 dead and 40,000 wounded. We spent a trillion dollars and who cares about that. You're average lefty would be thrilled to spend a trillion on condoms, birth control pills and abortions so please. We can debate those points but the fact is we won the war in Iraq.
Personally we never saw the point in getting rid of Qadafi who was a benign and somewhat helpful dictator. We recall the 80's where Reagan kept having to whack him around. Mo hadn't made trouble since. Here's the intro to an article we wrote about him for S&T:
On
the night of 14 April, 1986, a flight of A-6 Intruders and A-7 Corsairs from
the carriers USS America and USS Coral Sea launched a barrage of 42
HARM and Shrike missiles at radar and Surface to Air Missile sites all along
the Libyan Coast. This was just the opening salvo. Eighteen American F-111 Aardvarks bombed
Libyan airfields and installations, including the headquarters of Colonel
Muamar Qadhafi, and destroyed more than a dozen aircraft. This was not the
first military encounter between Libyan and American forces. On 24 March, the
two navies fought a series of skirmishes which cost the Libyans five naval
craft. As far back as 1981, American
F-14s had engaged and destroyed a pair of Libyan Mig-25s which had challenged
them in the disputed Gulf of Sidra. The American raid of 14 April, called Operation
El Dorado Canyon, may not have been the first battle between the two nations,
but it was the last. To
Americans of a certain age, Colonel Muamar Qadhafi, president for life of
Libya, is a blustering buffoon, a toy dictator mocked on T-shirts calling him
‘Qadhafi Duck’. For much of Africa, however, Qadhafi was a dangerous
revolutionary, seeding chaos and terror throughout the continent. Seeking to
spread his brand of Pan Arab Marxism, Qadhafi has waged war against the nations
of Egypt, Uganda, and Chad. Like his ill-advised skirmish with the United
States, Qadhafi’s African adventures ended in failure and humiliation, costing
billions in treasure and equipment and thousands of lives.
At least he held no truck with Isis and AQ. When Barry threatened to bomb Syria in 2011 we were dead set against it. Frankly, after Iraq we had had enough.
Libya is Hillary!'s greatest accomplishment.
The Question Peters and Carlson debate on, and we think it was a useful back and forth which both men, managed to keep civil after nearly crossing the line, was the liberation of Iraq good in the long run.
We supported the liberation of Iraq. We saw it as part of the horribly named war on terror. We thought it was a good thing. In the words of M. Wolfowitz we thought the liberation would be a 'cakewalk'. Well that didn't happen. Peters says he would not today support such an action.
Ourselves? Ok, Iraq chose electors to a constitutional convention, had a referendum on that constitution, elected a government, had another election and even a peaceful transfer of power.
Iraq is playing a major role in the defeat of ISIS.
