Big Red Car going political on y’all today.
The Commonwealth of Virginia has on its flag the symbol of a warrior princess with her foot on a fallen king while brandishing a sword and a spear. The naked breast makes it all the more alluring.
It is however, the credo in Latin that catches one’s eye — Sic Semper Tyrannis — “Thus Always to Tyrants.” Sister Felicia would be so happy that The Boss recalled his high school Latin.
The Obama administration has a different program than the Commonwealth of Virginia — it recognizes, legitimizes, and reinforces despotic regimes.
Commonwealth of Virginia — kill tyrants, take their crowns, make them wear pleated skirts, stand on their chests, get naked while doing it, brandish swords and spears.
The Obama administration — legitimizes tyrants, recognizes them, photo ops them (which they use on their Christmas cards), conveys full diplomatic recognition, lets them eat at the grown up table at Christmas and Thanksgiving.
Different treatment?
Cuba
The latest to the legitimization party is Cuba whereat the US government has recognized the existence of Cuba, re-opened the American Embassy in Havana, and spent a lot of time mugging with Raul Castro who, apparently, gets along famously with President Obama.
No surprise there, right? Why not? Couple of socialist chums? Fellow commies? [Bit harsh, Big Red Car. Should have stopped with the “socialist chums” crack. Sometimes, you take things too damn far. I’ve mentioned this to you before.]
The fly in the ointment is that Ben Rhodes, the White House staffer with no foreign policy chops or negotiating experience who negotiated the deal, supposedly extracted “promises” from the Castro regime that they would do all sorts of things to advance human rights and to stop abusing their citizens.
The White House crowed about it when the deal was announced. It was a big freakin’ deal with both sides supposed to have a tons of skin in the game.
Alas, in the rush to get a last year photo op and take a victory lap, all of this human rights jazz has been swept under the new rugs at the Havana Embassy and, well, forgotten.
Let’s be clear here — the Big Red Car likes the idea of rapprochement with Cuba. Fidel and Raul will not live forever so we need to be ready to get the best possible seats at their funerals (please, God) but Donald Trump could have negotiated a better deal in his sleep.
I know, I know — Secretary Kerry fell off his bike and was busy working that brilliant Iran deal. I know. Ben Rhodes was the right guy even though he doesn’t work at State. Shut up.
What has really happened is that a couple of brutal, ruthless, bloody tyrants — who have enslaved their people since the early 1950s — have been legitimized and cast in the role of your crabby uncle whose greatest transgression was farting at the Thanksgiving table. Not even a smelly one. Just a loud one.
Here is a picture of President Obama asking — does anyone else smell something nasty? Cause I do!
You will notice that Raul has that “hey, it wasn’t me” look on his face but even he’s not convincing.
What’s the big deal, Big Red Car?
The big deal, y’all, is that we are getting into a bit of a rut legitimizing despots and shitheads while pissing on the feet of our allies. Want some examples?
1. We make the Iranians look like “just folks” while they are run by some bat shit crazy ayatollahs who allow their people to be drawn and quartered — some truly medieval shit that is right up there with ISIS — and are constantly saying that they intend to wipe Israel off the face of the earth.
We give them money and a pathway to a nuclear weapon. What could possibly go wrong there?
2. We let Bashar al-Assad sit atop Syria after double secret redlining the guy and then let him cozy up with Russians.
Sure we said that chemical weapons were bad form but then we decided, OK, maybe, chemical weapons are just like Raul’s farts, right?
We arm rebels who morph into …………wait for it…………..ISIS.
3. We pretend the Turks are our friends while they are supporting Hamas, Hezbollah, and buying ISIS oil while we are begging them to use their shitty little airbases.
They are NATO members for goodness sake. We are the big alpha dogs in NATO, right? Right?
With friends like this ……………
4. We throw elaborate, expensive state dinners for the Chinese as they are building islands in international waters in the Pacific. Trump says the Chinese are getting cheeseburgers and nothing more.
I like the frugality as much as the policy implications.
Let them eat cheeseburgers or at least make them bring everyone General Tsao’s spicy chicken in the bargain, no? I like Chinese food.
5. We let Putin and his pert little nipples host the Olympics and take the Crimea as if it were an Olympic prize while slowly digesting eastern Ukraine.
We do keep him and his cronies from visiting Disneyland so maybe the Big Red Car is being too tough on the Obama administration. Disneyland is a big deal.
6. We let the rich Arab countries send us Syrian refugees and don’t say — hey it’s y’all’s neighborhood. You guys handle it.
The ones who really piss me off are the Kuwaitis because we really did get their asses out of a crack when Saddam Hussein invaded them.
Those were freakin’ Americans who got your nuts out of the fire, Kuwait. At least pretend to be grateful.
7. We pretend that Iraq is not part of Iran already when we bled to make them free and to be clear of regional shitheads like Iran.
We allow a new Axis of Evil to emerge — Russia, Syria, Iraq, Iran. All aboard, this train’s pulling out and we fueled it up.
8. Don’t get me started on the narco-terrorist Afghanis.
9. Pakistan pretends to be in total wonder that Osama bin-Laden was living a mile from their West Point for almost a decade.
“Wow, what a surprise,” they said fooling…………………………….NOBODY.
Luckily, these guys have nuclear weapons. What could go wrong there?
10. North Korea? North Korea, we treat like they’re selling day old bread while they’re starving all of their people and spending all of their money on nuclear weapons and rockets.
Sorry — what could go wrong there?
11. We simultaneously piss on the ankles of Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the Kurds (the only real fighters in the Middle East).
We legitimize despots. We make bad deals. We damage allies. We are not very good at this foreign policy stuff.
But, hey, what the Hell do I really know anyway? See you in Havana next year for Fidel’s funeral, God willing. In the meantime, who gives a shit about human rights? Big Red Car, out!
You’ve made very clear that there is a consistent pattern. So, somehow some people are getting what they want. We have to suspect that there are some things going on we don’t understand.
But I suspect that various people, e.g., in Congress, have known all about this for years and have arranged that as bad as it looks and as bad as it is, just for now it’s not much the way it looks and in real effect not nearly as bad as it looks, besides, steps have been taken to keep it from getting a lot worse, and it will all be over in about a year anyway.
Then in 2017 some people will publish some books that make The BIg Short and All the President’s Men look like My Little Pony.
It’s called Democracy where we get the government we deserve except in our case our Founding Fathers saw that we would be dealing with real humans, i.e., imperfect, and set up checks and balances to save us. That setup has worked well through some very sick and/or mixed up people in government and, hopefully, will this time, also. I can guess some of what the books of 2017 will say but will let the books say it. “Wouldn’t do no good to say it” now anyway.
For Syria, it has some Shiites and some Sunnis. Assad is a Shiite. A few years ago, in Syria the 1000 year old war between the Shiites and Sunnis heated up. There were street demonstrations, gunfire, little bombs, bigger bombs, chemical bombs, and the fighting has continued. We should be surprised? And if Assad is run out of power, dead or alive, just what will be the result — holding hands, singing Kumbaya followed by Why Can’t We Be Friends? I don’t think so.
Or, IIRC, and to paraphrase, “We have two admittedly regrettable but nevertheless clearly distinguishable alternatives, one where we’ve got thousands of people killed and one where we’ve got millions of people killed”.
Europe went through some many decades of religious wars. The Mideast, at least 500 years behind, is still having theirs.
Don’t expect the Mideast to be much like Europe with secular government, separation of church and state, freedom of religion, respect for human rights and life, modern legal system, constitutional democracy, etc. any time soon.
About the best we can do is keep the Mideast from hurting us. At some point, we may have to take a big patch of that desert and turn it into red glass, maybe that also glows in the dark.
We could try to run that place, say, as a colonial power; and it would likely be better for both us and them; and if we took the oil we could make it pay, maybe a little, I doubt a lot; but it would be very bloody business. E.g., each Friday, a lot of Mullahs would be grabbing for power and, because all they know and the people they are talking to know is just a 1000 year old Islamic state, that’s what they’d constantly try to go for, They would just keep coming at us, and we’d just have to keep mowing them down like grass.
The only end would be when we finally had wiped out Islam from that area AND done a really good job moving that society 500+ years forward, That would be a lot of blood.
Schwarzkopf taught the 7 million man army a really big lesson — it didn’t take. Saddam and the Shah tried to run secular governments — they failed. There was a relatively modern part of Akrapistan, but the Islamic wackos got rid of it. The US, at enormous blood, treasure, time, and effort set up Iraq with a modern government, and as soon as we left it all fell apart — they went right back to their Shiite-Sunni 1000 year war. Saddam told us we’d have a heck of a time keeping the place together. He actually did keep it together; when we dumped him, it fell apart, and hasn’t been back together since.
As of this week, Shiite Iran wants to fight with Sunni Saudi Arabia. Well, Saudi Arabia executed a Shiite cleric in Saudi Arabia. Gee, I wonder what that Shiite cleric, in Sunni Saudi Arabia, had been trying to do — I can guess.
In Syria, I’d leave Assad there.
Generally we can hope for a balance of power or, in Kissinger’s words, too bad they can’t both lose. Well, sometimes they do!
Net, it’s their oily toilet. Let them have it unless it starts to hurt us and then we should defend ourselves. We can add some fine details, but IMHO that’s about it.
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Basar al-Assad is an Alawite which is a different flavor than your run of the mill Shiite. It is a minority creed in Syria which provides some of the energy to the civil war.
The US needs to think strategically and act tactically in the Middle East.
It is only energy to us and the interests of our only decent ally, Israel. The rest of it is an illusion.
Energy independence makes us safer than sorting out the Middle East.
Right now, Iran is the big player and we made it so.
BRC
https://www.themusingsofthebigredcar.com
Yup.
And for that insight, be sure to treat BRC to some high test and park him by a cute, pink Nissan Leaf or some such!
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The US legitimizes yet another tyrant and cuts yet another great deal. The hits keep on coming and the deal with Cuba is a real winner.
Congratulations to Ben Rhodes, he of no foreign policy experience and even less negotiating experience. Well played.
https://themusingsofthebigredcar.com/the-care-and-feeding-of-tyrants/
BRC
https://www.themusingsofthebigredcar.com