The Anti-American Right-wing

Photo by Larry Downing/Reuters

Michael Tomasky
World News

03.05.14
Why Neocons Love the Strongman

This is just the crisis to make themselves seem relevant again within the GOP—even if they’re undermining the commander in chief at a pivotal moment.
Say this for Rudy Giuliani: He gave away the game with his now-infamous admiring comments on Fox News two days ago about Vladimir Putin. “He makes a decision and he executes it, quickly,” the former mayor said. “Then everybody reacts. That’s what you call a leader. President Obama, he’s got to think about it. He’s got to go over it again. He’s got to talk to more people about it.”

Giuliani, once a genuinely moderate Republican (go look up his mayoral immigration record) and a man whom aides used to describe a long time ago as the one figure capable of pulling the national GOP back toward the center (I swear, I had those conversations), has served for some time now as little more than a right-wing standup comic—and a staggeringly hypocritical one at that. I’ll never forget his St. Paul convention speech, when he defended Sarah Palin by mocking Barack Obama and the Democrats for not thinking her hometown was “cosmopolitan enough.” This from a man who, while ostensibly campaigning against Hillary Clinton in 1999 and 2000 to represent all of New York state in the U.S. Senate, I think literally never spent a single night upstate. Zoom—as soon as the event in Albany or Schenectady was over, it was on the plane and right back to the emotional safety of the Upper East Side.

A standup comic often serves as his audience’s id, and so it is in this case. The neocons, on some emotional level, prefer Putin to Obama. He’s rugged. He goes shirtless. He knows his way around a Kalashnikov. He “wrestles bears and drills for oil,” as Palin put it Monday night, also on Fox. Palin, of course, is a pretty id-dy figure in her own right. She and Giuliani can say what some others who live and operate in Washington may feel constrained from saying. But every time John Bolton and Charles Krauthammer and Lindsey Graham and others carry on about Obama’s weakness, they’re also implying that he’s not half the man Putin is. And in neocon world, it always comes down to who’s the manlier man (although this makes Osama bin Laden a manlier man than Bush or Cheney, and Obama a manlier man than all of them, but never mind).

Now of course these people can’t openly cheer for Putin, because that would constitute outright treason, but they can test treason’s perimeter fence and probe it for weaknesses. I don’t quite think they want war with Russia; Russia ain’t Iraq. And obviously I don’t believe that if it came to that they’d be against their own country.
But that said, they are certainly undermining the commander in chief at a pivotal moment—not merely protesting his policies, but denouncing his character.
And don’t we suspect that they’re doing this because there’s a little part of them that wants a full-blown crisis? Of course there is. A crisis would vindicate them. A crisis would make the neocons—at risk of being flushed down history’s toilet by Rand Paul, who’s suddenly being called “front runner” by more and more people—relevant inside the Republican Party again.

For the neocons to blame Obama for the actions of a madman, with adjectives meant to communicate to the world that he can be steamrolled, is close to anti-American.​


What good would a settlement do them? Putin keeping the Crimea and stopping there, and that being the end of it? Why, they’d be reduced to carrying on about the Crimea as if it mattered to the United States one way or the other who ran it. Settlements are so kiss-your-sister. Settlements are for… community organizers.

No, they thirst for crisis. They can attribute it to Obama’s “weakness.” They can work in some shots at Hillary Clinton and try to hang it around her neck, since the Benghazi noose has shown an infuriating habit of slipping loose. And they can say to America, “See? You need us.”

The reality is that America needs their advice like it needs John Travolta’s pronunciation guide. I don’t think it’s much of a stretch to say that if President Romney were in the Oval Office and John Bolton at Foggy Bottom and all the Doug Feiths and Randy Scheunemanns and ex-deputies to Rumsfeld and Wolfie filling all the key positions, the situation would be far worse than it is. Romney would have spent the last year goading Putin. We’d already have been at a boiling point over Syria—whereas under Obama, at least Russia agreed on paper that Bashar al-Assad should turn over his stock of chemical weapons. A NATO membership card for Georgia would have been in the works, if not already chiseled, and an expanded and souped-up missile-defense shield in Eastern Europe would have been announced. Basically, everything the United States could do to play right into every one of Putin’s lurid, paranoid fantasies about America’s true aims in the world (i.e., crush Russia), the Romney administration would have done, almost undoubtedly leading him to have behaved more obstreperously than he already has, and at an earlier point.


I’m not doing any dances over how the Obama administration has handled this situation (and why just $1 billion in aid? We should be matching Putin’s $15 billion). The European Union’s posture, it’s worth noting, has been far more abysmal than the administration’s, and it’s mattered far more too, since the Europe vs. Asia tension is at the heart of Putin’s concerns about Ukraine (read this excellent and concise rundown of the EU’s five huge errors in its recent dealings with the country). There’s blame to go around.

But most of the blame rests on the manly shoulders of the megalomaniac who is most responsible for creating this situation (and let’s remember to save some for Viktor Yanukovych, and even a little for Ukraine’s current government). For the neocons to blame Obama for the actions of a madman, incessantly using adjectives that are meant to communicate to the world that the president of the United States can be steamrolled, and possibly should be for his own good, is close to anti-American. But they can’t blame Putin. He’s their doppelganger, psychologically. He is them, and they are him. Woe betide the world if they ever do face each other.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/03/05/why-neocons-love-the-strongman.html

 

Do you still consider Alan Grayson to be a hero of yours?

 

Here he goes again.

Third Grade.

 

Tantrum I'm guessing. It is fun watching them try to bully answers out of others though. I hope they keep it up. Ignoring them is a heck of a lot easier than what they have to do.

 

Bully? Wouldn't that be Grayson for beating up his wife?
As far as I can tell, you're the only one here who idolizes a wife-beating douche (remember, YOU put him in your Top 3!!), I was just curious as to your reaction to this news? You aren't getting any ideas from Grayson are you? Should we be concerned?

 

Sooooo...does that mean you've decided to look the other way in regard to these allegations?
Here, I'll make it easier for you. If these charges end up being true, would you call for his removal from office?

 

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You're not going to get an answer from him, David. Like the rest of his liberal breed, they're too cowardly to answer.

 

If you tards would learn how to stay on topic we might bother to waste our breath trying to educate you. Put it in the appropriate thread or STFU

 

I'll do as I damn well please until told otherwise by a Moderator.

 

Such courage. You and your hero Putin command so much respect although Putin seems to be just plain nuts and you have the safety and security the anonymity of the internet gives you. It would be a great thing to meet you in person and see the real you. You know what the Russian motto is don't you? Don't be a pussy! You clearly are.

 

No, I can't say I know what the "Russuan moto" is. Is that a new type of car?

 

Only a real pussy would respond to typos.

 

It's not my fault I don't understand your gibberish; the moron language wasn't offered in school.

 

Lots of courage behind that screen you have.
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ala Alec Baldwin & Alan Grayson?

 

Nope. An insult to third graders everywhere.

 

Darn!

The record is stuck again and it keeps repeating the same off topic noise. Over and over and over and over and over and ..... well if you have a brain you'll get my gist.

Now on topic (kind of). Has anyone noticed that Putin looks a lot like like Dick Cheney?

I suppose I could bring that up in thread after thread but it would be shallow and baseless.

I have no reason to play such childish games.

Then on the other hand........

 

Like a really little dick.