Better in their words…

Yesterday and today I’ve been listening to interviews with, in particular, Doug Macgregor, but also with Matt Hoh. What comes through loud and clear is what I’ve been describing as growing desperation on both current fronts of the Global War of the American Empire. The desperation of the West with regard to the war on Russia is perhaps best capsulated by this tweet of the nonsensical new NATO strategy, featuring Jens Stoltenberg, Secretary General of NATO:

Victor vicktop55 @vicktop55

Now everything is clear – this is a new NATO strategy — not to defeat Russia, but to convince it that it is losing.

“The sooner we can convince Moscow that it will not win on the battlefield, the sooner we will be able to reach a peace agreement in which Russia understands that it cannot win the war, but must sit down and negotiate an agreement in which Ukraine will become a sovereign, independent state” — Stoltenberg.

Circus performers, that’s all. They want to convince Russia that it is losing. No, you will have to defeat Russia on the battlefield to regain control of Ukraine. But that’s not going to happen, and you know it perfectly well. There was, is not and will not be any sovereign Ukraine. Ukraine is Russia.

https://t.me/vicktop55/23426

5:38 AM · Apr 3, 2024

Obviously this strategy can’t be seriously aimed at Russia. Russia knows it’s winning and also knows that there’s no trustworthy official in the West which whom they can deal—certainly not on the terms suggested by Stoltenberg. One assumes, therefore, that Stoltenberg was gaslighting the public in the West and trying to hold NATO ranks in line. But there’s a limit to how long this continue, before the West’s ruling class will have to take responsibility for this disastrous war of aggression against Russia.

Doug Macgregor did an interview with Danny Davis yesterday that covered both the war on Russia as well as the latest developments in the Middle East. I was a bit surprised that Davis failed to take Macgregor up on Macgregor’s clear suggestion that they discuss the ways in which the two fronts are linked. Here’s the closing portion of the interview, in which Macgregor makes that statement. Macgregor also raises the possibility of a Zhou resignation:

Approaching the Endgame in Ukraine w/Col Doug Macgregor

DD: Let me ask you a separate question. Let’s agree that most of our policies were based on lies, but at some point the Biden Administration may come to the conclusion that this is not a winning play. If we let things take their course before November, if the Ukraine Army collapses, that would be a catastrophic issue for him and it will almost certainly cost him the election. So wouldn’t it make sense for them to say, hey, let’s cut bait here and actually try to get this thing cut off?

DM: Actually I think it’s not impossible that within the next 60 to 90 days Biden could suddenly resign and essentially take with him as he leaves office the principal burden of guilt for this catastrophe, this fiasco. Now, that means that his vice president would step up to become president. Who would step in to be vice president I have no idea, but I think that’s a very real possibility. We shouldn’t exclude it–there’s been talk about it behind the scenes.

I haven’t changed my mind on this scenario. The problem I see is that a resignation probably won’t solve the problems facing the Dems. The obvious hope is that blame for the American Empire’s foreign policy debacle can be assigned to Zhou and Zhou alone, allowing the Dems to pivot to a new policy. The difficulty with this strategy remains Kama Sutra—she is just as identified with the foreign policy debacle as is Zhou, so I don’t see how a convincing pivot can be executed. The problem goes deeper, however. First, the Middle East catastrophe looks likely to only deepen. Second, the electoral difficulties for the Dems are also heavily linked to domestic issues—none of which are likely to improve. Indeed, the foreign policy disasters may have a significant negative impact on domestic issues regarding the economy. I get why this type of speculation is occurring, but I fail to see how the real problems can be solved this way. We shall see. Macgregor’s argument would make sense in a parliamentary system, but our Constitution presents the Dems with unique and, quite possibly insoluble, complications.

Everyone in Europe–behind the scenes in NATO–knows the war is over. The people that refuse to admit this tragic truth are the people at the top, because they’ve hitched their wagon to us. They bet everything they have on the United States to pull this off, so Biden has to go and I do not think he will be with us through the summer. I think at some point. In the near future he will simply resign and he’ll take the blame or the fall for it. The other thing is–and I’m sure we’re going to talk about this–the events in the Middle East are moving in new and different directions. Those events could actually converge with what’s happening in Eastern Europe in ways that we haven’t considered yet, making our position that much more unsustainable[i.e., less sustainable].

Macgregor was sure Davis would want to talk about this linkage of the two fronts of the Global War, but Davis didnt’ take the hint. The linkage should be obvious. I’ve been stressing this for a long time. The same people (as Matt Hoh will point out below) are behind policy on Russia as well as Israel and the Middle East. As I argued yesterday, globalist control of the world economy demands that both fronts be addressed simultaneously. However, as Macgregor points out, maintaining both fronts is increasingly stressing the American Empire’s resources and capabilities to the breaking point. But Davis turns to domestic politics.

DD: What do you think the chances are that when Congress comes back on the 9th of April–when the Speaker of the House Johnson said that they’re going to take up a Ukraine funding bill–do you think that’s actually going to fly? Because it would seem to be a huge waste of money to allocate another $60 billion …

DM: That obviously depends on the people that own Speaker Johnson, his donors. I suspect that it may be decided behind the closed doors that it’s time to cut the loss in Ukraine because it will become increasingly necessary for us to build up our position in the Middle East to prevent Israel from going under. I think Israel is in a very seriously weakened position right now and there’s a fear that we’re so focused on Ukraine that Israel could suffer as a consequence. If that in fact comes to fruition, I think Johnson may change his tune and be less willing to support the Ukrainian Adventure than he is at the moment. But, keep in mind–and this is something Americans have never completely grasped–most of that money doesn’t go to Ukraine. I mean, some of it obviously will–to pay the army that is vanishing, to pay the bureaucracy that is collapsing, to pay Zelensky and the criminals in his regime who are profiting enormously from this–but the majority of the money will go to [our own criminals] the defense industry. Because those people are also donors. So really it has nothing to do with what is in the interest of the American people, what is strategically important to the American people, and everything to do with Johnson and his friends and where their money comes from. I think we ought to just accept that as a reality.

DD: Yeah, I guess we don’t really have much of a choice. We would like it to be something different. It is what it is and we have to deal with the reality we have.

By good fortune, Macgregor returned to the internet today and did an interview with Judge Nap, in which he expanded on the topics he had tried to get Davis engaged in yesterday:

Col. Douglas Macgregor: Israel Is Desperate

It’s good to have such a knowledgeable observer as Macgregor in our corner. As we argued yesterday—and most knowledgeable observers understand this—Israel is desperately trying to draw the US into regional war in the Middle East, despite the risks of such a war exploding into WW3. As Macgregor told Davis, Israel is in such a weakened position now that there is a real risk that Israel could “go under.” Macgregor is of the opinion that the US faces a choice: continue its war on Russia, or save Israel from “going under”. It’s an either/or choice. Given that the Neocons’ primary loyalty is to Israel, the choice that will be made seems obvious—which is why the US is currently trying to talk the hapless Euros into continuing the war on Russia more or less on their own. In that regard, Macgregor offered some interesting comments on European polls that show that the Euro public is slowly tumbling to the realization of the soup they’ve landed in by following the Neocon/Globalist cabal over a cliff. Pardon the mixed metaphors.

Today, Macgregor expanded on all that. He flatly stated that Israel is desperate and sees its only hope in “goading” Iran into a massive attack on Israel that will force the US into open warfare in the Middle East. Israel knows, says Macgregor, that it can’t win a war against Hezbollah or Iran. Further, any US or Israeli attack on Iran itself would quickly spiral out of control, by the logic of the type of missile conflict that we would see. All incentives are in favor of a massive strike, rather than a “measured” tit for tat, once you start using ballistic missiles—use ‘em or lose ‘em is the operative idea. For this reason Macgregor believes Iran will not take the bait.

In addition, Macgregor believes that the mood in the region is moving decisively against Israel. As usual, he stressed events in Turkey, where Erdogan—who has largely been all talk and no action with regard to Palestine—suffered a crushing electoral defeat in the mayoral contest in Istanbul. It’s difficult to overestimate the importance of Istanbul—population over 15 million, 19% of Turkey’s total—in Turkish politics. One factor in the election, according to Macgregor, was Turkish rage against Israel. But this dynamic is mirrored throughout the region. Economic isolation is working very strongly against Israel, which means that Iran knows that time is on its side—war now is not in Iran’s interest. Israel will continue to goad Iran, but Iran has asymmetric tools at its disposal, while Israel isolates itself from the civilized world.

Finally, Macgregor explicitly linked the war on Russia to the Middle East. The region’s major players are all shifting toward Russia and BRICS. Russia doesn’t want a war, but it will defend its interests with the means that it possesses. Among those means are its bases—naval and air—in Syria; its close cooperation with Iran and the control of the Persian Gulf that that provides; its naval presence in the Indian Ocean, in cooperation with Iran and China (including Russia’s formidable submarine fleet); it’s naval presence now in the Red Sea. Russia is now deploying hypersonic Zircon armed ships in the region, which has the US in a panic. Any regional blowup in the Middle East risks direct confrontation between Russia and the US—it is in the Middle East that the forces of each nation are most poised for confrontation. US preparedness is no such as to be reassuring as to the ultimate outcome of such a conflict, but the greater danger is of allout WW3 in which nobody wins. Meanwhile, the Zhou administration continues to poke and prod China.

Macgregor concludes that the only thing the US has done since November, 2020, is to cultivate the emergence of groupings and alliances of nations in opposition to the American Empire. An Axis of Resistance that has gone global on multiple fronts, both military, economic, and financial. Read this next carefully. If you think Macgregor said these words without serious reflection, you’re wrong:

“We are now as much a pariah in most ways as Israel is. This isolation is a catastrophe. The Globalists call anyone who disagrees with them ‘isolationists,’ yet they are the cause of our isolation.”

Follow the link to listen to it all. Now we turn to comments by Matt Hoh, who makes most of the same points Macgregor does:

Matt Hoh: IDF Attacks Iran

Judge: Will America ever learn its lesson that these invasions produce generations of animosity which comes back to bite us?

Hoh: Why they don’t learn the lesson is that those in power feel they are disconnected from the past, that those were the mistakes of previous generations–‘we know better.’ Look, I remember being on television with retired generals, with Brett McGurk, the guy who’s been in charge of Middle East policy for both Republicans and Democrats now for more than 10 years, and these people just swearing that ‘we know better now, we’ve learned the lessons of Iraq, we’ve learned the lessons of Afghanistan, this is why we’ll be successful,’ and the problem about that explanation is that it’s belied by the fact that it’s the same people so we’re we’re asking the same people to learn lessons about themselves you know the same men and women who are conducting our Israel policy, who are conducting our Ukraine policy. They are the same men and women who ran our Afghan policy, who ran our Iraq policy, who ran our Libya policy, who ran our Syria policy, who’ve been running policy with regards to Africa for 20 years. So why would we expect there to be anything different?

We also have to realize that their intentions are the benefit of the Empire. Their intentions are not stability, their intentions are not any type of peace, whether it be Regional or Global. Their intentions are not the welfare of the American people. Their intentions are to support the Empire in all the aspects of the Empire, whether it’s the corporations, the banks, the fossil fuel companies, the weapons companies.

It’s a game of Risk, whether or not the American Empire has been maintained, whether or not the American Empire has grown or, God forbid, the American Empire shrinks. This is the type of mindset that these people have. You’re talking about men like Joe Biden, you’re talking about Mitch McConnell, you’re talking about people like Jake Sullivan or Tony Blinken. Power is their end, so the means are the ends themselves. It’s power for power’s sake. So, whatever they need to do to both please the Empire as well as please their benefactors to maintain their positions in the institutions of the Empire, then that’s what they’re going to do.

***

It’s not just Israel that’s a rogue nation. It’s the United States that’s a rogue nation, violating international law, dismissing it, just frankly making things up, such as we saw last week when the United States made up this notion that somehow Security Council resolutions are non-binding.

We have to be very careful to note that the majority of the Israeli public is in full favor of the genocide in Gaza. A super majority is in favor. I saw numbers about two weeks ago where 68% of Israelis are in favor of the blockade–68%, more than two-thirds of Israelis, are in favor of starving the Palestinian people. So we have to make sure we don’t fall into this trap of thinking–which is that the White House and those in the US want us to scapegoat Benjamin Netanyahu, make it seem as if this was all just the consequence of one man in his delirious ambition, his genocidal rage.

Those aid workers–if people aren’t aware–it wasn’t that just one missile hit them and killed them. These people were hunted for a mile and a half by Israeli drones. The Israelis destroyed one vehicle after another. They hit one vehicle, the Israelis, they transferred people out of that vehicle into another vehicle. These workers drove on. The Israelis struck the second vehicle and then they they pulled wounded out of that vehicle put him in the third vehicle and then the Israelis struck that third vehicle over the course of a mile and a half. They deliberately hunted and killed these aid workers. As another colleague of mine described it, this is putting heads on stakes. This is creating a warning to anyone who wants to try and intervene in Israel’s genocide that these will be the consequences.

And what does the United States do? The United States stands by Israel. I saw right before we came on, I saw the United States State Department’s response to the killing of those seven aid workers, one of whom was an American citizen and it basically was that you’d expect: Oh, this is a tragedy, it should be investigated, but we stand by Israel, and Israel has a right to defend itself. It’s just absolutely sickening, but it’s also very, very dangerous, as we’ve been saying, because we are now at this point where Israel is doing everything it can to provoke a war with Iran with the intention of having the United States fight alongside Israel. It’s a war that could go nuclear and nothing’s going to change.