Except a Nuclear Apocalypse Would Be Unimaginably Worse
The wildfires in LA are horrific. People are losing everything. Thousands of structures have been consumed by flames. Ash, soot, smoke, poison the air. It’s devastating. Just look at this photo taken from space.
It looks like a nuclear apocalypse. Yet as devastating as the LA fires have been, a nuclear apocalypse would be unimaginably worse. A thousand times worse. A million times worse.
We see something like the wildfires in LA—as bad as they are, they remain on a scale that is comprehensible. We can fathom them. They will eventually be contained.
One atomic bomb like the one used at Hiroshima would be a thousand times worse (and don’t forget the blast wave and radiation as well as the fires). A thermonuclear weapon, a hydrogen bomb or warhead, would be one hundred thousand times worse. Unimaginable. Unfathomable. Unsurvivable.
There’s much to be learned from these wildfires in LA. Much more action needs to be taken to prepare for similar events in the future. Perhaps they might serve as a reminder as well of how much worse the fires could and would be from a man-made inferno in a nuclear war.
America, it’s high time we stopped building more nuclear weapons and started investing in improvements to our infrastructure, to disaster preparedness, to meet the climate-driven catastrophes that we know are coming.
America needs more fire trucks, more fire crews, even something seemingly as simple as more water. We don’t need more infernal (and inferno-producing) nuclear weapons.
On Twitter/X, I stumbled across this useful image that visually captures the U.S. political scene:
The modification I’d make to this illustration is with the caption. It’s not only Republicans who turn everything rightwards—Democrats help too. Consider Kamala Harris’ embrace of Dick and Liz Cheney during her campaign of ill-fortune. Or her embrace of military lethality and her celebration of Israel’s “right” to “defend” itself as it wages genocide in Gaza.
It’s Republicans and Democrats who are turning this country rightwards even as Democrats block any appreciable movement in progressive or “leftist” directions.
Mainstream Democrats will always say they need to do this as allegedly it’s the only way they can win, which is pure BS, as Harris’ defeat recently shows. It’s the old “fake left, run right” tactic, and corporate-friendly Democrats keep using it, if only to keep the money flowing.
No matter. Liberal magazines like The Nation are telling me that Harris lost because of “bigotry,” not because she embraced the Cheneys and left workers behind. I guess President Obama won two terms because of bigotry?
Given this “ratchet effect,” America desperately needs a political revolution, as Bernie Sanders in 2016 was wont to say, as rightist Hillary Clinton ran against Trumpist Donald Trump. (Trump makes populist noises, but his guiding light is self-aggrandizement.)
As Democrats offer rightist candidates like Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris, Republicans give us a plutocratic “man of the people” (never mind the contradiction here) like Trump. Facing that grim “choice,” sensing that Clinton and Harris and Democrats like them are not what they say are, many Americans opt for the scrutable plutocrat and his friends. Elon Musk, anyone?
And thus America’s problems are ratcheted up.
P.S. A hearty “Happy New Years!” to all my readers wherever you are!
One of my favorite bumper stickers has this message: If you think you can trust the government, ask an Indian (Native American). It’s a good reminder.
Lately, the mainstream media has warned us against conspiracy theorists. Against distrusting government and media narratives. And yet recently (and finally!) the Wall Street Journal came clean in an article that probed President Biden’s declining stamina and mental health. The article is recounted here with venomous humor by Jimmy Dore.
I wrote in 2019 that Biden’s debate performance then, with his rambling about turning on record players and the like, suggested a diminishing capacity to serve as president. Many people shared those concerns, but the Democrats carefully stage-managed Biden, keeping him largely in Covid lockdown as he ran for the presidency and won. Over the last four years, we’ve witnessed many, many episodes of Biden’s continuing decline, most clearly during his debate earlier this year with President-elect Trump. Yet, until that debate, and even after in some cases, we were told not to believe our lying eyes about Biden’s sorry performance.
Now, with lame duck Biden slowly making his way out the door (assuming he doesn’t lose his way), we’re finally being told by the Wall Street Journal that he really wasn’t up to the job for the last four years.
I wonder why people don’t trust the government?
Another example: Recently, the government “discovered” the U.S. military had 2000 troops in Syria, not the 900 or so that Pentagon spokespeople had been telling us about for the last couple of years. What happened? Where did these extra 1100 troops come from? Not only can’t the Pentagon pass a financial audit (seven straight years of failures!), it can’t even count its troops.
Of course, the Pentagon knew all along that it had 2000 or so troops in Syria. They simply lied to us, full stop.
Will anyone be called on the carpet and punished for this lie? Of course not. When you lie for the government, you get promoted. When you reveal truth to the American people (Edward Snowden, for example), you get punished.
So, while not everything is a conspiracy, it’s always a good idea to question authority. Incredibly, whether led ostensibly by Biden or Trump, the federal government is something less than trustworthy. And if you don’t believe me, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to explore the white man’s many broken promises to Native Americans.
It’s always the right time to stop building more weapons of mass destruction
William Astore and Matthew Hoh
[Note to readers: Back in early September, Congressman Mike Turner penned an op-ed for the “liberal” New York Times supporting a massive “investment” in new nuclear weapons. Matt Hoh and I quickly submitted letters to the Times to protest this op-ed and its arguments; the Times ignored them. We then wrote our own op-ed below, shopping it to various mainstream media outlets without success. Here it finally appears for the first time.]
*****
Representative Mike Turner’s essay on nuclear weapons in The New York Times (We Must Invest in Our Aging Nuclear Arsenal, September 6, 2024) is dangerously loyal to counterproductive US national security policies and narratives.
Turner’s lamentation over foreign nuclear weapons programs ignores destabilizing US arms control choices this century. The US spends more on nuclear weapons than the rest of the world combined. Its $1.7 trillion modernization program (the Sentinel ICBM; the B-21 Raider bomber; Columbia-class nuclear submarines) has done little more than upset the decades-long nuclear deterrence balance among nations.
In his essay, Turner neglects to mention the US government’s unilateral withdrawal from multiple arms control treaties. Then-Senator Joe Biden rightly predicted the effects of George W. Bush’s abandonment of the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty: “A year ago [in 2000], it was widely reported that our intelligence community had concluded that pulling out of ABM would prompt the Chinese to increase their nuclear arsenal tenfold.” The Chinese are now clearly headed in that escalatory direction.
To prevent the apocalyptic consequences of yet another nuclear arms race, the US should act to decrease “investments” in new weapons while cutting current arsenals by negotiating and enacting new arms reduction treaties. Together, the US and Russia already possess ten thousand nuclear warheads, enough to destroy life on earth and several other earth-sized planets. We need desperately to divest from nuclear weapons, not “invest” in them.
Consider as well that America’s current nuclear triad, especially the Navy’s Trident submarine force, is potent, survivable, and more than sufficient to deter any conceivable adversary.
Simply put, the US must stop building genocidal nuclear weapons. It must instead renew international efforts and treaties to downsize these dreadful and dangerous arsenals. Spending yet more trillions on more world-shattering nukes is worse than a mistake—it’s a crime against humanity.
Here we are haunted by the words of Hans Bethe, who worked on the Manhattan Project that created the atomic bomb during World War II. The first reaction Bethe said he’d had after Hiroshima was one of fulfillment—that the project they had worked on for so long had succeeded. The second reaction, he said, was one of shock and awe: “What have we done? What have we done,” he repeated. And the third reaction: It should never be done again.
That is the imperative here. The US must act so that future Hiroshimas will never happen.
It’s not America’s fate alone that’s at stake here, but the fate of humanity itself, and indeed most life on earth, as only a few dozen thermonuclear warheads exploding would likely produce nuclear winter and an eventual “body count” in the billions.
During the First Cold War, one heard it said: “Better dead than red.” That mentality remains, even as the “reds” today are more capitalist than communist. Meanwhile, the weapons makers for the military-industrial-congressional complex (MICC), in their greed, are the adversary within. From Israel and events in Gaza, we’ve learned the MICC will literally empower a people to commit mass murder. With more and newer thermonuclear weapons, the MICC may yet kill the world.
Higher quarterly profits will mean little when everybody is dead.
During the Vietnam War, a US Army major was heard to say: “We had to destroy the town to save it [from communism].” If America can destroy towns in Vietnam to “save” them from communism, if it can facilitate the destruction of Gaza to “save” it from Hamas, it can similarly destroy the earth to “save” it from China, or Russia, or some other “threat.” That is the indefensible (il)logic of building yet more weapons of mass destruction.
Contra Congressman Turner, there is no logical, sensible, defensible reason for America’s proposed “investment” in new nuclear weapons. But there are nearly two trillion reasons why it’s going forward, because that’s the projected total cost of modernizing America’s nuclear triad. Money talks—loudly, explosively, perhaps catastrophically.
Today, more than half of US federal discretionary spending is devoted to war and weapons. Americans, in essence, live both in a permanent war state and a persistent state of war. As bad as that reality is, a state of nuclear war is unimaginable and must not be allowed to happen.
At the height of the Cold War, one of us served in Cheyenne Mountain, America’s nuclear command center, and witnessed a simulated nuclear attack on the US. Even on the primitive monitors the Air Force had back in 1986, seeing Soviet missile tracks crossing the North Pole and terminating at American cities was unforgettable.
A generation earlier, Robert Oppenheimer, the “father of the atomic bomb,” tragically noted in 1965 that it was 20 years too late to control nuclear arms. Those efforts, he said, should have been started “the day after Trinity” in July of 1945.
Let’s not make it 80 years too late. Congressman Turner is exactly wrong here. We must cut America’s nuclear arsenal and pursue new nuclear disarmament treaties. Never should our children be haunted as we were (and still are) by the darkness and doom of radioactive mushroom clouds.
William Astore, a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF) and historian, is a senior fellow at the Eisenhower Media Network.
Matthew Hoh, a former Marine Corps captain and State Department official, resigned in protest in 2009 against America’s ill-conceived war in Afghanistan. He is Associate Director at the Eisenhower Media Network.
Private health insurers make money denying care–not providing it
Luigi Mangione, the young man who shot and killed a senior health insurance executive, is emerging as a folk hero of sorts in America. This requires some explanation for people outside of America.
Luigi Mangione
Most peer countries to the United States have national health care systems. Countries like Britain, Germany, France, Japan, New Zealand, and the like. These national health care systems, run by the government, are not perfect, but overall they are cheaper and produce better results for patients than the American system, where health care is basically wealth care for the rich and privileged.
America primarily has a privatized health care system where profit is the prime directive. (Programs like Medicare* and Medicaid are a public-private partnership and are government-funded; the former focuses on people 65 and older, the latter on the poorest of Americans.) Most Americans get their private health insurance with their job, else they’re required to buy private health insurance on their own nickel. These health insurance plans are expensive and often come with high deductibles and co-pays.
So, for example, when you visit a doctor for a routine appointment, your co-pay is likely between $50 and $100 per visit. If you get seriously sick, break a bone, etc., your health insurance provider may not start paying your bills until a certain yearly deductible is met, which may sit between $5000 and $10,000. Not surprisingly with these deductibles, co-pays, and the like, Americans often declare bankruptcy due to medical bills even when they have health insurance and are in theory “covered.”
A quick Google search reveals that an unsubsidized private health care plan for a family of four in America cost an average of $24,000 a year in 2023. Other figures suggest a cost of roughly $18,000 a year, but it depends on what state you live in as well as your age. The various plans that you can buy are quite complicated and include the aforementioned deductibles, co-pays, and other complexities. Employer-based plans cost less; perhaps in the neighborhood of $6000 to $8000 per year.
Again, health insurers’ #1 priority isn’t to provide health care. It’s to make money for shareholders—and for the senior executives in the industry. So their profit-driven approach to claims is the now infamous “deny, delay, depose (or defend)” strategy. As often as possible, they seek to deny claims outright, forcing sick and desperate people to fight an incomprehensible bureaucracy shrouded in fine-print legalese. Or they seek to delay payment on claims. Or they take Americans to court (“defend and depose”), forcing people to hire lawyers (quite expensive) while aiming for the quickest and cheapest settlement.
For the insurers, this strategy makes all the sense in the world. They are in this business to maximize profits and earnings, not to provide generous health care benefits.
Efforts to create a fairer and more just system for Americans have failed due to political corruption at the highest levels as well as propaganda (remember those rumored “death panels” if the government ran health care). The idea of a national non-profit healthcare system is nothing new; the Truman administration advocated for it after World War II, and various other proposals were floated by LBJ in the 1960s, the Clintons in the 1990s, and even tepidly by the ultimate sellout Barack Obama with his Affordable Care Act, which is unaffordable for many and less than generous with its care. These and similar efforts have failed as Big Pharma, the AMA, health insurers, and other forces have combined to exert tremendous pressure so as to prevent meaningful reforms that would cut into their profits, salaries, and market share.
Basically, the U.S. health wealth care system costs roughly double that of comparable countries with worse outcomes for patients. Again, this isn’t a surprising result, since the health and well-being of patients isn’t the guiding priority. It never has been. The U.S. system is all about producing the highest possible salaries and profits for Big Pharma, for health insurers, for privileged doctors (specialists often make yearly salaries in the high six-figures), and for all the other stakeholders (and shareholders) in the current system.
Here in America, the Hippocratic oath of “first do no harm” in medicine doesn’t apply. Our oath is the Gordon Gekko one of “Greed is good.” It doesn’t matter if people go bankrupt or die as a result. It’s wealth care, not health care, silly!
It’s unlikely the Trump administration will do anything to change this. Its top priority seems to be the expulsion of immigrants. Members of Congress are completely in the pocket of Big Pharma, the health insurers, and powerful medical lobbies, so don’t look for meaningful change there.
That’s why so many Americans, deeply frustrated with an exploitative system of healthwealth care, where costs rise year by year as benefits shrink, sympathize with Luigi Mangione, even if they disagree with his murderous method of expressing his anger and disgust.
Put bleakly, America’s health wealth care system is another way of enriching the few while impoverishing the rest. It is also a form of social control. (Act out, protest—lose your job, your health care, maybe your life.) Only the most revolutionary acts are likely to change this system. That is exactly why the government, the mainstream media, and corporate elites are acting to suppress sympathy for Mangione.
Consider this article by Ken Klippenstein about a mom who, frustrated with her health insurer, repeated “deny-delay-depose” while saying “you people are next” on the phone; she quickly apologized, but not before the police and FBI were called in and charged her with threatening “an act of terrorism.”
Know your place, Americans. Stay supine and obedient or they’ll take away your health insurance. Better yet, they’ll finally give you affordable health care—in prison.
Most people think Medicare is a government program. That’s only partly true. While Congress created Medicare, and continues to develop Medicare coverage and appeal rules, decisions to pay claims are actually made by private companies. The government does not make those decisions. This was one of the compromises made in order to pass Medicare in 1965 – and the public-private partnership continues to date.
Indeed, the entities granting or denying coverage, and those deciding whether or not to pay claims, are mostly private insurance companies. For example, Anthem is the parent company of “National Government Services,” one of the major Medicare claims administrators. Another Medicare administrative contractor, “MAXIMUS,” is a for-profit company that helps state, federal and foreign governments administer programs.
In addition, about 30% of Medicare beneficiaries are enrolled in private “Medicare Advantage” plans. These plans are also run by private companies, mostly within the insurance industry, and they make Medicare initial coverage decisions for their enrollees.
We know that when Medicare is working right and covering necessary care, everyone is content. But, if coverage is denied unfairly… don’t blame the government. It’s probably not “Medicare” that made the decision; it’s most likely a private insurance company that’s paid by Medicare to make coverage decisions.
Thanks to a reader, Sally Moore, for pointing out the public-private nature of Medicare. It’s more complicated than I thought—I should have known better.
Update: A classic cartoon from Tom Tomorrow seems appropriate here:
Liberals at The Nation Applaud Joe Biden for Lying
At The Nation, Elie Mystal has an article, “Of Course Joe Biden Was Right to Pardon His Son.” Mystal’s argument, such as it is, asserts that Republicans are worse than Democrats when it comes to hypocrisy and persecuting their rivals, so Joe Biden was right to shield his son from their partisan efforts to persecute him. In a nutshell, the argument is that Trump’s done worse, plus Biden is a “loving father,” so that makes the pardon justifiable.
He loves his son, Trump is worse, and that’s all you need to know.
It’s a mind-boggling “argument,” which got me to write this short note to the editor:
That Joe Biden was right to pardon Hunter isn’t as questionable as the nature of the pardon given. The pardon is sweeping, covering 11 years, and open-ended, covering just about every conceivable federal crime. It’s likely no accident it begins in 2014, when Hunter started on the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company, where he “earned” $1 million a year. The sweeping nature of the pardon suggests that much is being swept under the rug here, especially Hunter’s dealings with Ukraine and China.
More than this, however, is President Biden’s integrity. Time and time again, Joe Biden said he wouldn’t pardon his son under any circumstances. That he trusted the justice system and jury trials. Those assertions now stand revealed as lies.
In his article, Elie Mystal says it’s all about power here. Perhaps he should think about justice and integrity as well.
I can see Joe Biden pardoning Hunter for specific crimes (like firearm charges) that he believes are overdrawn, but an eleven-year blanket pardon that coincides with Hunter’s highly questionable actions in regards to Ukraine? After Biden had sworn, again and again, he was not going to pardon Hunter for anything?
That Elie Mystal, the Nation’s justice expert (!), can applaud Joe Biden here is truly sad. Come on. Claiming that “Trump worse” or that Biden’s a “loving father” is no excuse for anything.
Like too many people, I sometimes make the mistake of talking about nuclear war, when it’s really annihilation and genocide we’re talking about.
Wars have winners and losers. In nuclear “war,” everyone loses. The planet loses. Life loses and death triumphs on a scale we simply can’t imagine.
Language is so important here. I grew up learning about nuclear exchanges. EXCHANGES! The U.S. military talks of nuclear modernization and “investing” in nukes when the only dividend of this “investment” is mass death.
One of the few honest acronyms is MAD, or mutually assured destruction. Lately, it’s an acronym that’s largely disappeared from American discourse.
More than anything, though, realistic images of a nuclear attack are perhaps the most compelling evidence against building more nukes, as in this powerful and unforgettable scene from Terminator 2:
To me, nothing beats that scene. That is nuclear “war.”
The U.S. has over 5000 nuclear weapons; the Russians close to 6000. That’s more than enough to destroy the earth and a few other earth-sized planets. Imagine the scene above repeated eleven thousand times on our planet.
The insanity, the immorality of spending another $2 trillion on new nukes … well, it boggles my mind. We’ve become like the mutants in Beneath the Planet of the Apes, worshipping the bomb, acolytes of death and destruction.
If we all don’t end up killing ourselves and the planet in “an exchange,” we’ll likely degenerate into utter barbarism, as depicted in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. And even that grim novel has a life-affirming ending that is most unlikely.
Amazingly, after I wrote the above passages about nuclear “war” and “exchanges,” I came across Admiral TR Buchanan’s recent keynote address at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), where he uses the word “exchange” in a remarkably banal (and frightening!) way.
BUCHANAN: Yeah, so it’s certainly complex because we go down a lot of different avenues to talk about what is the condition of the United States in a post-nuclear exchange environment. And that is a place that’s a place we’d like to avoid, right? And so when we talk about non-nuclear and nuclear capabilities, we certainly don’t want to have an exchange, right?
I think everybody would agree if we have to have an exchange, then we want to do it in terms that are most acceptable to the United States. So it’s terms that are most acceptable to the United States that puts us in a position to continue to lead the world, right? So we’re largely viewed as the world leader.
And do we lead the world in an area where we’ve considered loss? The answer is no, right? And so it would be to a point where we would maintain sufficient – we’d have to have sufficient capability.
We’d have to have reserve capacity. You wouldn’t expend all of your resources to gain winning, right? Because then you have nothing to deter from at that point.
So very complex problem, of course. And as I think many people understand, nuclear weapons are political weapons. I think Susan Rice said that at one point.
The motto of Admiral Buchanan might be: We had to destroy the world in order to lead it. Buchanan here is less sane than General Buck Turgidson in Dr. Strangelove.
This admiral thinks we might have to have “an exchange” with Russia, and that, if we do, we could do so “in terms that are most acceptable to the United States,” and that even after “an exchange,” the U.S. can still “continue to lead the world.”
Truly this is the banality of evil. I like how even after “the exchange,” we need to have a “reserve capacity” so that we can nuke the world again.
This is madness–sheer madness–but it’s received as probity and sane “strategic” thinking by the national security blob.
This guy was promoted to admiral precisely because he thinks this way. He thinks without thinking. With no humanity.
Well, as General Turgidson says in Dr. Strangelove, we might just get our hair mussed during a nuclear “exchange,” but does it really matter as long as we can kill more of them than us?
Overconfidence and Profiteering Trumped Humility and Public Service
Here are a few thoughts on America’s response to Covid that I hope are useful, especially in light of RFK Jr’s nomination to run health and human services. RFK is often portrayed as an “anti-vaxxer,” when, as I understand it, he is more of a skeptic or a critic of certain vaccines, whether of their efficacy or possible side effects. He’s associated with assertions that vaccines could be linked to higher rates of autism in children, with questions about the use of mercury (now eliminated) in trace quantities in certain vaccines.
People seem concerned that RFK is eroding parents’ trust in vaccines, especially for preventable childhood diseases like measles, mumps, and the like. It’s also true that vaccines are money-makers for big pharmaceutical companies, so some skepticism or at least caution may be warranted when claims are made that vaccines are 100% safe and effective. (That certainly wasn’t true of the various Covid vaccines.) When tackling such issues, I’d defer to the experts you trust, such as your pediatrician or your family practitioner. Don’t listen to RFK—and certainly don’t listen to me. My doctorate is in history, not medicine.
Medical science can survive the skepticism of RFK and maybe even profit from it in the sense of being more truthful and transparent about vaccine efficacy and risks.
Anyhow, here are some thoughts about the Covid crisis that I jotted down about two years ago.
*****
The Covid response by the U.S. government and medical community was a highly complex event. The whole idea of flattening the curve (so as to not overwhelm hospitals with patients) made sense to me. The vaccines, rushed into production, weren’t even close to perfect (“leaky” was the word used), and there were some people injured by them, but overall Operation Warp Speed made sense to me. As a precaution, my wife and I got the initial two shots and wore masks when we had to. We never got subsequent shots or boosters. (We were not in vulnerable risk categories and our doctor told us the virus was changing too rapidly for the boosters to offer much protection.)
That said, mortality in the U.S. due to Covid was very high compared to other countries that had less access to the vaccines. It’s unclear why, though preexisting conditions like obesity or compromised immune systems contributed.
What is clear is the upward transfer of wealth driven by the pandemic response as passed by Congress and the unequal suffering of small businesses compared to giants like Amazon. The Covid response created more billionaires in the U.S. and even wider discrepancies between the “haves” and “have-nots.” Meanwhile, lots of older Americans died in nursing and veterans’ homes, and America ultimately lost more than a million people to Covid and its complications.
What pissed many people off was the way in which the so-called experts insisted that they knew what they were doing even when they clearly didn’t. There was a lot of uncertainty about the origins of Covid and how best to contain it, but the government showed no humility. The message was “obey” us because we know best.
Again, I’m not defending anti-vaxxers. I’m pointing out that Covid vaccines were “leaky” because they didn’t prevent transmission, nor did they prevent Covid. Many so-called experts oversold the vaccines, saying they would prevent infection and transmission. Those statements proved to be wrong.
Medical science is a realm of complexity and uncertainty, and when it meets the realm of politics, especially as structured in the U.S., where you’re either “blue” or “red,” and where politicians avoid complexity as dangerous to one’s reputation, both realms suffer from the mix, especially medicine and science.
What we really needed during the Covid pandemic was humility before uncertainty. What we got was arrogance and an illusion of certainty. Trump, obviously, was way out of his depth. His ignorance put a premium on the experts to act like, well, experts. To admit uncertainty. To turn aside from overconfident statements issued literally in the name of science.
Dr. Anthony Fauci was neither as humble nor transparent nor truthful as he should have been.
Anthony Fauci, if nothing else, forgot to be humble. Forgot how to be an expert. Instead, he became a poseur. Just about everyone knew Trump was clueless. We expected more from a medical doctor, more transparency, a greater command over the facts, so the sense of betrayal was that much greater.
As a historian of science, I’m certainly not anti-science. Medical science at “warp speed” is tricky, however. There was a rushed effort to develop vaccines quickly, and not all of them were equally safe and effective. Calculated risks were taken in the cause of saving lives—and some people were vaccine-injured as a result. This doesn’t mean, of course, that vaccines are somehow “bad.” Most vaccines are safe and effective. Again, trust your doctor. And educate yourself. But remember too that a little knowledge can sometimes be a dangerous thing.
*****END OF NOTES
I just hope the experts learned valuable lessons from Covid, as it likely won’t be the last pandemic we face. Collectively, we should handle future crises with more care, more maturity, and more humility, as well as less panic and less arrogance.
We look to experts in life to help us, but we don’t expect them to be all-knowing. What I think we want, above all else, is frankness and honesty from doctors. And of course a commitment to “first do no harm.”
In my morning news feed from the New York Times came this article on Tulsi Gabbard:
How Tulsi Gabbard Became a Favorite of Russia’s State Media
President-elect Donald J. Trump’s pick to be the director of national intelligence has raised alarms among national security officials.
Here’s the key paragraph from the article, which, of course, is delayed until the sixth paragraph:
No evidence has emerged that she has ever collaborated in any way with Russia’s intelligence agencies. Instead, according to analysts and former officials, Ms. Gabbard seems to simply share the Kremlin’s geopolitical views, especially when it comes to the exercise of American military power. [Emphasis added]
Did you get that? NO EVIDENCE. Tulsi has never collaborated with Russia in any way. The problem is that she’s a critic of unnecessary and disastrous wars like Iraq and Afghanistan. She’s a critic of massive U.S. military aid to Ukraine. And since those criticisms are vaguely useful to Russia, she must therefore be a “Russian asset,” a dupe of Putin, according to Hillary Clinton and now the New York Times.
Within the so-called intelligence community (IC), you are allowed to be a cheerleader, a booster, even a selective critic in the sense that you may call for more money for the IC because of certain limitations or oversights, but you are not allowed to question America’s disastrously wasteful imperial foreign policy.
No matter how poorly the IC performs (consider the colossal failure of 9/11, or the total obliviousness about the impending collapse of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s, or recent disastrous wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya), no one is ever held accountable, even as the IC gets more money and authority.
Tulsi Gabbard with President-elect Trump. (Jim Vondruska for the NYT)
Tulsi Gabbard promises to be a game-changer. Skeptical of the blatant misuse of American military power, she’s been an articulate critic of forever wars. She is especially sensitive to deploying U.S. troops in harm’s way for purposes other than the defense of the United States.
The “liberal” New York Times is having none of that. Consider this remarkable paragraph:
“Nominating Gabbard for director of national intelligence is the way to Putin’s heart, and it tells the world that America under Trump will be the Kremlin’s ally rather than an adversary,” Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a professor of history at New York University and the author of “Strongmen,” a 2020 book about authoritarian leaders, wrote on Friday. “And so we would have a national security official who would potentially compromise our national security.” [Emphasis added]
Who knew that “Putin’s heart” could be won so easily? And note the weasel wording that Tulsi could “potentially compromise” U.S. national security. Again, no evidence is presented.
Well, we certainly don’t want the U.S. to have a rapprochement with Putin. He must always be our adversary, am I right? How dare that Trump and Gabbard might, just might, pursue a policy that is less antagonistic toward the Kremlin? Don’t you enjoy teetering on the brink of a world-ending nuclear exchange? I much prefer that to listening and negotiation.
In making enemies of Hillary Clinton and now the New York Times, Tulsi Gabbard has demonstrated she has what it takes to serve as director of national intelligence.
Former Democratic Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard has been nominated as Director of National Intelligence by President-elect Donald Trump. The so-called intelligence community is up in arms about this. That is a very good thing.
Tulsi Gabbard (Reuters, Jeenah Moon photo)
Here’s what Reuters has to say:
WASHINGTON, Nov 14 (Reuters) – President-elect Donald Trump’s choice of Tulsi Gabbard as U.S. intelligence chief has sent shockwaves through the national security establishment, adding to concerns that the sprawling intelligence community will become increasingly politicized.
Trump’s nomination of Gabbard, a former Democratic congresswoman who lacks deep intelligence experience and is seen as soft on Russia and Syria, is among several high-level picks that suggest he may be prioritizing personal allegiance over competence as he assembles his second-term team.
Among the risks, say current and former intelligence officials and independent experts, are that top advisers could feed the incoming Republican president a distorted view of global threats based on what they believe will please him and that foreign allies may be reluctant to share vital information.
Randal Phillips, a former CIA operations directorate official who worked as the agency’s top representative in China, said that with Trump loyalists in top government posts, “this could become the avenue of choice for some really questionable actions” by the leadership of the intelligence community. [Emphasis added.]
As if the intelligence “community” isn’t already politicized! And who sees Gabbard as allegedly “soft” on Russia and Syria? Hillary Clinton? The “queen of warmongers,” as Gabbard memorably described her?
Wow. We might get “some really questionable actions” by the IC (intelligence community). I’m glad we’ve never had any of those before.
Tulsi has a wealth of experience in the military (she remains a lieutenant colonel), she’s a former Congresswoman who’s served on important committees dealing with national security, and she’s tough as nails, having survived ruthless attacks on her character by the neocon Clinton wing of the Democratic Party. She is an excellent choice as Director.
What Tulsi has is integrity. Honesty. Poise. Perhaps even more importantly, she has Trump’s ear and his respect. As Director, she will oversee the preparation of Trump’s daily intelligence briefs. Trump was notorious in his first term in office for not paying much attention to those briefs. He should do better with Tulsi, somebody he trusts, preparing them.
Tulsi won my respect in 2016 when she supported Bernie Sanders and revealed how the Democratic presidential primary process was being fixed for Hillary Clinton. Tulsi has paid a high price for her principled stance, being smeared by Clinton and mainstream media outlets like NBC as a “Russian asset,” maybe even a stooge for Vladimir Putin. Politics is a rough game, but accusing a serving U.S. military officer and Congresswoman of being a “Putin puppet” is truly reckless and defamatory. Good for Tulsi for punching back.
The establishment Democratic party hates Tulsi because she refused to play their game. She refused to bow to the Clintons. Tulsi has also questioned America’s constant warmongering and knows a thing or two about the horrendous costs of war. She even has a normal life as a surfer. She has a connection to nature that I respect.
Her poise, her toughness, her integrity, makes her a superb choice as DNI. The more the intelligence “community” complains about her, the louder certain Democrats scream, the more certain I am that Trump has made a smart decision here.
Recall when Kamala Harris vowed to put a Republican in her cabinet? Well, Trump has made Gabbard his DNI and RFK Jr. will lead Health and Human Services. He’s picked two (former) Democrats for important posts and the Democrats can’t stand it.
On this occasion, with these appointments, I applaud Trump. You go, Tulsi. Ride the wave. Continue to serve our country as you always have.
Bracing Views 