Joe Scarborough is a small-bore thinker but he worries his way through problems of perception until he approaches comprehension. His street rat instincts then lead him through a maze of double speak on the air as he seeks to force Mika's kaffeeklatch to acknowledge the obvious. Why is he so devious? Simple - he knows that "the masters" in The Borg will do him in if he is perceived to be too independent. When was the last time you saw Freeman interviewed on network TV?
This morning while the birdies were perched around the stammtisch table, Joe asked Richard Haass, president of the CFR, if it is really necessary to rid Syria of Bashar Assad. Haas blinked a few times and then said that Assad was the cause of both rebellion in general and the growth of IS and Nusra. Joe let that go of course. He will return to the subject like a dog returning to a ripe bone long buried in the back garden.
Haass has been president of CFR since 1990 -? He has long presented himself as a deep thinker and a neutral party (almost) in the great struggle of the Zionist state to realize its self perceived destiny in the ME. His predecessor at CFR, Les Gelb, was, IMO, almost comically one sided in this matter however crudely he sought to disguise the fact.
Haass has been more careful, but today the look of surprise and something like alarm that came over him was striking. What was visible in that moment was a deep need to reinforce the message, the message that people like him and Dennis Ross are, IMO, engaged in injecting into the blood stream of The Borg.
Israel is deeply in thrall to a Revisionist Zionist fantasy in which all the surrounding states must be rendered impotent and harmless. That kind of thought led AIPAC and its more covert allies to drive the US towards war and invasion in Iraq. It mattered not at all that the case to be made about WMD programs in Iraq was a total fabrication. It mattered not at all.
Now, the main visible theme in the Likudnik effort is the idea that Hizbullah, the Syrian Government and Iran are, in combination, the greatest threat to the dream yet faced. In fact, Syria has long supplied Hizbullah and has served as a port of entry for Iranian weaponry and advisers on their way to Hizbullah. The present Syrian government must therefore be destroyed.
Joe asked Haass what would replace Assad.
The answer was that a junta of Alawi generals is the mostly likely outcome when Assad is removed.
In this response can be seen the vision of a Syria that will accept a role as a Morgenthau Plan style entity that accepts its fate as a pastoral vassal of Israel.
What next, Joe? pl
You encouraged me to look at the link on the "morning joe" website. Very disappointing. Haas and Joe's circus ring were not enlightening in the least as a matter of substance; but quite representative of what passes for thought in our national media. How long has this quackery been on display in our "news" programming -- 15 years? More? There seems to be no leadership, guts or determination left to show us the way.
Posted by: DC | 03 August 2015 at 03:47 PM
Israel reminds me of the silly teenager who is so obsessed with sex that he jumps in bed with the wrong partner--obsessively. First, the Revisionists made their pact with the Christian Fundamentalists, knowing full well that their theology is premised on the extermination of most of the Jewish people in the final Battle of Armageddon. When asked about this seeming anomaly, Menachim Begin replied that he was well aware of the End Times theology of the Darbyites and related American Christian Fundies, but he was willing to take his chances in favor of short-term advantage. Now, Israel is apparently jumping in bed with the Saudis and the Salafists (Nusra Front fighters are getting medical care in Israel), including, ultimately, with ISIS, on the basis of the obsession with the Iran-Hezbollah-Assad triangle. Haass and Ross are going to have a harder and harder time rationalizing their actions and comments.
Obama today has issued orders, for the first time, approving military actions against Syrian Army and Air Force units that might interfere with US military operations in Syria. For the past two years, the Joint Chiefs, under Gen. Dempsey, have fought back against any direct US involvement in the ouster of Assad. That now seems to have been changed, and the consequences will be bad, bad, bad.
Posted by: Harper | 03 August 2015 at 03:50 PM
Iirc Haas recently interviewed Kerry on the Iran deal and Haas asked Kerry pretty much verbatim 'What is in for us?' and I couldn't help wondering who is us in that sentence.
Israel apparently, because it is blatantly obvious what is in for the US.
Dennis Ross, Israel's lawyer in US employ, notably referred to the Israelis as 'my people'? So he isn't alone in letting it slip past his tongue every once in a while?
PS: Can't find the link to the interview atm, will provide it when I find it.
Posted by: confusedponderer | 03 August 2015 at 04:14 PM
Turcopolier
So much German in this article. So, if I would leave out one letter in the name of Richard Nathan Haass, I probably would leave out an "a" instead of an "s" as for me that would make more sense.
Regarding the "junta of Alawi generals" I could imagine having DM Fahd Jassem al-Freij as president of Syria at some time in the future. He is a Sunni, and I'm quite sure he wouldn't be opposed by the Allawi and the Christians, but by the very same people who today make sectarian claims that the Syrian government shall be led by a Sunni. Too bad for people like Richard Hass if their sectarian prejudices are prove to be baseless.
Posted by: Bandolero | 03 August 2015 at 05:45 PM
Bandolero
He evidently spells his name "Haass." pl
Posted by: turcopolier | 03 August 2015 at 06:28 PM
His last name means hare.
Posted by: charly | 03 August 2015 at 07:52 PM
I stopped watching the Joe/Mika circus a while ago, once I started getting Al Jazeera English. The only time that show is interesting is when Mika's father shows up.
As for Haass, the less said the better.
Posted by: Swami Bhut Jolokia | 03 August 2015 at 08:53 PM
SBJ
I watch it to see what the Borg is up to. pl
Posted by: turcopolier | 03 August 2015 at 09:38 PM
charly
I understand that the German authorities required the Jews to take family names in the e19th Century. Those who had none they wanted were given names by some bureaucrat. He looks a bit rabbity. pl
Posted by: turcopolier | 03 August 2015 at 09:40 PM
SBJ and pl,
I still rely on free broadcast TV signals. A little antenna theory applied in the attic makes that possible. I remain blissfully free of cable TV and the 24/7 news channels. Colonel Lang, I am forever grateful that you take that one for team.
Posted by: The Twisted Genius | 03 August 2015 at 10:02 PM
This practice was not only reserved for the Jewish population. The German occupying powers in Flanders, required that Flemish newborns also use German equivalents of their names e.g. Mauritz instead of French sounding Maurice.
Posted by: Amir | 03 August 2015 at 11:17 PM
My maternal ancestors had their surname changed from Mercier to Mercler. That was not that long ago after the Napoleonic wars after which the Rhineland was liberated from French occupation (which in many places had been progress).
It's a nationalist thing. It can go top down or bottom up.
In the US Germans were strongly 'encouraged' during WW-I to anglicise or de-germanise names and to stop speaking German, and many did. That repeated itself after WW-II.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/02/Enemy%27s_language.jpg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_language_in_the_United_States#Persecution_during_World_War_I
If I was Elliot Abrams I would probably see the fact that Eisenhower (or Eisenhauer - scion of German immigrants after all) is regarded and regarded himself as an American as proof of the evils of assimilation. Oy wey, he became so American he forgot his German roots, and ended up fighting Germany!
On the other hand, in the case of one Donald Trump (paternal ancestors named Drumpf, hailing from Bavaria), is it not obvious that the man is American?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_American#Assimilation
Posted by: confusedponderer | 04 August 2015 at 02:02 AM
IMO Richard Haass is anything but a deep thinker. FOREIGN AFFAIRS magazine has also declined in its deep thinking.
The major threats to the USA today IMO are not nuclear arsenals but the financial system, refugee and internal displacement flows, religions, and largely ignorant USA leadership in almost all circles. And the destruction of a Uniformed Military with its exclusive focus on organized violence but a clear chain of command is not far behind.
Of course some of this is unintentional but still exists. And as for Climate Change IMO CO2 has climbed well beyond the disasterous 400 ppm!
Clearly the BEST AND THE BRIGHTEST have again led America astray. So we may well get DONALD THE BAVARIAN.
Posted by: William R. Cumming | 04 August 2015 at 09:45 AM
WRC,
Donald's ancestors last name Drumpf apparently derives from Trumpf, which according to my lexicon of names in turn is derived from "trumpe", i.e. 'drum'.
Is that not quite fitting? Could anyone imagine the Donald play any other instrument?
Posted by: confusedponderer | 04 August 2015 at 09:54 AM
Someone has to do it, I guess. We thank you for your service.
Posted by: Swami Bhut Jolokia | 04 August 2015 at 10:31 AM
Wasn't it the French during Napoleon? But the name Haass is older than that.
Posted by: charly | 04 August 2015 at 11:27 AM
Thanks! I lived in Bavaria several years and when mentioning the WAR it was in fact the Thirty Years War Bavarians referring to not something more recent in time.
Posted by: William R. Cumming | 04 August 2015 at 12:08 PM
World War II never went through Bavaria; that is why the Bavarians still remained enamored of Herr Hitler etc. at least until 1980s.
Posted by: Babak Makkinejad | 04 August 2015 at 12:37 PM
World War II didn't go through Bavaria ? So Munich, Augsburg, Schweinfurt, etc. weren't bombed to smithereens but just suffered from lack of maintenance ?
And I'm sure you have a source for your claim that Bavarians remained Nazis right into the 1980s.
I would really, really like to know where you get your "information" about Germany, both historic and contemporary.
Posted by: Eric Dönges | 04 August 2015 at 01:45 PM
Col. slightly off subject but I was wondering if you were aware that the Kurdish-Turk pipeline was recently sabotaged and yesterday the head of maintenance, like his predecessor, was assassinated. Also there has been renewed fighting south of Kirkuk around the oil fields and Kurds are denying permanent IDP status for refugees trying to get to Kirkuk. Meanwhile ISIS is murdering taxi drivers in Mosul that are transporting those trying to get out. I might have rounded a few details but that is about the sum and substance. Looks to me like Turks and Iraqi government have found ways to open old fracture lines among the Kurds and anyone that can is going for the oil revenues or a piece of the pie. One might begin to wonder what the best US policy is toward Kurds and Turkey at this point given that they are generally the only groups that rarely shoot at us.
Posted by: bth | 04 August 2015 at 02:03 PM
That was my impression...
My sources: my murdered German friend as well as reading...
Posted by: Babak Makkinejad | 04 August 2015 at 02:19 PM
Tell that to my father in law. I have at my right side a photo of him, in his US Army fatigues, holding the tail gun of the JU 87 sitting right behind him. In a field in Bavaria, 1945.
Posted by: Tigershark | 04 August 2015 at 03:44 PM
Herr Oberst,
Ja, genau! (yes, exactly)- he does look a bit like his name. Also spot-on description of Joe S as a "small-bore thinker". But it is fun to ponder the coffee spewing from the Borgists mouths when they heard him ask the question about Assad. And the response of the "junta of generals" to replace Assad sound like the response of his ilk to who would replace Saddam.
Posted by: oofda | 04 August 2015 at 04:07 PM
I stand by what I have said.
Rural Bavaria and its farmers never suffered the way Northern Germany did.
The war went through Hamburg and left a ruin, likewise for areas further East.
Posted by: Babak Makkinejad | 04 August 2015 at 04:47 PM
Babak,
you will habe to change your mind about the idea of Bavaria having been spared the war.
That's nonsense, probably invective from a northerner.
Eric Dönges is quite right. When you say that Bavaria was only briefly engulfed in ground war and heavy ground fighting that is correct to a point, but pointless. It doesn't mean Bavaria was spared war. One thing Bavaria did benefit from was location adistance from allied bases early in the war, but that ceased to be a factor in the second half of the war as more modern, longer legged types entered service, and closer bases became available.
At that point, Allied air strikes certainly did target Bavarian cities a lot, and caused great devastation. Part of the British air war strategy was after all dehousing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dehousing
Look at the 1945 images of Würzburg of the other links.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_W%C3%BCrzburg_in_World_War_II
Munich likeweise was heavily damaged by allied bombing during World War II — the city was hit by 71 air raids over a period of five years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munich#/media/File:Wardamage2.jpg
The USAAF had their Black Thursday with devastating losses when they bombed Schweinfurt in Bavaria.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Raid_on_Schweinfurt
And as for being spared ground war, that is relative in terms of severity. The US 42nd Infantry Division entered Schweinfurt on 11 April 1945 and conducted house-to-house fighting, a commonly rather destructive form of war.
My home town in western Germany likewise only saw relatively little ground combat, but was bombed plenty. A late aunt told me that when the city burned the asphalt on the streets melted and one had to take care for the shoes not to get stuck when racing for shelter.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Cologne_in_World_War_II
The air war certainly had a quality of its own. Two good books on the subject are:
Max Hastings, "Bomber Command"
ISBN-13: 978-0760345207
Richard Overy, "Air War"
ISBN-13: 978-1574887167
Posted by: confusedponderer | 05 August 2015 at 05:13 AM