Alastair Crooke, 7/29/24
Extraordinary Times: Biden renounces his election bid via in the slimmest of Sunday afternoon postings; retreats into a silence which finally is broken by a ‘long farewell’ pronounced from the Oval Office. Biden’s staff didn’t hear of his renunciation until a minute before his letter was posted. Then the internet was struck down by CrowdStrike, and the head of the U.S. Secret Service gives an account of the Trump assassination attempt that leaves both sides of the aisle in Congress aghast at the seeming incompetence – or mooting something ‘worse’.
Everyone is left reeling.
With all media information streams tainted, and with no ‘believable someone’ to explain what is going on, we are pushed completely to the ‘outside’. For now, it is impossible to orientate. The media increasingly is about one thing: ‘Let us think for you. Let us be your eyes and your ears. Make our new words and phrases into your language. The explanations and hypotheses that are offered appear so unconvincing that they evoke rather, a deliberate attempt to dis-orientate the public – and to loosen their grip on reality’.
Nonetheless, even if the essence of the internal U.S. conflict is shrouded, a veil on the working of the Deep State has been peeled away: It is widely understood the Biden ouster was masterminded – behind the curtain – by Barack Obama. Pelosi was the ‘enforcer’ (“We can do this [Biden’s ouster] the easy way – or the ‘hard way’”, Pelosi warned the Biden circle).
Rod Blagojevich (who has known Obama since 1995) explains the gist of what is happening in the Wall Street Journal:
“We [he and Obama] both grew up in Chicago politics. We understand how it works—with the bosses over the people. Mr. Obama learned the lessons well. And what he just did to Mr. Biden is what political bosses have been doing in Chicago since the 1871 fire – selections masquerading as elections. Mr. Obama and I know this kind of Chicago politics better than anyone. We both rose up in it and I was brought to ruin by it”.
“While today’s Democratic bosses may look different from the old-time cigar-chomping guy with a pinky ring, they operate the same way: in the shadows of the backroom. Mr. Obama, Nancy Pelosi and the rich donors—the Hollywood and Silicon Valley élites—are the new bosses of today’s Democratic Party. They call the shots. The voters, most of them working people, are there to be lied to, manipulated and controlled”.
“All along, Mr. Biden and the Democratic politicians have been claiming that this year’s presidential race is about “saving democracy”. They are the biggest hypocrites in American political history. They have successfully maneuvered to dump their duly elected candidate for president … [Biden’s] unfitness to run for re-election today didn’t just happen. The Democrats have been covering it up for a long time. [However, after] June’s presidential debate, Mr. Obama and the Democratic bosses could no longer hide his condition. The jig was up, and Joe had to go”.
“The Democratic National Convention in Chicago next month will provide the perfect backdrop and place for Mr. Obama to finish the job and choose his candidate, not the voters’ candidate. Democracy, no. Chicago ward-boss politics, yes”.
Well, it seems that Kamala Harris – who never won a primary – is again about to circumvent the primary process through orchestrated acclaim, which rumour suggests is concerted by the Clinton family, whilst the Obama family (Dons of the Chicago political mafia) are against her, and fume quietly.
Is it done? Will Kamala Harris be the Democratic contender?
Maybe so – but were there to be a major international crisis – say, in the Middle East, or with Russia – possibly things might then change.
How so?
To get where Harris ‘is’, she “went from being a tough-on-crime prosecutor as a district attorney in California – to the far Left”, California delegates at the RNC told The American Conservative:
“She and Gavin Newsom, in charting their rise through the Democratic Party of 2024, tried to keep tacking to the far Left. They had to be the most extreme on crime, on abortion, on DEI, on the open border, on economic policy and confiscation level taxation. That really doesn’t play well in most of the country”.
Harris has also differentiated herself from Biden foreign policy by being explicitly more sympathetic to the plight of Gaza’s Palestinians.
U.S. foreign policy strategies however, are not widely discussed publicly, and are viewed by the ruling-strata as vital and being of the essence. The electorate will not be privy to what those entanglements are at the structural level, since they involve state secrets. Nevertheless much of U.S. politics rides on the back of this ‘less divulged’ bedrock.
Will Harris commit to these foundations of foreign policy structures (i.e. such as the Wolfowitz Doctrine)? Will she go soft on the structures out of a desire to tilt towards the progressive wing of the Democratic Party in respect to Gaza? Will she go party-partisan and break the bi-partisan canon (already under stress)?
Ignore the money-laundering aspect to foreign policy expenditure. The important thing is that no one can be allowed to go soft on these policies and treaties on which the ‘free world’ structurally now depends, and has done so for decades. That is the Deep State stance.
It will not play well in the U.S., were Harris to ‘go soft’. There was clear evidence in Netanyahu’s address to Congress that the longstanding bipartisan consensus to back Israel has eroded. This will worry the foreign policy grandees.
“The one adhesive that has maintained the resilience of the Israeli relationship is bipartisanship”, said Aaron David Miller, a former Middle East negotiator and adviser toRepublican and Democratic administrations. “That is under extreme stress.” He added: “If you have a Republican view and two or three Democratic views about what it means to be pro-Israel, the nature of the relationship is going to change”.
Mr Netanyahu was evidently well aware of this risk. He struck a pointedly bipartisan tone throughout his address. And the address undoubtedly was a masterful display of his feel for the American political psyche. It hit the required spots and carefully melded into a ‘State of the Union’ mode of delivery and structure.
Of course there were dissenters, yet Netanyahu seized the audience with his “crossroads of history” grand theme which portrayed Iran’s “Axis of Evil” confronting America, Israel and their Arab allies. And he cemented his hold over much of that audience by promising that – together – America and Israel would prevail: “When we stand together something very simple happens: We win, they lose. And my friends”,he pledged, “We will win”.
It was a replay of the ‘Israel is America and America is Israel’ meme.
So the foreign policy questions in respect to the Harris candidacy are two-fold: First, might Harris – as presidential candidate presumptive – choose to tear down, weaken or expose the load bearing foreign policy ‘givens’ in the eyes of the Establishment?
And secondly, what should be the stance of Deep State panjandrums should a serious international crisis arise in the near future?
A clamour then will surely swell that an experienced foreign policy hand must take the helm – which Harris isn’t. It would invite calamity, were someone with no foreign policy experience to knock down certain policy ‘structures’ on which so much U.S. policy rides.
Is Obama then awaiting the moment to insert his final choice as the new Party figurehead (as the GOP Convention goers suspect), or is he convinced that Harris will not prevail in November, and as party elder statesman, would prefer to pick up the pieces of the Party – in the aftermath – and mould it to his liking?
Just to be clear, an international crisis precisely is that which Netanyahu intends to begin to build out during his Washington visit. Of course, the address of Netanyahu’s ‘grand theme’ will be pursued quietly, away from the public gaze. Speaker Mike Johnson is convening a private gathering with Netanyahu alongside some of the most influential Republican mega-donors and political power players.
Netanyahu is on record that 7th October has evolved to become a war on Israel from all points of the compass, and that Israel needs the support and practical assistance of the “free world” … “at a time when it is more viciously demonized than ever”.
Whilst Hezbollah is being confronted daily by the IDF, it has manifestly neither been dismantled nor deterred. And that dictates that Israel cannot live with ‘terrorist armies’, openly dedicated to Israel’s destruction encamped at, and near, its borders, Netanyahu complains.
This constitutes ‘the imminent crisis’: The prospective Israeli military operation in Lebanon to push Hezbollah back from the border. Reportedly, the U.S. already has committed to limited support for this military objective.
But Netanyahu also insists that Israel needs the support and practical assistance of the ‘free world’ ‘to counter the regime at the heart of the existential threat – Iran’. What if Iran intervenes in Lebanon in response to a massive Israeli assault? Netanyahu casts this as the ‘barbarians’ coming for western civilisation – coming too for America as much as Israel.
The recent Israeli attack on Hodeida port in Yemen – at least in part – can be seen as an Israeli teaser clip to show the western world that Israel is able to confront adversaries at long distance (1,600 kms) showcasing its own in-flight re-fuelling capabilities for a large phalanx of aircraft. The raid inflicted heavy damage on the port. The message was clear: If Israel can do this to Yemen, it can (theoretically) strike at Iran, too.
Of course, hitting out at Iran is entirely a different proposition. And that’s why Netanyahu is seeking U.S. support.
There is a photograph of Netanyahu and his wife aboard the Wing of Zion (the new Israeli State aircraft) with a MAGA-style baseball cap on the desk beside him, only it is blue, not red, and is emblazoned with two words: “Total Victory”.
“Total Victory” plainly is Israel ‘winning together, with the U.S., in confronting Iran’s axis of evil’: Is the U.S. aboard? Or are U.S. foreign policy circles so distracted by the extraordinary succession events cascading out in the U.S. and Ukraine that the élites cannot, at the same time, attend to Bibi’s “crossroads of history”? We shall see.