Ref #6: Photo confirmation. Problem solved by the Almighty.| Submit your comments on this article | |
| Home Front: Politix | |
| ChiCom General to Spengler: | |
| 2019-12-01 | |
Book Review: Ball of Collusion, by Andrew C McCarthy (Encounter Books, 2019). Hardcover, 266 pages. US$35.99 America’s Central Intelligence Agency in concert with foreign intelligence services manufactured the myth of Donald Trump’s alleged collusion with Russia, argues Andrew McCarthy, a distinguished federal prosecutor turned public intellectual. A contributor to Fox News and a prolific writer for The National Review and other conservative media, McCarthy well knows how to build a case and argue it before a jury. His latest book Ball of Collusion should be read carefully by everyone with an interest in American politics. It is exhaustively documented and brilliantly argued, and brings a wealth of evidence to bear on behalf of his thesis that an insular, self-perpetuating Establishment conspired to sandbag an outsider who threatened its perspectives and perquisites. From my vantage point as an American, the constitutional issue is paramount: The American people elected Donald Trump, and it is horrifying to consider the possibility that a cabal of unelected civil servants supported by the mainstream media might nullify a presidential election. That is why I support the president unequivocally and without hesitation against his detractors. But this sordid business has deep implications for America’s allies as well as her rivals. Trump is not a popular president overseas, except in Poland, Hungary, and Israel. In the eyes of polite opinion, McCarthy writes, “Donald Trump was anathema: a know-nothing narcissist – as uncouth as Queens – riding a populist-nationalist wave of fellow yahoos that threatened their tidy, multilateral post-World War II order.” China (and not only China) views Trump as a bully who presses American advantage at the risk of disruption to the global economy. Donald Trump has one quality for which the rest of the world should be grateful: He really does not care how China, Russia, or any other country manages its affairs. By “America First,” he simply means that he cares about what happens in America, and is incurious about what happens outside America unless it affects his country directly. That stands in sharp contrast to view of all the wings of America’s political Establishment – progressive, “realist” and neoconservative – who believe that America should bring about the millenarian End of History by bringing democracy to Iraq and Afghanistan, by expanding NATO into a giant social-engineering project, by pressing China to transform itself into a Western-style democracy, and so forth. McCarthy reports in persuasive detail how the spooks set up the president. There is more to be said, though, about why they did it. I will summarize McCarthy’s findings, and afterward discuss the motivation. | |
| Posted by:Lex |
| #13 WARBM [We Are Ruled By Morons] |
| Posted by: Lex 2019-12-01 23:23 |
| #12 The Chinese have been setting one barbarian against another for thousands of years, so they're projecting their time-honored tradition onto Uncle Sam. And they're equally familiar with the possibility that the balls don't always stay up in the air, however skilled the juggler. A case in point is the way they allied with the Mongols against their old enemy, the Jurchens. The Jurchen defeat freed the Mongols to embark upon the destruction of Song China. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2019-12-01 23:20 |
| #11 America works because it's political leaders dont run the country. the people do. Now China doesn't work so well because it IS run by it's political classes and the people cant choose them either. They really are run by idiots |
| Posted by: Bright Pebbles 2019-12-01 17:57 |
| #10 For being on the other side, he's simply a bigger level of idiot. And the Chinese, in particular, are dependent on the US political class besides Trump being similar types of traitorous idiots, otherwise they wouldn't have an alliance with the country that was shielding Osama Bin Laden. So they're talking out of both sides of their mouths on both of their faces, IMHO. I gotta go off the net to cook some turkey, have a nice day, all y'all. |
| Posted by: Thing From Snowy Mountain 2019-12-01 13:12 |
| #9 Not idiots, simply on the other side. These who voted for O are idiots. |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2019-12-01 12:20 |
| #8 2015 was the year the Iran Deal was carried out. This should have tipped him off that yes, the US leadership was idiots. |
| Posted by: Thing From Snowy Mountain 2019-12-01 12:16 |
| #7 Ref #6: Photo confirmation. Problem solved by the Almighty. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2019-12-01 08:30 |
| #6 Only a moron seeks to stir a steaming shit pot. |
| Posted by: M. Murcek 2019-12-01 08:19 |
| #5 General Flynn |
| Posted by: Angaiting Pheans5604 2019-12-01 08:10 |
#4  Ref 1: And the CIA’s support for Sunni jihadist opponents of the Assad government in Syria made matters worse, as the Defense Intelligence Agency warned in a notorious 2012 report.”Rantburg 'name that fella' bonus question: The man who was in charge at the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) at that time ? |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2019-12-01 08:04 |
| #3 My Chinese interlocutor was not impressed. “You’re trying to tell me that the people who run the world’s great superpower are complete idiots who don’t think about the consequences of their actions? I don’t believe you.” The truth exists independent of human belief. |
| Posted by: M. Murcek 2019-12-01 06:45 |
| #2 ^ That about summed it up. |
| Posted by: Dron66046 2019-12-01 01:48 |
| #1 Most interesting nugget from the piece is Spengler/Goldman's anecdote of his dinner with a ChiCom senior military official who asserted, "General Petraeus created ISIS in order to destabilize China,” a senior Chinese military official informed me over dinner in 2015. Spengler/Goldman: The individual in question appears, incidentally, as one of China’s masterminds of so-called unrestricted warfare in Michael Pillsbury’s now-celebrated book The Hundred Year Marathon. “That’s ridiculous,” I replied. “It is not ridiculous in the least,” the Chinese soldier continued in the benevolent tone in which one instructs low-aptitude recruits. “There are ISIS leaders whom we have identified and tracked who were trained by Petraeus during the ‘Surge,’” the counter-insurgency campaign that David Petraeus conducted in 2008-2009 to contain a Sunni rebellion against the majority Shiite government that the United States had helped bring to power in 2007. I tried to explain: “This was a comedy of errors. ... When Obama took US forces out of Iraq, a lot of the same Sunnis who took money from Petraeus faced the same Shiite state, and became non-state actors, that is ISIS. And the CIA’s support for Sunni jihadist opponents of the Assad government in Syria made matters worse, as the Defense Intelligence Agency warned in a notorious 2012 report.” My Chinese interlocutor was not impressed. “You’re trying to tell me that the people who run the world’s great superpower are complete idiots who don’t think about the consequences of their actions? I don’t believe you.” |
| Posted by: Lex 2019-12-01 01:42 |