The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

War and the Meaning of Nationhood

Posted on | March 1, 2022 | Comments Off on War and the Meaning of Nationhood

Once upon a time (he says, as if speaking of a mythical ancient past, but in fact speaking of his own youth) students were taught to think deeply about the nature of government, what constitutes a nation-state, and what purpose such a geopolitical entity is intended to serve. This is (or at least once was) the first lesson of political philosophy, and this teaching was developed in historic context, through the study of early empires, Greek city-states, etc. One cannot understand government, in its present forms, without contemplating the origin of the nation-state, which derived from earlier kingdoms, and every kingdom can be traced back through the mists of distant time to some tribal warlord or barbarian raider whose name, if we know it at all, we know only because his feats were celebrated in songs that survived long enough to be committed to writing. Hence, the legend of King Arthur, who might have been a local chieftain who defended some part of the island against Saxon raiders in the so-called Dark Ages after the Romans evacuated Britain.

Whether or not King Arthur actually existed, he almost certainly bore little resemblance to any of the Hollywood versions of his legend, but this is irrelevant to political science. The point, as we were instructed in our youth, is that the nation-state is forged by military power, of whom the earliest kings of any particular nation were the leaders. Originating in the violent exercise of military power, then, the state claims a monopoly on the use of force, which it wields both to defend itself against foreign threats, and to maintain peaceful order among its subjects.

We are prone, in peaceful times, to forget this basic lesson of political science, and surely the Ukrainians weren’t thinking about it when they elected the popular comedian Volodymyr Zelenskyy as their president.

When I saw the protest poster above — “If Russia stops fighting, there will be no war. If Ukraine stops fighting, there will be no more Ukraine!!!” — it immediately carried me back to those classrooms where my teachers remarked on the origins of nationhood in war. Various intellectuals have sneered at this over the years, dismissing the eminence of European royalty by depicting them (however truthfully) as the descendants of savage warlords. We are supposed to be so much more sophisticated than our ancestors that we are not awed by legends and myths, you see. Yet is it not the case that our own national capital is named for a Virginia farmer who, being appointed general of the Continental Army, organized victory over the British and then became our first president? So the unity of military power and political authority was maintained even in our representative government.

“We the People,” etc., but there would be no United States and no Constitution were it not for the military victory that established our national independence. And as we behold Ukraine, fighting for its existence against Russian aggression, we are reminded of this truth.

Everyone is now praising Zelenskyy as a latter-day Churchill, after he drew a standing ovation from the European Parliament, but he must either find some way to organize victory, or else perish under the Russian boot, and accomplishing this would seem to require a miracle.

Once upon a time (he says, again speaking of his own youth as if it were an antique legend) American boys were taught about historic heroes, and urged to emulate their example — Davy Crockett at the Alamo, Alvin York in the Argonne Forest, and so on — because our elders, having recently won a World War, and being then engaged in what one of our presidents called the “long twilight struggle” against Communism, were conscious that their sons might be called upon to fight for our country.

We too easily forget all this, but then we look to Ukraine, and we know that if by some miracle they survive, they will never forget.




 

Category: History, Ukraine

The Science™ Is Actually The Politics™

Posted on | March 1, 2022 | Comments Off on The Science™ Is Actually The Politics™

Ace of Spades remarks, “Quelle coincidence,” at the polling memo from Impact Research (which “has helped elect Democratic candidates at all levels”) advising Democratic candidates on how to pivot away from their ill-advised “COVID Zero” maximum-lockdown stance on the pandemic. The obvious proof that these lockdowns were never “necessitated” (to use the phrase of Biden’s pollsters) is the experience of Florida, which has been wide-open since the summer of 2020 with no apparent harm, compared to the Democrat-controlled states.

Keep in mind that every Democrat in Congress supported the Biden administration’s policy of firing millions of workers (including nurses) if they did not comply with the COVID-19 vaccine mandate. And every Democratic governor and mayor was on the pro-lockdown side of the argument. What the polling memo tells Democrats, basically, is to pretend that none of this ever happened and hope voters forget.

Exit question: Are voters as stupid as Democrats think they are?




 

Category: Democrats, Polls, Science

Our Feeble-Minded Commander-in-Chief

Posted on | February 28, 2022 | Comments Off on Our Feeble-Minded Commander-in-Chief

We are so doomed:

ABC anchor George Stephanopoulos said Sunday on “This Week” that a new ABC News/Washington Post poll shows 54% of Americans do not believe President Joe Biden is mentally sharp during his interview with White House press secretary Jen Psaki.
Stephanopoulos said, “The president is approaching his State of the Union in a pretty difficult political position right now, 37% approval rating, Democrats trailing badly in the midterm polling. A majority in our recent poll out this morning even question the president’s mental capacity. How is he going to turn that around on Tuesday night? And how much has his State of the Union been changed by this war in Ukraine?”
Psaki said, “You know, George, from covering State of the Unions for some time, that it is about delivering a message to the public at a moment in time. And if you look back when President Obama gave his first State of the Union, it was during the worst financial crisis in a generation. When President Bush gave his first State of the Union, it was shortly after 9/11. Leaders lead during crises. That’s exactly what President Biden is doing. He’ll speak to that, but he’s also going to speak about his optimism about what’s ahead and what we all have to look forward to.”

If you’re also optimistic about “what we all have to look forward to,” then your brain must have turned completely to mush, too.




 

Category: ABC, Joe Biden

Listen to the Experts!

Posted on | February 27, 2022 | Comments Off on Listen to the Experts!

Far be it from me to say that Lyle Goldstein’s analysis is wrong.

Indeed, the possibility that Ukraine could become the site of an Iraq/Afghanistan-style “insurgency” does seem unlikely. But things that seem unlikely happen all the time, and we cannot rule anything out, just because the odds are daunting. Putin is rattling his nuclear saber now, and there is talk of negotiations, but the ground combat situation in Ukraine is still confused. Four days into the Russian invasion — it’s about 10 p.m. Sunday in Ukraine as I write this — Ukrainian resistance is still fierce and effective, and the Russians have failed to take Kyiv. On the other hand, according to Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko, the city is now “encircled” by Russian forces — i.e., the invaders control all the routes into the city. Kyiv is now besieged, in other words, and such affairs do not usually end well for the defenders. Western talk of sending military aid to Ukraine is thus rather belated, if there is no feasible way to deliver these materials to the Ukrainians now holed up in their capital.

We know that the Biden administration had intelligence warning of a Russian invasion weeks or months in advance, and the question is, what did the administration do about that warning, besides beg China to intercede with Putin? The Biden administration has made America helpless to deter aggression; the Afghanistan debacle demonstrated that we can’t even protect our own interests. What help can we offer Ukraine?

“Thoughts and prayers” — it’s all we’ve got left.

PREVIOUSLY:




 

Category: Joe Biden, Russia, Ukraine

The Blessings of St. Javelin

Posted on | February 27, 2022 | Comments Off on The Blessings of St. Javelin

This image of a saint wielding an FGM-148 Javelin anti-tank missile has become an iconic symbol of the Ukrainian resistance to the Russian invasion. When you see video of destroyed Russian tanks and armored personnel carriers, chances are it was a Javelin that did the damage.

The Javelin is quite a sophisticated weapon, so much so that a single missile costs more than $80,000. It is a “fire-and-forget” weapon; once the target is acquired through the sighting system, the missile locks onto the target and as soon as it is fired, the crew can run for cover or change their position. However, because of the missile’s “soft launch” technology, the location of the Javelin crew is not revealed to the enemy forces, who may not even know what hit them, much less where it came from. Besides which, when one of your tanks gets blown up by an armor-piercing missile, your first thought is probably, “Let’s get the hell out of here,” rather than attempting to mount a counterattack.

You’ve seen news about the Russians being “bogged down” because of “unexpectedly” strong Ukrainian opposition? St. Javelin, baby!

Coffee or Die spoke with Medal of Honor recipient Clint Romesha about javelins, and their use in conventional warfare. . . .
“Now if you could put one guy up on the side of a hill with six f–king Javelin missiles, you’re stopping an entire company of tanks with one guy,” Romesha said. “They don’t even know where that sh– is coming from.
He explained that Javelins have a soft launch, so there’s no smoke trail to show where they are being launched from, nor a dirt cloud kicked up by missile backblast. . . .
Romesha also pointed out a Javelin rarely misses. He said it’s one of the best “fire and forget” launchers that can be used against armor. Lockheed Martin, the producer of Javelin missiles, boasts a 94% hit rate on targets with a firing range anywhere from 65 – 4,000 meters.

Basically, if the crew gets a good “lock” on the target, this sucker will hit it at a range of two miles or more. When President Zelensky says he needs “ammunition” to defend his country, it’s more Javelins he needs the most urgently, and the Biden administration will have to answer for why it didn’t supply Ukraine more of these weapons in the weeks leading up to the Russian invasion. By the way, some of my conservative friends have noted that in Ukraine’s war against Russia, liberals have finally discovered a “nationalism” they can endorse. And given the role played by the Javelin in Ukraine’s resistance, perhaps some liberals will reconsider their habit of whining about the “military-industrial complex.” Raytheon and Lockheed-Martin, routinely portrayed as villains by “anti-war” liberals, turn out to be the source of Putin’s worst nightmares.




 

Category: Military, Russia, Ukraine

What a Real President Looks Like

Posted on | February 26, 2022 | Comments Off on What a Real President Looks Like

Either way it goes, he’ll be a historic figure:

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky declared that he is still in the capital of Kyiv (Kiev) in a video purporting to show the leader from the streets of the embattled city in the early hours of Saturday morning after reportedly shutting down a plea from the Biden administration to flee.
Addressing apparent rumours of an evacuation from Kyiv amid a Russian assault, Zelensky posted a video on his official Twitter account to claim that this was fake news and that he is still on the ground of the Ukrainian capital.
“I’m here in the ground, we will not lay down our arms. We will defend our state because our weapon is our truth. Our truth is that this is our land, our country, and our children. And we will defend all this,” the president said according to a translation from state news agency Ukrinform.

Zelensky’s video came just hours after the Associated Press reported that the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden had called on Zelensky to evacuate the city.
According to the news agency, citing a “senior American intelligence official with direct knowledge of the conversation”, the Ukrainian president replied by saying “The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride.”

Specifically, he needs anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons, but the essential point is that the Ukrainians are still fighting:

Ukraine’s outgunned forces held the capital of Kyiv for the third day on Saturday as battles continued in cities across the country, while a defiant Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told citizens to defend the country. . . .
Russia’s invasion has not progressed as fast as Moscow would have expected, say Western intelligence officials.
Britain’s Ministry of Defense said Russia has yet to gain control of Ukrainian airspace “greatly reducing the effectiveness of the Russian Air Force.”
Russia has also faced “acute logistical difficulties and strong Ukrainian resistance,” slowing the speed of the Russian advance, the UK ministry said in a Saturday intelligence update shared on Twitter.
But it stressed that the bulk of Russian forces are now only 18.6 miles from the center of Kyiv, warning that casualties are “likely to be heavy and greater than anticipated or acknowledged by the Kremlin.”

Every day Kyiv hangs on, the worse Russia’s problems become.




 

Category: Russia, Ukraine

UKRAINE: Kyiv Survives Another Day

Posted on | February 26, 2022 | Comments Off on UKRAINE: Kyiv Survives Another Day

The good news is that the Ukrainian capital did not fall to the Russian invaders Friday night, but it is becoming a battle in earnest:

Street fighting has broken out in Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, as Russian forces advanced on the city and Ukrainian officials urged residents to take shelter.
As dawn broke in Kyiv on Saturday, it was not immediately clear how far the soldiers had advanced. Ukrainian officials reported success in fending off assaults, but fighting persisted near the capital. Skirmishes reported on the edge of the city of nearly three million people suggested that small Russian units were probing Ukrainian defences to clear a path for the main forces. . . .
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy refused an American offer for him to evacuate, insisting that he would stay in Kyiv. “The fight is here,” he said on Saturday. . . .
“We aren’t going to lay down weapons. We will protect the country,” he said. “Our weapon is our truth, and our truth is that it’s our land, our country, our children. And we will defend all of that.” . . .
“It was an extraordinarily awful night,” said Al Jazeera’s Andrew Simmons, reporting from the capital. “Missiles just raining down on Kyiv, ballistic missiles shuddering the city and relentless bombardments by the air force of the Russian Federation.”
He said that there was fighting across the country, but in the capital “the force of the conflict has reached a seismic level”.
“The trauma, the pain is just so immeasurable, very hard to narrate what has been happening,” Simmons added.

Civilized nations do not do this to their neighbors, obviously. There has been talk of a negotiated ceasefire, but Putin appears to be offering unacceptable conditions, so that the offer to negotiate is just a pretext to shift blame to the Ukrainians. Putin is talking like a madman:

Looking dead-eyed into the camera on Friday, Vladimir Putin gave one of the most bizarre speeches of his 22 years as Russia’s leader, a directive that managed to sound alarming even in a week when he has ordered tanks into Ukraine and missile strikes on Kyiv.
“Once again I speak to the Ukrainian soldiers,” he said, addressing his enemy. “Do not allow neo-Nazis and Banderites to use your children, your wives and the elderly as a human shield. Take power into your own hands. It seems that it will be easier for us to come to an agreement than with this gang of drug addicts and neo-Nazis.”

The term “Banderites” is a historical reference to 20th-century extremists, so its use by Putin is rather like Democrats smearing Republicans as “Klansmen” or whatever. And to describe the democratically-elected government of Zelensky (who is Jewish) as a “gang of drug addicts and neo-Nazis” is just bizarre.

Trying to find decent reporting about the actual combat in Ukraine is a difficult task. We get a lot of human-interest stuff about civilians hiding in shelters, and almost nothing about the location of military units. We are told that “explosions were heard” (duh) or that the sound of small-arms fire could be heard (duh again), but journalists on the ground in Ukraine don’t seem to be going out to where the fighting is actually happening and attempting to find out who is fighting and where.

Because of the low quality (and scare quantity) of combat reporting, we can only hazard a guess at the tactical situation. Is it fair to say the Russian offensive now seems to be “bogged down”? I’m not sure. On the one hand, the Ukrainians have demolished bridges to prevent (or at least impede) the advance of Russian armored and mechanized forces, but wasn’t this predictable? So perhaps the Russians have merely paused, and are consolidating their gains as they establish a chokehold around Kyiv, preparatory to a mass assault in the coming days.

One wishes for old-time war correspondents like Joe Galloway, who helicoptered into combat zones in the heat of battle. We don’t have that kind of eyewitness reporting of what’s happening in Ukraine, and it’s frustrating to those of us who don’t accept the blathering of TV talking heads as a substitute for real journalism.

PREVIOUSLY:




 

Category: Russia, Ukraine

UKRAINE: No, Thanks, Fox News, I Don’t Want to Hear Geraldo Rivera’s Opinion

Posted on | February 25, 2022 | Comments Off on UKRAINE: No, Thanks, Fox News, I Don’t Want to Hear Geraldo Rivera’s Opinion

This morning I got up at 6 a.m. to work on my job (that I never discuss) and turned on my home-office TV. Fox News was actually reporting news, but after a while, they brought on Geraldo Rivera and I wish I had video of his appearance, to explain why I switched my TV to CNN. As it is, you’ll have to take my word for it, how awful and inappropriate it was to have that Bozo blathering nonsensically on Fox & Friends. Like, why do we need to hear your take on this, Geraldo? When did you become an expert on Ukraine? What is your value-added in this discussion?

There is a war going on, and when I turn on a TV news channel, I’d like some news about the war. Is this too much to ask? Like, could I get some footage of military action? Some confirmed reports of where the troops are fighting, who’s winning, that kind of stuff? It’s a war, after all.

Elizabeth Nolan Brown makes a relevant point:

Now is not the time for petty culture war grievances and personal grifts. Yes, life—and news—in America goes on, but maybe the day Russia starts bombing Ukraine isn’t the time for your critical race theory rant or your masculinity-crisis paranoia, you know? And it certainly isn’t the time for you to try and tie whatever you would be on about anyway into the war news cycle.
I promise, the culture war and all its brave keyboard warriors will still be there next week. So will COVID-19, and climate change, and border battles. Just let it go for a minute.

Thank you for saying this. I don’t need to be told — because it is obvious enough — that this war highlights Biden’s incompetence. Just about everything that has happened since Jan. 20, 2021, has highlighted Biden’s incompetence, and so there is no need for anyone on Fox News (or anywhere else) to feel the need to repeat what everybody with two eyes and a brain already knows. Give it a rest.

Most of the day Thursday, I was trying to figure out what was going on at Gostomel (or Hostomel) airport in the Kyiv suburbs. Wednesday, it was reported that Russian paratroopers had taken the airport, but then the Ukrainians claimed to have retaken it in a counterattack. Could anyone confirm this? Well, you wouldn’t know a damned thing from most of what was on the so-called “news,” so I found myself searching Twitter for Ukrainian-language accounts about the fighting, by plugging in the name of the airport (in Cyrillic letters) and then running the text of various tweets through Google translation. This didn’t do much to clarify the situation, but it was at least better than being completely in the dark, which is what I’d have been if I’d relied on TV news.

What I eventually concluded was that Russians were still in control at Gostomel or, at least, that the Ukrainian counterattack had not “destroyed” the Russian paratrooper force (as had been claimed), and when I woke up Friday, it was clear that not only had the Russian paratroopers held on, but that they were being reinforced, as helicopters were seen flying in low over the area. The most definitive report I found was from the Wall Street Journal:

Russian forces pouring in from neighboring Belarus through the Chernobyl nuclear disaster exclusion zone reached the outskirts of Kyiv. They took over the Hostomel airfield following an airborne assault on Thursday, and by Friday morning Russian armored forces reached the area. Heavy combat continued through the day, and Ukrainian troops blew up several bridges leading into Kyiv from the northwest.

If this is correct, then a Russian armored column has now reached Gostomel, so it’s no longer just paratroopers holding the airfield, which means that soon the Russians will be flying in all kinds of equipment, and this is less than 20 miles from downtown Kyiv. Very grim, indeed.

So that’s the news, it seems, and having updated you on that, now we can turn to domestic politics. Ace of Spades went thermonuclear:

This is what neocons always do — they have no plans, they have no solutions, so they just smear opponents as Traitors.
What are they actually arguing for? They do not say. They obviously do not want war with Russia. (I… hope? I admit, a lot of them are positively deranged — I can’t say for certain. Maybe some do now want the Cleansing of the Unclean World With Nuclear Fire. We have sinned, Trumpishly; we must be made pure again.)
So what do they actually want? They claim that anyone who does not join them in Uncritically Supporting Brandon is Undermining the Unified US Front and stopping them from executing their great plan, whatever that is.
So what is that plan? When I’m not clapping hard enough for Brandon, what is the great plan I’m actually blocking from taking effect?
They never say. Because there is no great plan. And because there is no great plan, they have nothing to sell, except for smearing their opponents as Traitors and Foreign Spies.
You know, like people really committed to democracy and Civil Discourse always do.
If we gave you all the “support” you require for your great plans, and all the political power you so obviously crave, what exactly would you do?!?
You never say, because you don’t know! You have no ideas! You have nothing! You have literally no thoughts, no plans, no ideas, no solutions except the one Guiding Holy Writ:

ORANGE
MAN
BAD

That’s literally your only stock in trade. If you have anything more than that — prove me a liar right now by telling me what exactly you would do if you had carte blanche.
Crickets. Silence.

Yes, indeed. Having gotten us into this mess, they have no plan to get us out, and instead spend their time spewing rage at Trump, or Tucker Carlson, or anyone else who points out how disastrously wrong they’ve been about everything. It may be that Trump or Carlson deserve to be criticized for some of their statements, but what does that have to do with the actual war in Ukraine? About as much as the gibberish Geraldo was babbling this morning. The Ukrainians made the mistake of believing what they were told about Trump being a villainous Putin ally, and Biden being the hero who would protect them from Putin. So it looks as if Hunter Biden will have to find somewhere else to hustle for corrupt cash, and I hope nobody invested their savings in Burisma stock.




 

Category: Joe Biden, Russia, Ukraine
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