Ukraine, Time for America to exit World War I

Woodrow Wilson's crusade to make the world safe for democracy has gone beyond absurd.  The echo chamber has been reverberating about what we have to do in the Ukraine.  No one in the media is saying the answer is to just leave.  The implication is that if we do, The Russkies are at the Atlantic in a week.  So what?  Europe becomes their problem instead of ours.

If the Old World wants to be sans Rus, their taxpayers can pay for defense.

Anyway, in the words of Will Smith in Men in Black, "Don't start nothin', won't be nothin'."  The trouble has our fingerprints all over it.  (see here, but I suspect my few readers already have).

Justin Raimondo has an account at antiwar.com of our new  millennium stupidity.  I am linking if anyone needs a history lesson.  We've been over the territory here before.

It's time to bring back all the boys from "Over There."  Cohan could write a catchy tune, but it was dumb then, it's dumber now.

We suspend our fundraiser in favor of the most worthy antiwar.com in spite of Justin's refusal to use the word Neutralist

The Neutralist announces the suspension of our ongoing fundraiser.  To become a Platinum Level Neutralist Sustainer requires a minimum donation of $15,000,000.  As our non-success has been impressive, we have decided to slack off in favor of an organization that is the grand torch bearer in the anti-intervention camp.

Antiwar.comhttp://antiwar.com/has been carrying on the fight since what feels like forever.  I discovered it during the buffoonery of the Clinton interventions.  It was a wonderful and welcome find.  There were people out there who thought mostly the same.  If I was crazy, I was not alone.

Maybe all of us who believe our countries foreign adventures have not been a good idea are mad.  I like to think that no matter how strident Justin Raimondo et al are, they are not hysterics.  It is the other side that is.  Fortunately, there is some proof of that.

Justin's Wednesday column is about the fundraiser.  He mentions how David Frum called people who opposed war treasonous.  He has some vindication below.

“Writing at the height of the neocons’ triumph, Frum said conservatives must "turn our backs" on the "traitors" in their midst, including not only Pat Buchanan but also Bob Novak, Tom Fleming, and Joe Sobran, as well as myself. Frum’s evidence of my "treason"? Let him speak for himself:

"The week after the fall of Kabul, Raimondo acknowledged that though the Afghan war seemed to have succeeded, disaster lurked around the corner: ‘The real quagmire awaits us. . . . When the history books are written, Operation Enduring Freedom will be hailed as a great success – provided it doesn’t endure much more than a few weeks longer.’"

In retrospect, my prediction is spot on: however, in the springtime of the neocons – Spring of 2003 – this was not so readily apparent. Not that I’m claiming to be Nostradamus or anything: at the time, it was clear to anyone with even a half-baked knowledge of Afghanistan’s history that the Americans’ attempt to remake the country would ultimately fail.”

Yup, Justin was right twice.  First in the prediction and second, he did not have to be Nostradamus.  Yet David Frum is still taken seriously.  He gets to talk on government radio and is published in say, The Daily Beast.  Okay, those are not really serious outlets, but you get what I mean.

Justin was and is mostly right, but he has to solicit supporters.  That is right and just as opposed to Frum types who are really just given presents.

So feel free to donate to antiwar.com, and when you send in your donation, tell Justin and Eric, they should call themselves Neutralists and not Isolationists.

I do have a problem with his praise of Sontag's anti-war activities.  Anyone who calls the group that brought the world indoor plumbing a cancer can't be all good.

Another Neutralist Manifesto!

I've seen John V. Walsh's writings on occasion, but never got overly excited.  It's ho hum time not because he writes terribly, just the opposite.  It is that the Neutralist is almost always in agreement.  In his latest article, he has sent cold shivers of pleasure up our spine for two reasons, for two reasons.

First, he has written a Neutralist Manifesto to rival the one on this site.

If the United States insists on its status as the dominant and unchallengeable military power, then we are on the road to conflict, certainly a new Cold War the beginning of which the “pivot” represents, and quite possibly we are on the road to WWIII. We in the United States are the ones who can control this and perhaps save the world from the very worst suffering and deadly conflict. The answer is to abandon Empire, dismantle our overseas bases, end our occupation of foreign nations, including South Korea, Japan and Germany, adopt a defensive strategy to protect our land and come home. Trade and talk, yes. Military intervention, no. We have a potential partner for peace in China. Let us give it a try. Establish trust and verify it. In short, Come Home America. A paradise awaits us here. Let us leave others in peace to construct their own.

Lovely stuff that.

Our second reason is he is a founding member of an organization called Come Home America that embodies what we believe.  Now our investigation of the website has not been exhaustive so maybe we should be a little bit reticent to extend fulsome praise.  It would not do to find out that they are for coming home because the Grand Goggflek of the Planet Nogemal has communicated with them.  If that turns out to be true, we withdraw approval, at least until Goggflek signals us directly.

We are not overly worried and suggest a visit to http://comehomeamerica.wordpress.com/

It is a site that has attained neutralismo even if they don't know it.

Thank you for your service, while your here.

Retired Admiral Mike Mullen has noted that the servimen killed in action are quickly forgotten by his countrymen and women.  I cannot say I disagree with him, but we generally tend to forget all our dead.  I will be going to a memorial service for a relative gone several years now.  He was close and is in my memory often.  Others, it's harder, that's why we have memorial services, not to mention Memorial day.  Like most American holidays, Memorial Day is now just another have fun day.

I applaud the Admiral, to a point.  Granted, fellow feeling for those who follow your trade is natural, but the lads and some lasses who lose their lives in war are a bit different from cousin Sid who died of an infected paper cut suffered in his cubicle as he was struggling to get out the monthly cafeteria usage report.

Our forces overseas are either the first line of defense in a vital world historic conflict, or their lives are being wantonly put at risk.  A short perusal of the Neutralist should leave no one to wonder long where we stand.

According to the Admiral,

"When you get to these wars, I worry that America has paid us very well, the compensation's good, [so the culture says] 'please go off and fight our dirty little wars and let us get on with our lives,'" he said. "We need to figure a way to get America to buy into those, into them."

Interesting words.  Yeah, the people like to be vaguely reminded someone is out there, so you have fine organizations like Fisher House and, after some recent media exposure, lesser outfits like Wounded Warrior.  So, does he have any ideas?  If he wants to drag the citizenry through the hospitals, maybe clean a bedpan or two, support for the war will last for nanoseconds.  It is only the detachment from reality keeps it from being unpalatable.

Another paragraph and quote struck us as a bit weird,

He proposed some sort of universal national service program (although not a draft), perhaps two years of service for all people between the age of 18 and 24, to bridge the gap between the military and the civilian communities.

"The military becoming more and more isolated from the American people is a disaster for America," Mullen said.

Now how is putting the kids in some non-draft situation going to bridge the gap?  

Actually, The Neutralist may be the only one in the country who finds such proposals bizarre.  It seems mandatory community service requirements in high schools and colleges can only make the students cynical.  Even the slow student gets that forcing someone to do good does not make them good.

He singles out The Northeast for special treatment.

The problem is worse in the Northeast than other regions. "The people in the Northeast don't know us anymore, for example," Mullen said, given that the Base Realignment and Closure process has led to the closure of so many military installations in the region.

Now as someone who has lived here all my life, except for an inglorious period as a soldier, to a degree I believe him correct.  The political class is not enamored of  the military and does not enlist.  The base closures have been many and without people with jobs at the bases, there is less paycheck loyalty.

For all that there is a pervasive support the troops sentiment.  Hardly a professional sports event happens without remembering the troops.  Of course, there has been some substitution of Marathon Bombing memorialization  the closer one gets to Boston.  ROTC may not be big at Harvard or Yale, but many of the private and state colleges offer it.

The national service idea is not without supporters regionally.  In the upper reaches of academia and commerce, they see their kids teaching the benighted and closing some gap, while the lower orders have the grunt jobs.  Another reason to oppose it.

We have addressed this in other posts, but what kind of military does the Neutralist envision?  Ideally, we would wish everyone would rush to the colors and serve long term in the reserves.  I expect to be signed as a pitcher by the Red Sox before that happens.

Next idea?  The Neutralist wants a miltary that can defend the country, but not be tempted to foreign adventures.  Obviously, that is not a large standing army.

We are not optimists, but there is a system that is an effective fighting force and does not go abroad to save the world or markets.  That would be Switzerland.

Now this can work only if everyone goes.  As soon as war comes, the senator and rep, not to mention their staff head as well as the college president and ceo move out to their units.

The training of the new soldiers would mean everyone at age of induction goes to learn together the joys of low crawling.  The professors kid mixes with the lower orders.  He may find a few Billy Bobs from south of the Mason-Dixon who can outsmart him*.  Also, he can get to meet the inner city youth he has shed tears of blood over while personally avoiding.  Sexual orientation, who cares?  In basic, it should be all training all the time such that if someone still has energy to get into another bunk, they've probably earned it.

The grand establishment that is the military will no longer exist.  We won't need Pxs, Golf courses, enlisted clubs and all the paraphernalia that bribes people into long service.

It won't be fun, and like the Swiss, as everyone goes, the people will not tolerate frivoulous deployments to save the world or bring democracy or something.

I know this has no chance of happening.

*Be assured, there is no one of this class who thinks anyone outside it his or her equal.

Tomgram, salvation is destruction

The headline to the Tomgram article says it all,  We Have to Destroy Our Constitution to Save It.  It's one of those great lies such as Bush the younger's abandoning free market principles to save it.  It has no basis in truth, but is accepted by a segment of the population.

No one to the Neutralist's knowledge actually said that about the constitution other than Tom, but it is the general tone of partisans of the security state. 

Bush did make his remark.  Unlike a lot of people who were born with a hatred for him, his family and party, The Neutralist doesn't think he was stupid.  Neither do we believe him a genius.  He possessed the cunning of the political class.  There is a very limited free market in this country.  In real terms, Bush did nothing to save it, nor did he have any intention of doing so.  He was bailing out the banker class.  His remark of saving it was him being cute as was, oh like say, Bill Clinton when he announced the end of the big government era.

The security state partisans do claim to be preserving our freedoms, but they talk more on the order of keeping us safe.  They say we have not heard about the events they prevented.  We sure know about the guys they set up for a fall.  If they're so effective, then there should have been no Boston Marathon bombing.  After all, they were tipped off by the Russkies.

So if the record of catching the bad guys is, as they say in Scotland, not proven, what is the rationale for scooping up all our phone records?

In truth, we do not have an answer, only guesses.  The people who are doing this are bureaucrats even if they wear general's stars.  We would not want to say they are born rotters and that is what they do.  They may have signed on believing in the goodness of the mision.  No matter the state of their souls, they believe in the mission.  If they don't, at least they serve it.  Governments and bureaucracies do not always trust the citzenry.  It is not far from that to a for your own good attitude.

It is even shorter to a we are trashing the Bill of Rights to save it.  Are they mad.  Sure, but the real crazies don't go to asylums.  If you can write a plausible paper, appear cogent on C span, you should have no worries about keeping a post no matter how many files you want Leviathan to scoop up.

The Tomgram applauds the activity of the people who exposed COINTELPRO and the paper that exposed the operation.  What has changed?  More to the point, who has changed?  There is a tiny burst of surprise that the Clintons have an enemies list.  Not a big topic in the media.  When Nixon had them it was proof of complete evil, as was just about anything he did.  Equally hated and reviled was J. Edgar Hoover and his FBI. 

To go after them was truth to power.  Was it really?  After all, the media applauded the actions of the operatives.  We don't know, but no matter, the security state at that time was a fraction of what it is now, but it was not good.

Now, the great and good are not rising up in opposition as they did even under Bush.  Not too many have much to say against this administration.  Why?  Is it a cult of personality for someone who really does not have much of a personality?

Tom and Glenn have to be commended.  It has to be a bit lonely, but that is heroism.

Anyone up for another Asian war?

Of course The Neutralist should stay on top of current events so that we can comment intelligently on events relevant to our mission.  Sadly our budget is non-existent so we have to rely on other sources.  Fortunately, they abound on the Internet.  One is always being warned that we cannot trust everything on the web.  Of course they never mean NYT or WAPO.  Moi, I'll take the new media over the old when it makes its points well.

It seems there is trouble brewing in Pacific.  None of it close to us, but thanks to our great victory in WWII, the country we leveled is our ally.  Now, if they have a war, it is our war.

In one of the newer media outlets, Antiwar.com's blog John Glaser notes that China is kind of tired of a large ocean being an American lake.

In Mr. Glaser's post, Abandon Hegemony in Asia-Pacific, Or Risk Catastrophic War, the title says it all.  Is maintaining the Pacific lake worth a war?  The few people who have been following The Neutralist cannot be in the dark on our position.  We have always been for the end of our country's policy of running the world.  In the end, it is unsustainable.  We are rattling swords with a big creditor in support of another big creditor.  Are we the indispensable power or a grand pawn?

Is China wishing to establish an Asian Monroe Doctrine or does she wish to have a lake.  The Neutralist can't say for sure, but believes, in the end, short of war there is no point to staying.  There are enough regional players such that if we leave, The Middle Kingdom will have enough problems sorting that out that they're not about to obtain a trans-Pacific landing force anytime soon.

Thanks to treaty obligations, bugging out will be complicated.  Even so, we should begin the process of negotiating our departure with all the powers now.

Actually, we should have begun the process in 1898 by saying to Spain, sorry about that boat, but send us a few pesetas comp and you keep the Philippines.  No, go back further, we should have told the sugar planters further south that we were not helping to depose Queenie.

Mr. Glaser sums it all up best here, “maintaining global hegemony does ordinary Americans little good. Such an exclusive hold on power in the sphere of international relations is greatly beneficial to political elites and the wealthy entities to which they are closely tied, but not much for the general population. Given this, the question of whether we prefer maintaining hegemony to “all-out conflict” in the Asia-Pacific is pertinent.”

It was maybe the Dole's in Hawaii, who wanted the Philippines is a good question, but elites set up a colonial situation that probably made war inevitable.  Why are we still there?  There are ample web sources to argue that, but be assured, Joe and Jane average will get nothing out of it.

Bill Kristol wants to transform the Dumb War into another Good War.

It is no small task Bill Kristol has set himself. After all, when someone who has made no great sacrifices in life wants to tell us that men who paid the ultimate price really died for some good reason, one might think there would be some logical justification for his pontification. Not really, his screed does little more than tell us to suck it up for the country, because that's good, or something.

He quotes the poem of Wilfrid Owen wherein the poet disagrees that Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori is as sweet as it sounds. Owen, unlike Kristol, actually saw service and near the end of the conflict was killed in action.

Kristol does not mention Siegfried Sassoon. Sassoon was also a war poet and as brave a soldier as Owen. He was decorated with the Military Cross. After being wounded, he refused to go back to the war. The futility was too much and he turned against the whole project.

Kristol notes that the beginning of “The Great War” is the bicentennial of the War of 1812. He quotes the Star Spangled Banner Then Conquer we must verse. So a war we incompetently drifted into justifies all the silly deaths of 1914-1918? 

One is tempted to ask if they taught logic at Harvard. That is irrelevant. Kristol surely understands a valid syllogism. What is going on is he is being cute. His conservatism is all pretense. A conservative foreign policy would emulate Switzerland's. We, as a people got nothing out of our intervention in the First World War. We are getting none out of our Middle-Eastern adventures.

Kristol and the Weekly Standard staff are going on a cruise to schmooze with the subscribers. Let us all applaud that sacrifice as our boys in Afghanistan hunker down in a meaningless conflict. I doubt Mr. Warrior will be too upset if there are casualty reports while he is at sea.

Kristol, would probably quote with approval the words of Herbert Croly when he was pushing for WWI, "The American nation needs the tonic of a serious moral adventure."  Croly was one of the founders of The National Review and an uber-progressive and like Kristol a chickenhawk.  I don't really believe Kristol is stupid enough to believe the stuff he spouts, but if he does, he's a lunatic.

Hat tip to Mediaite and Lew Rockwell blog.

Isolationism, always new always fresh!

America is taking a short break from remaking the world.  This may have something to do with the last few attempts not being too successful.  Actually, they were failures, but is that any reason to stop trying?  It never has been and never will be over at Planet New York Times.

Back in October, Andrew Bacevich, West Point Grad, Professor of International Relations and History at Boston University wrote a long piece on the Times' love of adventuring.  It was exhaustive in displaying how the “Paper of Record” supports intervention and condemn Isolationism whenever it rears its ugly head.

Professor Bacevich exhaustively chronicles how Timesguys and Timesbabes are always fighting the eternal recurrence of “The New Isolationism” (TNI). The opponents of TNI are so numerous that if they could be mustered together, they could constitute and invasion force and head off to the next country we need to save.

The lads and lasses who hate isolationism so much never get around to explaining why the whole internationalism stuff is so great.  It's just that America hunkered down here is horrible in their view.

And this is of course the problem.  There really are not many isloationists.  It's that the op-edsters in the times get to define the terms.  I wish the Professor had come to grips with this as he wrote a great Neutralist column.  Neutralism is not turning our back on the world, though it is turning our back on running the world.

My favorite part of the article, his quote of James Traub from the 1991 NYT,

An op-ed by up-and-coming journalist James Traub appearing in the Times in December 1991, just months after a half-million U.S. troops had liberated Kuwait, was typical.  Assessing the contemporary political scene, Traub detected “a new wave of isolationism gathering force.”  Traub was undoubtedly establishing his bona fides.  (Soon after, he landed a job working for the paper.)

This time, according to Traub, the problem was the Democrats.  No longer “the party of Wilson or of John F. Kennedy,” Democrats, he lamented, “aspire[d] to be the party of middle-class frustrations -- and if that entails turning your back on the world, so be it.”

Anyone who wants to be part of Wilsonianism is either not bright, not sane or a charlatan.

Good work, Professor.  You don't have far to go to come out into the sunlight of Neutralism

Professor Bacevich' article has been posted a few places.  I read it at the Unz Review .

Some good stuff from Sic Semper Tyrannis

Common sense reigns on Col. Patrick Lang's committee of correspondence known as Sic Semper Tyrannis.  The Neutralist will comment on a couple.

First up is

South Sudan Another Failure of U S Foreign Policy

by Hank Foresman.  Now I don't know who Mr. Foresman is, but I did try to do a little research.  It appears he had a military career like Col. Lang and has graduate degrees.  At the end of the day, the credentials are not as important as the validity of what he wrote.  I agree with his analysis that Rice and Powers don't get it.  

He praises the older generation of realists such as, Henry Kissinger, George Schultz, Brent Scowcroft, Zbigniew Brzezinski, James Baker, Sam Nunn, James Baker, and Jeanne Kilpatrick.  To an extent, I agree.  They did have a better connection to what was possible to manage.

Of course, the Neutralist does believe that the short term goal of American FP should be to undo World War I and the long term to position ourselves so that we need not go on foreign adventures.  The aforementioned wise men and woman were not on that team. 

Of course, as usual, my blood boils when I read the I word as in this comment from Col. Foresman,

Hank Foresman said in reply to Alba Etie...
Mr. Etie: I believe we are seeing a more restrained Foreign Policy but one that is still heavily influenced by the likes of Slaughter, Rice, and Power. The Neo-cons are still a prominent force in the loyal opposition but they are increasingly being challenged by neo-isolationists such as Rand Paul and his father and Wyden and others on the left side of the Senate aisle. I am not very optimistic that realism will see the light of day in the near term.

The Rands are Neutralists even if they don't know it.  They are certainly anti-intervionists.

Even more instructive are Col. Lang's comments on the new NIE on Afghanistan.

The Neutralist has no connections and knows no one, but we saw Afghanistan and Iraq coming a cropper before either invasion.

Justin, celebrate Neutralism, not the I word!

In a previous post, Justin Raimondo writes an Neutralist column without mentioning the N word, The Neutralist observed how Justin wrote about Neutralism without saying the magic word.  Two Cheers for ‘Isolationism’ How’s that ‘global leadership’ thing working out for us?was a good column, but needed to use the word.

Justin is at it again.  In Long Live ‘Isolationism’! It’s a synonym for peace he again makes the Neutralist case, but calls it Isolationism.

Wrong word.  America need not be a hermit country like Japan before Perry.  We can be engaged with the world, but not running it.  That is the difference in the words.

Your a great man for the cause, Justin.  Just get the right word.

Why Imperialism Sucks-Part Whatever II

So we have a war on drugs that is important to fight.

We are helping the Afghans do something and have beaucoup troops there to do that.

Drudge led me to this.

After 12 Yrs of U.S. Occupation, Afghanistan Sets Record for Growing Opium

It is a conservative site so maybe it's ragtime.  They do quote the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

The best part of the article is where it says, 

In fact, according to the latest worldwide data on opium-poppy cultivation, Afghanistan dedicates more land to the cultivation of opium poppies than all of the rest of the world combined.

Okay people, no one with the least detectable pulse believes the American people get anything out of being in Afghanistan.  Someone is, but for, as Mr. South Carolina put it, US Americans it's nada.

I hope the Loya Jurga refuses an SOFA.

Drudge off the deep end!

Drudge has a picture of Obama holding up a piece of paper.  the headlines accompanying it are,

PEACE FOR OUR TIME...

American Held Hostage In Iran For 444 Days Calls Deal 'Foolishness'...

'Like Jimmy Carter all over again'...

Krauthammer: Worst since Munich... 

Saudi Arabia warns it will strike out on its own...

Rift with USA… 

Subtle it ain't.  So we have given over and the Iranian storm troopers will either be at the gates of D.C. or raining nukes on Lubbock in no time flat, or something.

The Saudis are going out on their own, according to the Telegraph.  Good luck to 'em.  Maybe the Chinese will be better partners.  Doubt they will be as easy to snooker.  Or maybe Bandar can leverage his special relationship with Putin.

The Neutralist is aware that the western industrial world runs on hydrocarbons.  If it is a choice of having our sons, and increasingly daughters, involved in another mid-east conflict with the same level of success as, oh, let's say, Iraq or Afghanistan, we should take our chances.

Israel is not amused with us either.  We wish Prime Minister Netanyahu luck as well.  After all it is his neighborhood.

The principal fact to keep in mind is that it is not our neighborhood.  We don't have to demand Iran do anything and we shall be no worse if we leave the region entirely.

The guy cited as the hostage above and who thinks the deal with Iran sucks may be right.

“My personal view is, I never found an Iranian leader I can trust,” he said. “I don’t think today it’s any different from when I was there. None of them, I think, can be trusted. Why make an agreement with people you can’t trust?”

haven't had to deal with Iranian leaders, so The Neutralist can't disagree.  Maybe in another news item the man can tell us a world leader who is absolutely trustworthy.

As we have said before, time to say au revoir.

Why Imperialism Sucks-Part Whatever

Without any legitimate provocation, we saw Spain off from the Caribbean and Far East in the late Nineteenth Century.  What did we get out of it?

Not much.  Our attempt at a Cuban protectorate took kinda for a while, but is long gone.  The 

Philippines, we fought the Spanish, then the people and then the Japanese.  Now gone.  A few islands in the Pacific are still ours.  What a waste.

The reductio ad absurdum is Puerto Rico.  Puerto Ricans can be charming and upstanding people.  It is as unfair to stereotype a people as all good as all bad.  Suffice it to say, the Puerto Rican experiment has not been an unmitigated success.  Maybe not even a mitigated triumph.

Now we have a CNBC headline, 

Worsening Debt Crisis Threatens Puerto Rico

Puerto Rico has as much debt per person as Detroit and we've had Detroit about twice as long.

And who does PR want to bail them out?

Thank God we didn't land troops in Libya.  A successful invasion would have meant a headline like the one above  hundred years hence.

Time to give into the Puerto Rican Independence movements, sans severance package.  Heck, time to start a Detroit independence movement.

,

Eric "Bring the Boys Home" Margolis tells us what to do about the debt

Okay, to be honest, Mr. Margolis middle name is not Bring the Boys Home.  Still, his column leads in that direction.  He does not say bring all the boys and now some lasses home, but the logic is inescapable.

"The United States has no serious strategic enemies that can be identified."

Like duh.  As we always say at the Neutralist, the Middle Eastern countries ain't getting into carrier fleets to invade the lower the "Homeland."

there are elements that see themselves as our enemies, but if we don't let them in here, they will probably just bother their neighbors.

It's more of a "we have met the enemy and he is us" situation.  So much money being spent on what we can't afford.  The amount spent on the military benefits us in almost no way.

We need a military only to defend the US.  Our bloated defense establishment does us no good chasing poor tribesmen around some benighted backwater.

You can read the whole column here.

William S. Lind and our best policy in the Middle East-It's a Neutralist strategy

I used to read William S. Linds essays on strategy that that appeared at the Free Congress Foundation.  After they abruptly stopped, I read him whenever possible.  It has been mostly at The American Conservative.  He always makes sense, though the Neutralist is sure we can find something to disagree with if we try hard enough.

Not today, however.  Mr. Lind has written a thoroughly neutralist column at TAC.  The title says it all,

Islam’s Civil War

America can win it—by staying out.

Yup, as we've said before, they ain't jumping in their carrier fleets to invade our east coast.  

some have decried Mr. Lind's attitude as gloating.  I hope it is not.  I take no pleasure that Shia and Sunni will fight and kill each other.  May they find peace.  Still, facts are facts, and we, and they are better off without our attempts at managing it.

To read Mr. Lind, go here.  

He is now a fellow of the Neutralist Foundation whether he likes it or not.  If we can, we'll hit him up for dues.

A simple explanation as to why the American people are not feeling war love

a Madison Avenue fable.

 Seeking to produce a new dog food, a big corporation set market researchers, food chemists and advertising agencies to work. The experts came up with a new product they were proud of. The dog food sold well, for a while. Then it slumped. Puzzled, the corporate executives commissioned a public opinion firm to see what was wrong. 

Soon, the answer came back: "The dogs don't like it."

The Neutralist is somewhat Menckenesque in attitude toward the electorate.  I am happily amazed that they find the flavor of the current sales pitch a bit off.

this is from Ben Wattenberg.  I have no idea how he feels about intervention, it is just that the story works. 

Anatoly Karlin dissects the stupid rhetoric on Syria

I can't say I know much about Mr. Karlin other than guessing he is a Russian living in the US.  Always interesting, but this time superb.  His dissection of the rhetoric could be a primer on the subject.  His introduction to the post Game of Homs is dead on,

What striking about Syria is how so many people insist on speaking about it in profoundly moralistic, Manichaean terms. This is complete nonsense, given that its civil war isn’t a showdown between democracy and dictatorship, but an ethnic and religious conflict.

His explanation of what the regime is doing is also worth reading.

The Assad regime 

The rhetoric: He kills his own people! He is the Evil Overlord (TM)! 

The reality: That’s kind of what happens in a civil war. Abraham Lincoln also “killed his own people,” you know. It is obvious why the “regime” fights on: That is what regimes do  – as a general rule of thumb, they’re fond of surviving. The rather more interesting and telling question is: Why do key elements of the population continue to back them?

As far as the Alawites and Christians are concerned, it’s pretty clear: The Sunnis have never been particularly well disposed to them, and the past few years haven’t made them any fonder. The last time the Sunnis revolted in Hama in 1982, one of the slogans of the Muslim Brotherhood was “Christians to Beirut, Alawites to the graveyard.” 

In the game of Homs, you win or you die – and the “you” is in its plural form. No wonder Assad has a solid support base. 

there is more to it and everyone should read it.  Unfortunately, the web being what it is, only folks who have heard of him will notice.  The vast sea of my incurious countrymen will never see it.

Fortunately, other than the Obamanots, few still buy the idea that another war is the ticket.

Report from the telescreen-Diane Sawyer introduces the women snipers of Syria

The Neutralist almost never watches network evening news.  In our so called adult life we have witnessed all to much propaganda masquerading as news that little shocks us.  Last night, we came close.  It was not that it was blatant.  The problem was there was no effort to not be stupid.

Diane Sawyer in "I am a serious newsreader" mode introduces us to the women snipers of Syria.  She hands off to Muhammad Lila on the ground who is with black clad teachers by day who are snipers by night.  Didn't answer the question as to when the lasses get sleep, but when it's life or death for the cause, you do what you have to do.

According to Muhammad, "they've been trained as rebel snipers, patrolling to keep their neighborhood safe."

Was it all contrived?  Snipers don't ususally patrol, they have a position to observe the enemy lines and pick a target of opportunity.

But, damn it all looked contrived, and the average American wouldn't know anyway.

It is getting harder and harder for the major media to propagandize effectively.Ten, fifteen years ago, the shilling for war would have been more effective.  They must be surprised that less and less people buy the line.  Of course, there is the internet and also, they've gone to the well a little too often.

Maybe folks have the felling, fool me once shame on you, fool me ten times.........

Mara Liasson and NPR your tax dollars at work

Listening to NPR after Sunday Baroque.  Mara is talking oh so seriously about how the president has a problemo with his war as the American public is "seriously conflicted" about the proposed debacle,  She said this not just once.

I googled and found a poll that said support is 50% up from 9 or something.  I am not sure that that means we are conflicted.  Most people I are not anguishing.  They have an opinion and others have a different one.

What it means is not enough people, even NPRbots have blindly accepted the pro-intervention line.  NPR, and the other media can't sell it even to some Obama loyalists.  NPR, Fox for the left.

The story after was even more vapid.  It was Jill Biden talking about her important work in education or something.  I am sure she is a nice lady, but if she were not Gaffer Joe's wife, she would not be on radio.

What got me was I think she said, "Just after we were elected."

Good luck Mr. President

Sir I wish you this sincerely.  I hope you were not really hot for the adventure and it seemed like you might have been hesitant.  Were the furies, Anne-Marie Slaughter, Samantha Power, Susan Rice, Hillary Clinton, pushing you?

Who knows your thoughts?  Certainly not the Neutralist.

But here is a chance to climb down.  Here are two options:

1. Let a vote happen and lose and blame the Republicans for every bad thing that happens in the ME.

2. Make a speech laying out why intervention would be a bad thing and you were for peace and unicorns or some twaddle.  Wait and collect another Nobel.

Understand, I hope you extricate yourself not because I love any politician, but because this is a bad idea.

Bonne Chance!