Warnings to
Russia from Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham
By Glenn Greenwald
26/08/08 "Salon"
-- - John McCain's two most loyal supporters and most
influential foreign policy advisers, Joe Lieberman and Lindsey
Graham, have an
Op-Ed in The Wall St. Journal today proclaiming that
"Russia's invasion of Georgia represents the most serious
challenge to this political order since Slobodan Milosevic
unleashed the demons of ethnic nationalism in the Balkans." Just
as their neoconservative comrade, Fred Hiatt, does
in today's Washington Post, Lieberman and Graham
demand that the U.S. expend vast resources and assert itself
both militarily and politically in order to thwart the New
Russian Menace ("This means reinvigorating NATO as a military
alliance, not just a political one . . . The credibility of
Article Five of the NATO Charter -- that an attack against one
really can and will be treated as an attack against all -- needs
to be bolstered. . . .The Georgian military should be given the
antiaircraft and antiarmor systems necessary to deter any
renewed Russian aggression").
The painful absurdity of
hard-core warmongers who supported the invasion of Iraq (and, in
Lieberman's case, advocating we do the same to
Iran and
Syria) parading around as defenders of the "political order"
is too self-evident, and by now too common, to merit much
comment. But this warning from the neoconservative duo about the
folly of imperialistic Russian policies is really a sight to
behold:
In the long run, a Russia that
tries to define its greatness in terms of spheres of
influence, client states and forced fealty to Moscow will
fail -- impoverishing its citizens in the process. The
question is only how long until Russia's leaders rediscover
this lesson from their own history.
To recap: the U.S. is going to
impede Russian aggression, re-build and protect Georgia,
revitalize the military strength of NATO, and restore peace and
order to Europe. We're going to stare down the Hitlers of Iran
(also in the Post today, Lieberman comrade -- the
super-tough-guy and Iran obsessive Micheal Rubin --
lashes out at Joe Biden for "blinking on Iran" and being
"Tehran's favorite senator"). We're going to re-build, occupy
and safeguard Iraq for decades if necessary. We will
single-handedly promote Israel's interests and view each of its
enemies and its wars as our own. We're also going to
get much tougher on China, just like Russia:
A John McCain presidency would
take to a more forceful approach to Russia and China,
according to senior foreign policy advisers to the
Republican candidate. . . .
Robert Kagan, who wrote much
of the [foreign policy] speech delivered [by McCain] in Los
Angeles, told the Daily Telegraph: "Russia will loom large
for both Europe and the US, and John McCain has been ahead
of the curve and has seen this coming down the road. . .
.While continuing a "multi-faceted approach" to Beijing,
[McCain foreign policy adviser Max] Boot said the US needs
"to be forthright on their human rights abuses and not
shrink from condemning what they are doing in Tibet for
example, or from trying to help Chinese dissidents to stay
out of jail".
And we're going to do all that
while cutting taxes further. But remember: it's Russia,
bulging with cash from oil exports, that better realize -- for
their own good -- that its efforts "to define its greatness in
terms of spheres of influence, client states and forced fealty
to Moscow will fail -- impoverishing its citizens in the
process."
The
foreign policy team exerting chief influence over John McCain
is truly more extremist -- in a purer and more deranged form --
than the foreign policy team of the Bush administration. They're
not only the most extremist faction in American political life,
but also the most delusional. These aren't just the people who
led the U.S. to war in Iraq -- though they are that -- but
they're also the ones who actually believe that the Bush
administration has been far too meek in its assertion of U.S.
military force and too passive in its interference in the
affairs of other countries. They want to accelerate -- massively
intensify -- virtually every one of the polices that has brought
the U.S. to such disgrace and near ruination over the past eight
years. There is nothing "moderate" or "centrist" about any of
them. John McCain is the Candidate of Bill Kristol and Joe
Lieberman and John Bolton for
good and clear reasons (including
in Georgia): he's the best and most devoted instrument to
advance their militaristic agenda.
Is there any real discussion of
any of that? Hardly. Here's the trite soap opera pablum and
royal court intrigue which, instead, dominates our media's
campaign coverage:
Riveting. Being in Denver has meant that I've been in the
proximity of the herds of establishment media figures for the
first time, to actually hear what they say and how they conduct
themselves off camera, and it's all exactly the same. The only
topics they're capable of thinking about are the same ones they
chatter about on the TV -- is Obama Making a Mistake by speaking
in the stadium because the heartland Americans (who they know
and understand so well) will think he's too big for his
britches? What Must Hillary Do? How will Michelle Play in the
Bowling Alleys? To say it's bereft of substance is to understate
the case dramatically.
Digby was on some "media vs.
bloggers" panel yesterday with Newsweek's Jonathan Alter
and the Post's Chris Cilizza and -- after Alter ranted
that bloggers, to cite Digby's summary, "have a psychological
condition called 'disinhibition' -- like Alzheimers patients"
(as contrasted with the extreme psychological health and balance
displayed by Alter when he demanded, in an
article excerpted at length by Digby, that the U.S.
Government torture people) --
this is what happened:
Ari Melber asked the pertinent
question about how a reporter can possibly fail to call out
illegal and immoral acts like wiretapping and torture for
what they are, under some misguided definition of
objectivity or neutrality. Cilizza answered the question
honestly, admitting that they don't do a good job of it.
When Cilizza said "they don't do a
good job of it," what he was referring to was "reporting on and
covering what the Government of the U.S. actually does." If they
don't do that well, what do they do well? And Cilizza is
right -- they don't do a "good job" of that because they don't
do it at all (along those lines, Jerry and Joe Long have a
super-concise and appropriately acerbic post on just some of
the media's Convention behavior that is quite worth reading).
John McCain himself, and
especially those who whisper foreign policy wisdom in his ear,
have long had a lengthy list of New Enemies We Must Confront in
the World -- beyond those we're already fighting. They not only
want to add China, but now especially Russia, to that list,
without the slightest concern for the severe degradation they
have already imposed on the U.S. military and America's economic
security (but, Lieberman and Graham warn, Russia will go
bankrupt if they have a 10-day border skirmish with a
neighboring state). But infantile calls for Standing Tall in the
Face of American Enemies and Not Blinking is still the
definition of Seriousness in American political discourse, and
the pure derangement and extremism that lies at the heart of
this McCain foreign policy mentality will thus continue to go
largely unexamined.
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