I can’t remember the last time a Foreign Affairs article made a stir among the commentariat. But this week it was Fiona Hill’s “The Kremlin’s Strange Victory: How Putin Exploits American Dysfunction and Fuels American Decline.”
One of the benefits of Joe Biden in the White House is he can’t give long speeches. I suggest watching all of his Sept. 21 address to the United Nations. It’s half an hour and features the usual hesitations and mispronunciations.
What kind of regime sends young women to die in its pointless and criminal wars?
You’ve probably read and heard a lot already about the 20th anniversary of 9/11. I wasn’t going to add to that. Until I saw the remarks of America’s worst president, George W. Bush.
America is supposed to be a republic with democratic elements. The republic part, such as the electoral college, the Senate and Supreme Court, limits the excesses of democracy. The democratic element is that, if the people really want something over a reasonable period of time, they’re supposed to get it.
Long ago when Trump first took office, I advised him on Fleming Foundation to fire all his generals. Including the admirals. Instead, he packed them into his administration: Gen. Mattis, Gen. Kelly, Gen. McMaster. The only good one, Gen. Flynn, got railroaded by Trump’s own “Justice” Department, then later exonerated.
August 15 marks 50 years since Nixon took us off gold. Since then, gold has gone from $35 an ounce to $1,782. A better way to put it is: The dollar’s value was eroded from $35 an ounce of gold to $1,782 – a reduction of 1/50th of the original value.
Andrey Vyshinsky was Stalin’s prosecutor during the Great Purge of 1936-39. He came up with the phrase, “Give me the man and I’ll find the crime.” That’s not remote. In 2009, Harvey Silvergate, a Boston civil rights lawyer, penned a book, “Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent.”
Out of power, though trying to claw their way back in, the Neocons have become an unintentionally humorous sect. Their howlings could form the dialogue of a woke sitcom.
“People say the Pentagon does not have a strategy They are wrong. The Pentagon does have a strategy; it is: ‘Don’t interrupt the money flow, add to it.’”
– Col. John R. Boyd (U.S. Air Force, ret.)
