Stephen Kinzer in the Globe, Re Afghanistan, Trump was right-Will Biden be?

 Stephen Kinzer nails it in his February 18, 2021 Boston Globe column.  He shouldn't have to, we should've been long gone from Afghanistan, but we aren't and if some foreign policy goofs have their way, we may never.

Worth a read anyway:

Trump was right: Get out of Afghanistan

Biden should honor what looks like the best deal we’re ever going to get in that country.

Stephen Kinzer against the grain on Syria.The question is how does this guy get published?

One would not want The Neutralist to become All Stephen Kinzer all the time, but even after being praised on these pages, he is not resting.

In the February 18, 2016 Boston Globe, He has written the article, The media are misleading the public on Syria.  Now, if you are willing to seek out other sources, you may know that there is another side to the story, but you won't find it in the regular press.

According to virtually all the Main Stream Media, Assad lives only to kill his own people and the brave Syrian people are standing up against his oppression unless they are starving in enclaves. Meanwhile, the Russkies are bombing the good rebels as opposed to ISIL or Daesh or whatever it is called this week.

His last article which was discussed on The Neutralist was refreshing.  This one, well it's sticking a thumb into the eye of not just the media, but the government apparatus.  It's the emperor has no clothes on steroids.  With that said, Mr. Kinzer is not really trying to be a firebrand.  His article is nicely laid out.  It can't be helped, the normal press has gone so far overboard that reason seems almost unhinged.

After the Globe article, he appeared on NECN to speak with one of their hosts.  Now New England Cable News is not Fox or CNN, but it was still a happy surprise.  If you get a chance, watch it and see a reasonable man talk sense.

Poor Stephen Kinzer, the lowly, mostly unread Neutralist is rewarding him by making him a Neutralist Fellow

The Neutralist trudges along in obscurity trying to get the nation on board with a humble non-interventionist foreign policy.  We spend almost all our time in the great swamp of despondency, feeling unwanted and unloved.

Then along comes someone to prove to us there is some sanity in the universe.

In of all places, someone made sense in the Boston Globe, an establishment organ if there ever was one.

It was without a sense of urgency that we got to this as it was published on December 13th of last year.  Mr. Kinzer's What a truly conservative foreign policy looks like is not long, about 700 words, but that hardly matters.  It is as direct and to the point as anything the Globe has printed on the subject, which isn't much.

He begins by setting out what American Foreign Policy is,

AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY is based on deep convictions. Those who shape it believe the United States is the indispensable nation that must lead the world; this leadership requires toughness; and toughness is best shown by threatening or using force. Beneath these beliefs lies the assumption that the United States knows more and sees further than other countries.

He then tells us why it is essentially liberal,

Many liberals embrace this dogma. That makes sense. It emerges from the liberal tradition, which imagines that humanity is steadily progressing toward a perfect world in which no one will go hungry, warlords will disappear, diseases will be cured, and people will cooperate for the common good. 

As the few readers of this blog must know, we see such an attitude at best as misguided and at worst, delusional and dangerous.

Mr. Kinzer than gives us the conservative FP.

Conservatism, by contrast, is a live-and-let-live ideology. By nature it is prudent, careful, and restrained. Conservatives do not believe that any country can solve the world’s problems or is called to do so. They want to leave other nations alone, not remake them. That makes restraint in foreign affairs an essentially conservative doctrine. 

It is well stated.  He then asks the question,

Why, then, do so many self-proclaimed conservatives vote for lavish defense budgets, favor maintaining hundreds of military bases around the world, and support foreign wars?

Our good man knows the answer,

It is because they have left true conservatism behind. The vision of an exceptional America, dominating the world and shaping the fate of nations near and far, has seduced them away from conservative values.

Though this is valid as far as it goes, there is a problem with it.  He mentions Taft and Hoover and Ron Paul as real conservatives and he is right.  Most, however on the American right have never been really conservative, at least as far as foreign policy is concerned, even though they claim the label. They never held conservative values to be seduced from.  This is not just sad, it's tragic.

It is a excellent work by the visiting fellow at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University.  He finishes it strongly,

Mainstream conservatism has joined the foreign policy consensus. By helping to push the United States into ambitious nation-building projects, its leaders have abandoned their movement’s founding principles. A true conservative looks dubiously on foreign intervention. Who does not, is none.

As they say, the thing speaks for itself.

Kinzer never labels himself, for all we know, he may not be a conservative and might be appalled that The Neutralist is favoring his article.  No matter.

So, our apologies Mr.Kinzer, but we officially make you a fellow of theNeutralist institute.

We might ask Globe token "conservative" Jeff Jacoby should read What a truly conservative foreign policy looks like.  

A refreshing article at the Boston Globe, but also more of the same from Chickenhawk Jacoby

The Boston Globe was for a couple of decades owned by the New York Times.  In that era, it was reliably Timesy.  To be honest, so we guess.  I no longer live in the Boston area so what little I read was usually a link that evinced no surprises.

As there are few hot properties in daily news outlets, The Times unloaded the Globe in 2013 at a fire sale price relative to what the old Yankee ownership received about 20 years previously.  

The new owner, John Henry, is a successful businessman who also owns the Boston Red Sox.  Out here in Nowheresville, we have not discerned any change in direction from the usual knee jerk progressivism.  Then again, we are not paying attention.

It was refreshing to catch a link to an article that is in opposition to the administration policy in Eastern Europe.  The title of the September 20th piece, Russia is not the enemy, set the tone that Stephen Kinzer followed to the end.  What's interesting is Mr. Kinzer is a veteran Timesman.  Of course, as we are not following either paper too closely, we may be misjudging.

Still, the article is good.  It lays out all the reasons why the current policy toward Russia is ill advised.  Reading Kinzer, one gets the feeling that American foreign policy makers just don't know when to stop.  Well, that has been a bit of a theme here at The Neutralist.

Mr. Kinzer's article is worth your time.

The current administration at the Globe has inherited, for better or worse, old staff.  In the for worse column, we would include token conservative Jeff Jacoby.

Jeff is a neocon, which really does not bear much resemblance to conservatism.  The man is reliably for war and more war.  

Needless to say, you can leave out one word in the title of Mr. Kinzer's article and change Russia to Putin and you have serviceable theme for Jacoby's article back in March.  The title, Putin has builta Russia of hate, is not going to win awards for subtlety, nor is the article.  Jacoby blames Putin for everything except the Lindbergh kidnapping.

The article is a rehashing of all the anti-Putin tropes, as Putin has been, 

"crushing Chechnya, occupying Georgia, running interference for Syria and Iran-al while eviscerating domestic democratic opposition, plundering Russia's wealth..."

Forgetting that Putin also warned us about the Marathon bombers, but so what.  Gee, those Chechens are the nicest people.  

That running interference for Syria, we could translate that as opposing ISIS, but why quibble.

Putin might not have annexed Crimea if Nuland et al had not pushed a coup as Jacoby did not mention.

In his article, Jeff all but accuses Putin of killing dissident Boris Nemtsov.  For all we know that may be right.  Does it mean we have to go all out against the Russkies.  Jeff is all for it.

"America and the West can best give meaning to Nemtsov's death by emulating the resolve and courage he embodied in life. Condolences won't stop Putin's advances. Backbone is a different story."

Jeff knows all about backbone.  He has led the fight against those who call him and his non-serving ilk "chickenhawks."  To him its a slur.  He and the rough writers showed us by marching down to the recruiting office to lead the battle from the frontlines and not the keyboard.

Nah, he still fights from the comfortable Globe bunker on Morrisey Boulevard.