A bit longish but to add “context” on the subject of “Cluster Bombs,” just raised by the Quincy Institute in an earlier post today, and this statement, true in itself: "Now Biden has generated global outrage by promising to send cluster bombs, known for their ability to kill and maim children fifty years after the relevant war has ended, as any Laotian farmer could tell you. . . . Biden has admitted that these devices are being sent only because the U.S. is running out of the artillery ammunition that the Ukrainians actually require. “This is a war relating to munitions. And they’re running out of that ammunition, and we’re low on it,” hetolda TV interviewer.”
Not as criticism of Andrew Cockburn but to bring the article up to date from May on budgetary numbers, the military budget doesn’t “nudge $850 billion,” which was Biden’s opening proposal, but blew past that number with the Republican controlled House NDAA Bill granting the Republican’s opening proposal of about $886 billion, though it’s always difficult to compare "apples to apples” in military budgeting, with this claiming in March that that was Biden’s proposal, which the Republicans denounced as “insufficient": https://www.defensenews.com/congress/budget/2023/03/10/gop-blasts-inadequate-biden-defense-budget-as-it-vows-spending-cuts/.
"WASHINGTON — Republicans in Congress are blasting the president’s proposed $886 billion defense budget for fiscal 2024 — a 3.3% increase over last year — as insufficient."
But as with the scapegoating of “Who Lost China,” in foreign policy, post-WW II Conservative Republicans continue their "tradition” of denouncing virtually any military budget proposal as “insufficient,” until Trump came along and showered so much money on the so-called “Blob,” that he made a joke of “Non-interventionist Conservatives” repetitious claim that “Trump was fighting the Blob.” Now made even more hilarious by transposing that on to DeSantis as well!
But I began this a few days ago so I will just finish it up and send in my continuing "demythologizing” the “myths” Conservatives are generating of the mythological “Right-wing Peaceniks,” which Andrew Bacevich of QI contributed to as well in his noxious book on “Conservatism.” But this stands as the continuing refrain of Conservative Republicans from the end of WW II, regardless of specific country they wished to attack, or which was the war du jour:
"Republican senators demanded more defense spending, calling the allocated funds in the deal inadequate. The legislation caps defense spending in 2024 at $886 billion and $895 billion in fiscal year 2025.”
Adding “context” to YouTube link shared by Chas the other day on cluster bombs, beneath the “scorecard” of U.S. past use of them, which is at bottom. There is an obvious concerted “Cognitive Warfare” operation ongoing against the American people since Trump began campaigning with micro-targeted propaganda memes, to convince the war favoring electorate that he would "out-Neocon, the Neocons," which he did. But sent another micro-targeted campaign propaganda meme, in the Arthur Finkelstein “Six-party Theory” of political campaigning, to the war-weary faction of Republicans of Ron Paul voters, etc., that he “would end the endless wars and fight the Blob,” which he didn’t. Unless you believe Trump’s and the Republicans showering more money upon the Military contractors than had hitherto ever been done during “peacetime” (unless under Reagan?), that is, upon the Military-Industrial Complex Eisenhower helped create with his “New Look” military policy notwithstanding his later denunciation of it. The “Blob” as so-called “Non-Interventionist Conservatives” have taken to calling it, while creating the “myth” of the “Right-wing Peacenik,” a blatant lie as revisionist history.
As I heard again yesterday by Dan McCarthy, a former editor of The American Conservative magazine, current Editor of the right-wing journal Modern Age (which I used to read, so I know it well), and one of the most zealous agitators on behalf of Yoram Hazony’s Israeli Settler "National Conservative Movement,” on a Spectator podcast. He made the absolutely ludicrous statement of Ronald Reagan "keeping us out of endless wars like Vietnam!” When Reagan was in fact one of the most vociferous proponents of the Vietnam War as a “Traditional Conservative, with Barry Goldwater, with this letter expressing Reagan’s only “criticism" of the war; the familiar “hands tied behind our back” criticism of “Limited War,” shared virtually universally by Traditional Conservatives, and daisy-chained contemporaneously to their embryonic “neoconservative” political siblings:
With that as some context, and in the interest of "telling the truth” and revealing lies and misrepresentations, as Dan Ellsberg set the example for, which especially means "debunking the myths” being created of the “Right-wing Peaceniks” by “New Right” promoters of Republican politicians as taking place even on this email list. So much so that one wonders if some of the 501(c)(3) organizations shouldn’t be reported to the FEC for making illegal “contributions in kind” donations to the likes of Trump. DeSantis, Josh Hawley, Matt Gaetz, and the Republicans most vociferous in support of war on China. With their extreme militarism "concealed” by Trump media platforms, such as The American Conservative magazine was declared by then Editor Johnny Burtka, with their campaign lies by omission when Republicans make some token opposition to the Ukraine War as reported and shared here on occasion.
So in that interest, future historians, if there are any, will very likely see U.S. military (USSOCOM)/paramilitary (CIA) operations against Russia, China, and Iran (most notably of the latter under the “Dual-Presidency” of Trump-Netanyahu, to be taken to an even higher level under DeSantis, according to DeSantis), since long before 2014, as the beginning of WW III. Which given the “nature” of war to escalate as a “phenomenon” in itself, Clausewitz as a “proto-phenomenologist” would fully understand. In fact, as some astute historians recognize, the opening stage of WW II most emphatically began with the “Mukden Incident, in Manchuria, as actual “kinetic war;” followed not long after by Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia. And historians of today studying the opening stage of WW III, like both Bill Polk and Chalmers Johnson would, I believe, agree that WW III began with the illegal U.S. War of Aggression against Iraq, as the “opening shots” of WW III. It was with that, that the “Moscow-Beijing-Delhi Strategic Triangle” began to take shape, as an alliance of “self-defense,” notwithstanding the title of this attached article: "The Moscow–Beijing–Delhi 'Strategic Triangle': An Idea Whose Time May Never Come.” That “time has come,” though India is not so central to that as originally, but still there in “support.” With the attached articles by Chalmers Johnson showing how prescient he was as we continue our collapse as any kind of resemblance to a “Democratic Republic,” into a fully Militaristic State, as were our WW II opponents, by whatever name we choose to assign to them, and to ourselves. To see how the “shoe is on the other foot” now, as the US Empire long ago supplanted Britain’s Global Empire (with Britain now in essence “our subservient colony”), read Patrick Henry’s speech denouncing Britain and King George with the question: "Are fleets and armies necessary to a work of love and reconciliation? Have we shown ourselves so unwilling to be reconciled that force must be called in to win back our love?,” and explain how our military buildups and wars beginning in the 1990s but accelerating post-9/11 can be seen any differently by Russia, China, and Iran today, always chiefly promoted by Republican “hardliners,” in the Conservative Tradition.
It was the Iraq War that "demonstrated the futility of the 1990s-era agreements on peace, nonaggression and disarmament in the face of a power determined to march forward,” that is, the U.S., to Russia and China, to paraphrase the State Department below:
That we are in the active kinetic stage of the U.S. War Against Russia, now WW III, begun in 2014, with the “Kiev Incident,” can be seen in John Kirby’s statement on Fox News yesterday that our ammo supplies for Ukraine Theatre operations are almost depleted, so "we have to provide cluster bombs for the Ukrainians to use against Russia to cover the shortfall,” to paraphrase Kirby, quoting Biden. The nationality of the actual "trigger-puller” is irrelevant to whom are the “belligerents,” as Russia and China are not too stupid to realize. Just as it wasn’t when the U.S. sent forces into North Vietnam on sabotage and subversion missions in 1964 under OPLAN-34A, and into Nicaragua in the 1980s, as the ICJ concluded in the case of Nicaragua v. U.S., as I recall the decision.
And as one-time Russian opponents of Putin, like Dmitri Trenin, have come to realize, as can be seen here: https://moderndiplomacy.eu/2023/07/03/the-us-and-its-allies-are-playing-russian-roulette-youd-almost-think-they-want-a-nuclear-war/ (I used to gnash my teeth a few years ago when his articles were shared here, for his failure to recognize the on-going U.S. “micro-aggressions” against Russia, which goes to my concern that U.S. “Perpetual War” is suicidal, not least to the “freedoms” once guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution’s Bill of Rights, so hated historically by U.S. hyper-militaristic Rightists, as articulated so “eloquently” by Willmoore Kendall.
But here is John Kirby bemoaning that in less than a year and a half, the U.S. has dropped on Russian forces, in the inexorable escalation of WW III from its 2014 beginning, so much munitions that the other “U.S. Theater’s” of the war now also allegedly have ammo shortages, especially the Pacific Front! What to do about it? Give a blank check to the munitions manufacturers of course, with guarantees of exorbitant profits, even greater than anything they’ve had to the present, of course!
So where does the “opposition party,” the Republicans, stand on this, in their demands for "accountability” we hear so much about? And of their “Realism and Restraint” their propagandists endlessly lie to us about in trumpeting, and reinterpreting, any and every vote against aid to Ukraine, as a “principled” vote against the U.S. war against Russia, which John Mearsheimer has pointed out was escalated to war against Russia by . . . Donald Trump?
Just like he did in demanding that Biden place the U.S. under martial law a couple years ago, Tom Cotton is out in front in stating the Republican Party’s traditional position on all war issues, with he representing the “Traditional Conservative” side, and Lindsey Graham that, and the Neoconservative side, evidencing there’s no difference between the two, to include amongst the Democrats adoption of the latter. With Cotton, and Josh Hawley on China, agitating as the "second coming” of Theodore Roosevelt, against Wilson up until Wilson gave in and declared war against Germany, contrary to “Conservative/Libertarian Mythology:"
"Republican senators demanded more defense spending, calling the allocated funds in the deal inadequate. The legislation caps defense spending in 2024 at $886 billion and $895 billion in fiscal year 2025.”
So why can’t the supposed “Realism and Restraint” crowd call Cotton out as the unrepentant war criminal (inciting aggressive war) he is? And John Hawley and Matt Gaetz, et al., of the so-called “New Right?,” for their incitement of War Against China, they yearn so much for? Maybe because they’re in on it now, with their active collaboration with the MIC-Intelligence Contractor Peter Thiel, and his “Radical-Right” political theory derived from the fascists Carl Schmitt and Leo Strauss? Read “National Conservative Doctrine,” and its “Network” of TAC magazine, and Yoram Hazony’s Settler Movement, along with the “Conservatives” of Hillsdale College and the Claremont Institute, and “knowledgeably, and informed,” (I’m full of rebuttals Tom) tell me differently!
Instead, they, the “Restrainers Club,” take "any” suggestion Cotton, or any other Republican, may offer that he (or they) might be reconsidering ultra-militarism, so he can be “brought” into the so-called “Conservative Restrainers Club?” Which is laughable in itself as they’re made up of pro-China War Hawks, and the most rabid of pro-Israeli Right zealots, like Trump and DeSantis! In the meantime, they cannot be criticized too much, it would seem, lest he/they "refuse to join the Restrainers Club.” Which sounds like junior high age kids seeking to get the “Cool Kid” in school to join their club!
So at worst, Cotton must only be a wayward Right-wing Peacenik, as reported on by New Right proponents, soon to “return to the family fold,” like the Prodigal Son, lest the mythology of the “Right-wing Peaceniks” be called into question.
BLUF: "The crisis in Ukraine illustrates the problem. Even Republicans sympathetic to the new right haven’t been able to resist the hawkish temptation. Among the loudest voices calling for escalation were Republican Senators Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Marco Rubio of Florida, politicians who have otherwise tried to articulate a more populist domestic vision for their party. Senator Rubioresortedto inapt Churchill-Hitler parallels (though he latersaidhe opposes deploying troops to Eastern Europe); Senator Cottonlambasted President Bidenfor “appeasing Vladimir Putin.”
"The Israeli scholar Yoram Hazony has suggested he wants to forge a new, more solidaristic and inwardly focused consensus to replace the old, broken fusion of pro-business libertarians, religious traditionalists and foreign-policy hawks.Yet even at the 2021 national conservatism conference, the hawks were amply represented and pitched the same old belligerence, especially against China.” (TP-“even,” [arched eyebrows])
. . .
"It’s important to revisit the intellectual history to understand how it was that the right came to advance what is a liberal cause in the first place. . . . The party of restraint was seen as conservative: cautious about the danger posed by war to republican virtues, respectful of enduring civilizational differences, humble in the face of unpredictable global events, hesitant to commit American blood and treasure to all but the most necessary military causes.”
Bullshit, in plain English! It was the celebrated, by Russell Kirk, “Conservative South,” with its feudal “traditions” of “Honor,” and “Militarism," and their incessant demands to expand slavery west, and south, such as Andrew Jackson’s military aggression against Spanish Florida, and later Southern calls for U.S. expansionism to the Caribbean, which created much of the “Tradition” of “Conservatism." It was Virginia land speculators like George Washington who drove the initial expansion of the newly founded US into “Indian Territory” to take land that was resided upon by Indians, continuing the expansionism of Jamestown, and Plymouth, colonies begun as the “tip of the spear” of English Imperialism. Not to pass historical judgment upon them but just to correct the mythology of “American Conservatism” as the “Restrainers.”
As these stand as examples of from The American Conservative magazine in its promotion of so-called “Non-interventionist Conservatism,” and consequently, of Republican electoral opportunities (it would seem), as the “only choice” people have to “end the endless wars,” as we saw with the election of Trump with all the calculated misdirection we saw with both his campaigns, which I share not as criticism of the author of this but only as an example of the foregoing:
"It was just a few lines in an hour-long speech before the conservative Hillsdale College annual Constitution Day dinner, but for a brief, possibly illuminating moment, Senator Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) sounded like he might be a regular subscriber to The American Conservative.” And then listing as if in a “war crimes indictment,” as they should be, all the crimes of incitement Cotton is guilty of, while concluding (against the evidence) that those “few line” indicated he might have “joined the club.”
Leave it to the full-fledged Straussian Curt Mills to "tell it like it is,” in promoting Cotton:
BLUF: "The senator notably singled out “endless wars” in his 2020 convention speech last summer. Cotton is certainly still an Iran hawk, even an uber-hawk, but recent activity makes clear it is China that is increasingly commanding his focus.” . . . "Cotton is an old antagonist of Iran realists, spearheading the effort to tell the Iranians in 2015 that Barack Obama’s nuclear deal (JCPOA) with Tehran would be null and void under a Republican president; every Republican, even realist Rand Paul, signed on.” (TP-Which tells you all you need to know of the “realist” Rand Paul!)
Which this “dissenting opinion” by Daniel Larison perhaps in part the explanation of why Larison is no longer with the magazine:
"A first-term senator, Cotton was elected in 2014 with $8.1 million in backing from the Koch brothers."
Ah yes, the “libertarian” Koch brothers, with
But all is not roses between Cotton and the Quincy Institute, in spite of their founder largely getting the most militaristic member in Congress elected as a Senator, unless listening closely to some of their “experts” on foreign policy putting in a plug for Cotton’s fellow “Conservative” faction, if not Cotton himself (in that odious propaganda collaboration between TAC, QI, and Saurabh Sharma’s American Moment, I referred to before as Ex. A):
“[Anti-Semitism] festers in Washington think tanks like the Quincy Institute, an isolationist blame America first money pit for so-called ‘scholars’ who’ve written that American foreign policy could be fixed if only it were rid of the malign influence of Jewish money,” he said in remarks quoted prior to the speech by Jewish Insider."
"Some of the president’s defendersinsist that Trump’s game of chicken with Iran to see who blinks first is actually a rejection of neoconservatism. Instead of democracy promotion, they insist, this is rational deterrence in the Jacksonian tradition. President Andrew Jackson (1829–1837) came close to war with both France and Mexico on different occasions but fought neither. Bacevich, who still holds the title of Professor Emeritus of International Relations and History at Boston University, believes this is a distinction without a difference. “I think some of these are artificially constructed categories that shouldn’t be taken seriously, and this whole notion of a Jacksonian tradition versus a Hamiltonian tradition, I’ve always thought that was actually kind of bogus.”
(TP-there, I agree with Bacevich. But recall that nefarious article and book touting Andrew Jackson as Trump’s forebear in The American Conservative magazine and its Straussian Hillsdale College professor Bradley Birzer admitting it was written to help get Trump elected, with Birzer now TAC’s “resident historian” or whatever they call him, which tells you all you need to know about each of their “historical revisionism!”
But Jim Lobe gets Cotton’s “genealogy” correct, which aids in “defining him” ideologically:
"Cotton is a protégé of neoconservative pundit and Iraq war proponent Bill Kristol, who is now an avowed anti-Trump conservative, a tension that has had little visible impact on Cotton’s ability to position himself as an ally of the White House. But the quiet appointment of Bill Kristol’s son, Joseph Kristol, as Cotton’s legislative director in June, certainly raises questions about the close relationship between one of the Senate’s most outspoken Iran hawks and Bill Kristol."
But the refusal to identify Cotton as a “Traditional Conservative,” as defined by Tom Pauken as out of the Willmoore Kendall mold, which Cotton indubitably is, but obscuring that by calling him a “Neoconservative,” serves to obscure where our “Militarism,” that Cotton represents more than anyone today with the exception of Josh Hawley, originates. Hawley wrote a panegyric of our first “Modern” Militarist, Teddy Roosevelt. Who is celebrated by Andrew Bacevich in an equally panegyric celebration of his “ideology” by including its statement in his book on “Conservatism.” Perhaps that accounts for the disinclination of QI to denounce “New Right” politicians like Hawley, and go light on Cotton? A “perceived need” or bias not to “incriminate” the “Traditional Conservatives” Bacevich celebrated in his book on Conservatism? Which unfortunately, leads to a distorted account sometimes of "who” and “what” are driving our “Perpetual Warfare State, “ideologically,” and politically.
Here is a good example in an otherwise fine article:
"The Times’ recent decision to publish an op-ed by Sen. Tom Cotton calling for the military to quash Black Lives Matter protests highlights a militaristic pipeline to the nation’s paper of record.” (TP-absolutely true!)
. . .
"According to the New York Times’ own reporting on the matter, as part of the editing process Rubenstein asked for photographs of federal troops enforcing desegregation orders in Mississippi in 1962 to illustrate Cotton’s comparison between anti-segregation federal troops and what he wanted the military to do now. Times photo editor Jeffrey Henson Scales criticized the use of the photos as a “false equivalence.”
It was a "false equivalence!” Cotton’s call in his opinion piece was phrased as: "One thing above all else will restore order to our streets: an overwhelming show of force to disperse, detain and ultimately deter lawbreakers.” That is the sine qua non of the Ideological Conservative Movement from the day it was birthed, by CIA officers B, B, & K; Buckley, Burnham, and Kendall, down to the present! Always calling for "an overwhelming show of force,” whether as the "solution” to resolving the Vietnam War, to include the use of nuclear weapons as Goldwater and Reagan made clear in their calls to “expand” the war, and use "all available means” for “Victory.” To include had we had gone to the “final stage” of what Republican Conservative War Fanatics were actually calling for, to make Vietnam a radioactive Wasteland! Which too would have meant “Defeat,” as we would have preliminarily reveal our "true nature.” And always too ignorant to understand how “overwhelming violence,” as that is what they actually called for, can have a “Blowback,” or counter-productive, effect, with what Hannah Arendt called the “Boomerang Effect.” Which we’re getting today, “good and hard,” with that “true nature” is becoming ever more clear, as Chalmers Johnson had already recognized over two decades ago.
Which will get worse, the longer we stay on the course we’re on now with the only actual disparity between the two militarist camps being the Republicans, with Tom Cotton the loudest, screaming, in imitation of the fascist (more accurate than “Neoconservative,” and "Conservative”) Michael Ledeen’s demand of “Faster, please!”
2014 & 2015 in Ukraine: Cluster munitions were used by both sides to the conflict in January and February 2015. An OSCE mission documented use by Ukrainian government forces in Luhansk city in late January 2015, while Ukrainian government forces had already used cluster munitions in Donetsk city in October 2014. In August 2014, remnants of cluster munitions were documented in territory controlled by Ukrainian government forces and in territory controlled by armed insurgents. As early as July 2014, evidence indicated cluster munitions had been used.
2006 in Lebanon: Israeli forces use surface-launched and air-dropped cluster munitions against Hezbollah. The UN estimates that Israel used up to 4 million submunitions.
2003–2006 in Iraq: The US and UK use nearly 13,000 cluster munitions containing an estimated 1.8 to 2 million submunitions in the three weeks of major combat. A total of 63 CBU-87 bombs were dropped by US aircraft between May 1, 2003 and August 1, 2006.
2001–2002 in Afghanistan: The US drops 1,228 cluster bombs containing 248,056 bomblets.
1999 in Yugoslavia (including Serbia, Montenegro,and Kosovo): The US, UK, and Netherlands drop 1,765 cluster bombs, containing 295,000 bomblets.
1998–1999 inAlbania:
Yugoslav forces launch cross-border rocket attacks and NATO forces carry out six aerial cluster munition strikes.
1992–1995 in Bosnia & Herzegovina: Forces of Yugoslavia and NSAG use available stocks of cluster munitions during civil war. NATO aircraft drop two CBU-87 bombs.
1991 in Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia: The US and its allies (France, Saudi Arabia, UK) drop 61,000 cluster bombs containing some 20 million submunitions. The number of cluster munitions delivered by surface-launched artillery and rocket systems during the Gulf War is not known, but an estimated 30 million or more DPICM submunitions were used in the conflict.
1982 in Falkland Islands (Malvinas): UK aircraft drop cluster munitions on Argentinean infantry positions near Port Stanley, Port Howard, and Goose Green.
1982 in Lebanon: Israel uses cluster munitions against Syrian forces and NSAG in Lebanon.
1979–1989 in Afghanistan: Soviet forces make use of air-dropped and rocket-delivered cluster munitions. NSAG also use rocket-delivered cluster munitions on a smaller scale.
1978 in Lebanon: Israel uses cluster munitions in southern Lebanon.
1971–1973 in Syria: Israel uses air-dropped cluster munitions against non-state armed group (NSAG) training camps near Damascus.
1960s–1970s in Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam:
US forces make extensive use of cluster munitions in bombing campaigns. The ICRC estimates that in Laos alone, 9 to 27 million unexploded submunitions remain, and some 11,000 people have been killed or injured, more than 30 percent of them children. An estimate based on US military databases states that 9,500 sorties in Cambodia delivered up to 87,000 air-dropped cluster munitions.
On Jul 16, 2023, at 2:22 PM, Chas Freeman via Salon <salon@listserve.com> wrote: