June 13, 2018
MY CORNER by Boyd Cathey
Russia, the Neoconservatives, and the Real
Issues Involved
Friends,
Almost one year ago the
United States Congress (with only a handful of “nay” votes) adopted new and
severe sanctions against Russia for its supposed attempt to
influence and interfere in the 2016 national elections [https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/aug/02/donald-trump-sanctions-russia-signs-bill]. Included in that legislation was a
provision—specifically placed there by Russophobe Senator Lindsay Graham
(R-SC)—that President Trump cannot alter or lift any of the sanctions without
future Congressional approbation.
The government of
Vladimir Putin, in response to this provocation, announced that the American
diplomatic presence in Russia would be reduced by 755 persons, a drastic move
by any standards. But we should not and cannot say it was unexpected—or
undeserved.
That sanctions vote
was fascinating as it illustrated during the first year of the contentious
Trump presidency a rare point of political unity
between the socialist Left, the Democrats and the mainstream media—formerly
noted for their “soft” and favorable attitude to the old and unloved Soviet
Communist Russian regime—and the conservative/GOP mainstream, dominated by the
Neoconservatives. Of course, perspectives and approaches to the question
differ, whether it was the Trump campaign that was colluding with Moscow, or if
it was Hillary and the Clinton Foundation that had collaborated in some way,
but their target remained the same: that man in the Kremlin and the country he
governs.
One thing was
clear: the result of the 2016 presidential election had that most unheard of
and remarkable result in recent American political history: a de facto alliance
of these supposedly antipodal political forces. And what we have
witnessed is a phalanx of the pseudo-Right Neocons and the formerly pro-Soviet
Left linked together, competing to see who could be more “anti” and who could
come up with the more far-fetched Russia conspiracy theories, and—as with the
2017 sanctions—the latest unwarranted, over the top legislation.
Consider the
recent—but largely unreported—formation of an umbrella group, the Renew
Democracy Initiative (RDI), with the goal of “uni[ting] the center-left and the
center-right.” Its leaders include former John McCain foreign policy advisor
Max Boot, The
Washington Post’s Anne Appelbaum, Never Trumper Bill Kristol, former chess
wizard Gary Kasparov, and Richard Hurwitz of Council on Foreign Relations. [See
“Neocons & Russiagaters Unite!," April 27, 2018: https://www.rt.com/usa/425303-renew-democracy-initiative-neocons-rdi/] RDI’s manifesto calls for "fresh
thinking” and urges “the best minds from different
countries to come together for both broad and discrete projects in the service
of liberty and democracy in the West and beyond…. Liberal democracy is in
crisis around the world, besieged by authoritarianism, nationalism, and other
illiberal forces. Far-right parties are gaining traction in Europe, Vladimir
Putin tightens his grip on Russia and undermines democracy abroad, and
America struggles with poisonous threats from the right and left.” [bolding
mine]
Or, recall those
on-camera Fox News Russia experts—think here of General Jack Keane or the
unhinged Colonel Ralph Peters who literally foamed at the mouth when talking
about Putin, calling him “the new Hitler,” and who asserted that Putin had
committed “worse crimes” than the German dictator. (Peters is so
anti-Russian that he finally left the Fox News network stable in March 2018;
see http://www.latimes.com/business/hollywood/la-fi-ct-peters-fox-20180320-story.html)
When Tucker Carlson
on his prime time program last July 11, 2017, demanded that Peters provide
facts and figures for his accusations, Peters immediately exploded and implied
that program host Carlson was a “Hitler apologist.” [https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2017/07/11/tucker_carlson_vs_ralph_peters_russia_putin_syria_assad_status_of_middle_east_iraq_war.htm]
It was a classic argument and
instance of reductio
ad Hitlerum.
Of course, such
examples aren’t rare in the establishment “conservative movement” media. Pick
up any issue of National
Review or The
Weekly Standard or listen to the Glenn Beck radio program and you can find
the same hysteria, largely laced with faked quotes or disinformation (e.g.,
“Putin wants to re-establish the Soviet Union” or “Putin was head of the KGB”
or “Putin has had his enemies assassinated,” and so on, ad nauseum).
Indeed, another
ploy by Neocon pundits (and Congress) has been to parade Bill Browder, the
grandson of American Communist Party boss Earl Browder, as a star witness to
President Putin’s nefarious dealings. Of course, it should be noted that
Browder fils lost
big time financially in his manipulations in Russia, as investigative
journalists Philip Giraldi [http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-new-know-nothings-in-congress/ and https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2018/02/01/meet-corrupt-billionaire-who-has-brought-about-new-cold-war.html] and Robert Parry [https://consortiumnews.com/2017/08/02/a-blacklisted-film-and-the-new-cold-war/] have documented, and he is engaged in a
vicious personal vendetta against Vladimir Putin.
For the
Neoconservative leaders of what passes for “conservatism” these days, it is as
if nothing has
changed since 1991, since the ignominious fall of Communism. It’s even arguable
that their hostility to Moscow has increased since then.
Let me suggest
several reasons for this: First, many of the more prominent Neoconservatives
descend from Russian Jews from the Pale of Settlement, whose memories go back
to the pre-Communist days of pogroms under the Tsars. They
originally welcomed Lenin and the Communist regime as liberators and
formed some of its staunchest supporters and apparatchiks in the regime of
terror that followed (especially in the Cheka and the NKVD) until Josef Stalin
unleashed a wave of anti-semitism after World War II. [See the partially
translated excerpts from Solzhenitsyn’s Two Hundred Years
Together at: https://200yearstogether.wordpress.com, and the commentary: https://russia-insider.com/en/solzhenitsyns-damning-history-jews-russia-review/ri22354
]
Putin, despite his
strong support from native Russian Jews and from the Moscow Rabbinate, is a
Russian nationalist and fervent supporter of the traditionalist Russian
Orthodox Church, and those two factors bring up painful memories of the “bad
old days” of discrimination and Jewish persecution for the Neocons.
A prime example of
this comes in a recent volume authored by prominent Neocon journalist and
homosexual activist (yes, the two traits often seem to go together), James
Kirchick: The End
of Europe: Dictators, Demagogues, and the Coming Dark Age, 2017). In this
jumble of Neocon ideology and prejudice, Kirchick evaluates what for him seems
to be happening ominously in Europe. He is deeply fearful of the efforts to
“close borders” against Muslim immigrants from the Middle East. He blasts
Marine Le Pen as a racist—and most likely a subtle “holocaust denier!”—and
attacks the attempts in places like Hungary and Poland to reassert national
traditions and Christian identity; for him these are nothing less than
attempts to bring back “fascism.” [http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/books/2017/04/the_end_of_europe_by_james_kirchick_reviewed.html]
Russia comes in for
perhaps his harshest criticism, and the reason is unmistakable: Russia seems to
be returning to its older national and pre-Communist heritage, to its age-old
Orthodox Christian faith. Russians are returning by the millions to the church
and the “old-time” religion. For Kirchick this can only mean one thing: the
triumph of bigotry, anti-semitism, and “extreme right wing” ideology, and the
failure of what he terms “liberal democracy and equality” (including, he would
no doubt include, feminism, same sex marriage, across-the-board equality, and
all those other “conservative values”!).
Kirchick’s
critique, shared by many of the leaders of the national Republican Party and
dominating the pages of most establishment “conservative” publications and talk
radio these days, joins him arm-in-arm with globalist George Soros in efforts
to undermine the Russian state and its president…all in the name of “democracy”
and “equality.” [See, “George Soros Aghast as Collapsing EU, while Russia
Resurgent,” January 19, 2018: http://russiafeed.com/george-soros-aghast-collapsing-eu-russia-resurgent/]
But, just what kind
of “democracy” and what kind of “equality” do Kirchick and Soros defend?
Beyond the
ideological foundations for their hatred of nationalist Russia are economic
considerations and the issue of who controls and manages the Russian economy:
Wall Street and Bruxelles, or Russia,
itself. Unlike the weak and pliant Boris Yeltsin, Putin the nationalist ended
the strangle-hold of Russian industry, in particular control of Russia’s
important energy sector, by those few international businessmen, the oligarchs
(many of them Jewish), most of whom fled the country. That could not stand! How
dare Russia—and its president—oppose the economic diktats of
Bruxelles and Wall Street!
Lastly, we should
add one more reason for hostility, and that is Russia’s remaining international
presence, in particular, in Syria. It is very simple: you don’t go from being
one of the world’s two “superpowers” to all of a sudden a second-rate,
economically-handicapped “has been” without some remorse. As a patriot and
nationalist President Putin has, understandably, attempted to reassert Russian
power—certainly, not as much or in the same manner as the old Communist
leaders. But, from his reasonable point of view, the largest country in the
world does have interests, and not just in what goes on in neighboring nations
where millions of Russians (formerly within Russia) reside, but also with
long-time allies such as Syria.
Is not this same
criterion true for the United States and its dealings with its neighbors and
allies?
More, for the past
twenty-five years Russia has experienced the poisoned tip of Islamic terrorism,
domestically, including the brutal war in Tchechnya in the Caucasus region and
the horrid bombings in the heart of the country, Moscow. From the
beginning of his tenure Putin has offered to cooperate with the United
States in the fight against international Islamic terror, but each time it was
the United States—us—who refused, including famously Paul Wolfowitz during the
George W. Bush administration who replied to one such offer: “We don’t
need your assistance or intel.” And thus, the revealing files on the Tsarnaev
brothers (Boston bombing) were not received. But, as Neocon Charles
Krauthammer once declared: “We live in a unipolar world today, and there is
only ONE superpower, and that is the United States.” That attitude was not
received with equanimity by post-Communist Russia, a Russia that has discovered
its heritage and its traditions and has asked for partnership with the United
States, and not the hysteria we have witnessed in the United States sweeping
aside all rationality.
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