As Cheryl has noted for us, The NY Times has reported that a Russian military intelligence unit, for those playing along at home, this would be a GRU unit, is taking out bounties on US and coalition military personnel deployed in Afghanistan. According to the reporting, the US Intelligence Community came to this conclusion and briefed it to the President and the principles within the National Command Authority no later than March of this year. At that point the National Security Staff of the National Security Council developed a package of responses ranging from issuing a démarche to the Russian government demanding that they stop to escalating sanctions to “other possible responses”. But, “the White House has yet to authorize any step, the officials said.”
Let me repeat that: THE WHITE HOUSE HAS YET TO AUTHORIZE ANY STEP!!!!!!
I want to be really, really, really, really clear about what Russia, via the GRU, has been doing with these bounties against US and coalition forces in Afghanistan. It has been waging war against the US and our coalition partners, many of whom are our NATO allies, by proxy through Taliban backed or affiliated militia and irregular forces. In short, they have been waging a form of low intensity, irregular, and unconventional war against the US and our partners and allies in Afghanistan. US concept, doctrine, and law regarding how to respond to state directed cyberattacks and subverting influence operations undertaking by Russian military intelligence may not be adequate to formally state that those operations, which have been ongoing against the US and our allies and partners since at least 2014 are, in fact and in law, acts of war. But they are clear about what Russia’s GRU is doing in Afghanistan and what the GRU is doing in Afghanistan is waging war against the US and our allied coalition partners.
The President and the National Command Authority should have pushed back forcefully and hard as soon as this was brought to their attention. A démarche demanding the Russian government immediately desist should have been issued immediately. It should have delineated a very short window of time for Russia to stop its actions against US and coalitions forces, and if/when they didn’t comply, then the US response should have escalated. US Cyber Command, along with the cyber operations components of the CIA, should have been tasked with a swift and harsh response against Russian targets through the cyber domain if the diplomatic pushback failed. At the same time, US Special Operations Command should have been tasked with two overlapping missions if the diplomatic pushback failed. The first was to put SEALs, whose specialty is hunting, capturing, killing, and/or rescuing, into the Afghan theater with a very focused assignment: find the GRU personnel responsible for taking out the bounties and the Taliban affiliated militias and irregular forces who had accepted them, capture them if possible, and kill them if necessary. The second was to put small teams – Operational Detachments Alpha (ODAs) – of US Army Special Forces, the Green Berets, into the theater to conduct our own unconventional warfare operations against the Russian intelligence units and the Taliban aligned militias and irregulars they were partnering with. The Green Berets primary mission set is unconventional warfare. They are the best at it and should have been deployed, along with the SEALs, as soon as it became clear that responses through diplomatic channels had failed. This sequence of operations: diplomacy via a démarche and, if that failed, then a cyber response and two separate, but related special operations responses would create time and space for the development of plans and sequels to escalate as necessary. None of this has, of course, happened!
One of the primary reasons that Putin either authorizes and approves these types of operations against the US and our allies and partners, or tolerates them as freelancing provided they are successful, is because he has faced no real negative consequences for the war he has been waging against us and our allies and partners for the better part of the last decade! His irredentism in Georgia and then in Ukraine, his cyber war against our Baltic allies, his attempts to destabilize Finland, his ongoing interference in Ukrainian politics to reestablish what he thinks should be Russia’s near abroad, his use of the Wagner Group, a private military company (PMC) against the US, its allies and partners in Syria and other places, is all because he feels that he can get away with it. That the only country that could really stop him is the US and the only coalition that could do so is a US led NATO. And since that never happens, he is free to pursue his goal of leveling the international system so as to provide Russia, as an extension of himself, with greater power and leverage than it would otherwise have based on its relative economic and military power.
Putin’s actions have repeatedly demanded a much stronger response than he has actually received. To be very honest and to mark my beliefs to market, when it was clear that Putin was going to invade Crimea, and then did so, my assessment provided to the US senior military leader I was advising at that time was: “no one is going to risk a war with a nuclear power state over Crimea”. And while this was true, and we did not, the reality was that we should have. I was wrong. Putin’s invasion of Crimea needed to be met with force. The US and NATO should have mobilized to retake it for Ukraine and, while doing so, rolled up Russia’s little green men – whether Russian intelligence and special forces or Wagner Group mercenaries – and the Russian backed separatists in eastern Ukraine at the same time. I am aware now, as I was then, that Russian doctrine is to use nuclear weapons within the theater of operations when confronted with losing in a conventional war. In hindsight, we should have called their bluff. We did not do it then when Obama was president and it is certainly not going to happen with our current president; especially given that while he was being made aware that Russia was targeting our troops, as well as our allies, in Afghanistan, the President was inviting Putin to rejoin the G7 because the G8 just sounds better.
Until Putin is punched in the nose and knocked on his ass, he’s going to keep doing these things. I guarantee that it is only a matter of time until we find out that the GRU has been offering similar bounties against US and coalition forces operating in Syria and Iraq. Until Putin faces some real consequences for his actions and those of his subordinates who are successfully freelancing, he will continue to wage his 21st century form of war against the US, our allies, and our partners. The longer we wait to provide him with real consequences, the more likely it becomes that when we do, we will have limited ourselves to options that are very, very costly.
Open thread!
NobodySpecial
It’s amazing to me how the Daddy Party elected such a weak leader.
The Moar You Know
So, this is just another front in the ongoing war they’ve been fighting against us since, I would assume, 2014.
How is one supposed to square one’s oath to the US and the Constitution when the government is taking the part of those leading the fight against us?
Emma from FL
Where are our generals? And please don’t tell me about lines of command and all the other regular-times rules and regulations. This is something that destroys any sense of normalcy. Their men are being murdered with the connivance of the Commander-in Chief.
(added) I am not one of those that pays even lip service to the military but when I read this it made me cry.
debbie
Adam, you know there will never be any consequences as long as Trump is in office. This only gives Putin more incentive to interfere in November.
Bruuuuce
@NobodySpecial: It’s a GOP thing. Talk big, cower in a corner. El Jefe is the epitome of their bluster and fear.
Miss Bianca
Is there any chance – I mean any chance at all – of Trump facing any actual repercussions from this revelation? More to the point, is there any chance that any of his fucking Republican enablers facing any actual repercussions?
dexwood
@NobodySpecial: Well, they are the party of strength. Up is down, pandemic is health. Do you doubt Pence’s stoney countenance? Liars, monsters, ghouls, traitors.
Emma from FL
@Miss Bianca: No. The usual suspects will talk a mean game and then fold like cheap suits. The usual MO for the Republican party.
Jeffro
I know there are strong institutional forces at work here keeping our military and intelligence assets from striking against a hostile foreign power – one that has attacked our elections, has an eye on our power grid, and has now been shown to have offered bounties on our own troops – on their own w/o a go-ahead from the Executive Branch.
But what do they do when our Executive Branch is working hand-in-glove with that hostile foreign power?
Almost everything that trumpov & Co has done to favor Russia has been right out there in the open, for 4+ years now (and most know that the Ill Douche has been in thrall to Putin and Russian interests well before then). There’s been a ton of reporting on all of it.
What’s the missing link? What brings it all down? How much more of a ‘hot mic’ do we as a country need? It seems like we Dems have our own ‘collective action problem’ here…who will step up, buy a half hour of airtime (or hell, just slip the Lincoln Project a Tubman!) and lay out the case that this traitor is the most compromised president* in American history?
The mind boggles.
Jeffro
@Emma from FL: Or, what Emma just said
John Cole
Very good post.
piratedan
We also need to make sure this is understood and stated in plain english… we have 51 GOP Senators who watched and listened to the evidence of his treasonous acts in Ukraine and did bupkis and green lit his continued Presidency. While we’ve long known Trump to be a tool, these folks are allowing that tool to be wielded against us.
dexwood
@Emma from FL: Great point.
WaterGirl
@Miss Bianca: I’m pretty sure the House will have something to say about this.
Adam L Silverman
@The Moar You Know: To answer your first question: yes it is.
To answer your second: I do not know and, frankly, I do not think you can.
rp
https://youtu.be/MpQEumX-NGc
Adam L Silverman
@Emma from FL: There is only so much that the Joint Chiefs, as the President’s senior military advisors, the two responsible Geographic Combatant Commanders – CENTCOM’s and SOCOM’s Commanding Generals, and the theater commander can do. They provide the inputs, but the President makes the final decision on what to do.
Adam L Silverman
@debbie: I am sadly very aware.
bluehill
I’m gonna guess that a not insignificant percentage of the repub party as currently constituted would actually vote for Putin if he was on the ballot.
Another Scott
Good, pursuasive, post.
I saw a report (somewhere) that the UK intelligence services knew about this, too. How long has BoJo been holding out? What have the 5 Eyes been doing and talking about?
What’s the sense in having intelligence services if the information is never used and/or never gets to legislators who have subject-matter responsbilities?
Grr…
Cheers,
Scott.
Mary G
The president’s already tweeting that it didn’t happen, and even if it did, nobody told me about it. He’ll probably have the people who found out about it fired.
I’ve been a life-long pacifist, but I do find myself wanting to see President Biden bring the hammer down on Putin next January. Put Hillary in charge of it.
Mary G
@bluehill: Yep, he hates Black people, non-Christians, and women with a vengeance, so he’s their guy.
Adam L Silverman
@Miss Bianca: I do not know. If the Biden campaign folks are worth what they’re getting paid, they should have an ad up on the air all over the country tomorrow with the script based on this reporting and the bottom line being the President has betrayed his oath of office, the US, and our troops. And that he’s broken faith with them. If we’re lucky the Lincoln Project folks will do it.
piratedan
And tbh… i had to go to the fucking nyt website to make sure the article wasn’t put in play by one of the usual ratfuckers of note… and i didn’t recognize the names of those on the story…. sorry to say that i actually had to stop and make sure that this wasn’t more black psyops shit playing to my biases.
Jeffro
@The Moar You Know:
@Adam L Silverman:
Just because the enemy happens to also be part of our government, doesn’t give them a pass. I understand the hesitancy, but it’s past time for the folks in the know to go public and lay it out for the American people: your president* is fully owned by a hostile foreign power and doesn’t care if that entity is paying bounties to kill your sons and daughters. You want to know why? ‘Cause they got him elected? You want to know why? ‘Cause he’ll do whatever they say. You want to know why? ‘Cause he owes them lots of money and is compromised in all sorts of other ways.
Like, quit playing the game, get the time clock and smash it on the court, and grab the mic. Let’s go.
Carlo
At the national strategy level, the way to attack Russia and weaken Putin is to depress the price of crude oil. Carbon taxes, renewable energy investment, and, yes, more fracking. A set of economic policies that drives the price of gas up and the price of oil down would make investment in oil field development seem very risky and unattractive.
This would have obvious environmental benefits.But the chief national security benefit stems from the fact that Russia, together with a number of other corrupt bad actors, is a petrostate, and most of it’s GDP is derived from mineral wealth. The oligarchy surrounding Putin would likely start plotting against him if he were unable to hold up his end of their deal — keep the mineral wealth flowing in exchange for political support. Once those guys start facing insupportable debts, much about the internal political balance in Russia would likely change very quickly. Kind of like the way the USSR seemed invincible, right up to the week when it suddenly collapsed.
Another Scott
@Mary G: That was someone being snarky in a previous thread. ;-)
Seriously, I don’t see anything about this in his Twitter feed.
Cheers,
Scott.
Emma from FL
@Adam L Silverman: I understand that, Adam, but if they cannot get any protection for their own men, they bloody well should resign and speak up publicly. This is not petty corruption or business-as-usual politicking. Our soldiers are being hunted for profit. Jesus Christ, I can’t even believe I’m typing that.
Jeffro
@Emma from FL: thank you
dexwood
@Emma from FL: It’s the new Catch – 22. One way or another, there is profit to be made.
Jinchi
Didn’t something similar happen when Trump abandoned the Kurds.
MobiusKlein
I can’t process this insanity.
When does it stop?
Heywood J.
Really interesting post.
I guess a bratva money-launderer is never going to confront his paymaster. But as we are all playing the ongoing game of wondering what will it take for Republicons to finally put their country before party, there don’t really seem to be any more lines to cross. I guess maybe if he lets North Korea nuke Omaha they might finally stand up to him. Hard to imagine what it will take at this point.
Adam L Silverman
@Jeffro:
The answer is a separate post and related to some other issues I’ve been watching. The short answer is we have no institutions or structures designed to respond to this. Our counterintelligence programs, which have been allowed to degrade since the end of the Cold War, were intended to watch, track, assess, and note threats – not stop them, round people up, and/or prosecute them. And when it is decided that they do need to step in, take action, and prosecute, that is done through the National Security directorate at the Department of Justice working with the National Security section at the FBI. So subject to the whims of whichever political appointees are running the DOJ.
The political tools for removing a lawless president, let alone one who has or is betraying the country, which are rooted in the Constitution assume that the other elected constitutional officers at the Federal level – members of the House and Senate for impeachment, conviction, and removal – and the VP and the appointed constitutional officers in the cabinet for invoking the 25th Amendment would be ethical and zealous guard their own political power and the power of their institutions. As we know, that has all broken down. The VP and the AG and Senator McConnell all enable the President, as do a number of other Republican senators, representatives, and members of the cabinet, because they are able to pursue their own agendas and achieve their long held and desired objectives because this President really doesn’t care what they do. He is a useful tool for them.
Adam L Silverman
@John Cole: Thank you.
Adam L Silverman
@Another Scott: It is a good question. Given that Grennell was acting DNI at the time this was briefed to the President and the national security principles, my guess is that the members of the SSCI and HPSCI found out about this when the NY Times posted their story.
different-church-lady
Jesus christ people, it’s not like he did something truly horrific and unforgivable here, like cc: himself to a private email address or something…
Adam L Silverman
@Emma from FL: No argument here.
Another Scott
Cheers,
Scott.
Adam L Silverman
@Jinchi: Yep. Though that was attempted and fortunately unsuccessful direct action on a US position.
debbie
@Another Scott:
Just saw a tweet saying this was why there was a COVID-19 press conference this afternoon: Distraction.
Jeffro
@Another Scott: Just banged on him that this was pretty weak tea (and in social media, no less…oooh, so scary to trumpov)
Draw the line. Gum up the works. Go on the air. Throw a shoe, fer chrissakes.
It’s not “kicking America around”, it’s “can put American soldiers in the crosshairs with impunity”. Come ON, Dems!
Adam L Silverman
@debbie: Actually VP Pence needed to make his monthly lickspittling quota.
Cheryl Rofer
Hi Adam –
Thanks for expanding on this. I don’t entirely agree with your solutions, but I agree that something more should have been/ be done. It’s a long story that goes back to the wild 1990s and the US role in that. Trouble is that we’ve made mistakes in many dimensions since then.
Putin probably always would have been a hard case, but stronger responses than we’ve had could have softened his responses (working with allies to isolate Russia, ramping up motivating programs that we could work with them on, not being totally contemptuous of the treaties they saw (rightly) as stabilizing things between us, and so on).
Having been a small part of the better things that the US did during the wild 1990s with Russia and other parts of the Soviet Union, I’ve been putting that part more into context lately, with some Twitter colleagues digging out the documentary history and talking to young folks to whom it is a fascinating story parallel to the building of the pyramids. Two roads diverged in the 1990s, and we chose the lesser one.
debbie
@MobiusKlein:
It is too much. I’ve already forgotten what the outrageous revelation at 3 p.m. was.
Adam L Silverman
@Cheryl Rofer: You’re welcome.
My actual solution is that Russia must be reduced. In all military senses of the term.
Brachiator
@Another Scott:
I’m not sure that it is every country. But Trump is definitely owned by Putin.
trollhattan
Is Russia bombing civilians in Syria these days? Because I have some ideas for Putin pushback if they are.
Trump isn’t a citizen of the U.S., or the world, or anywhere lacking his lurid name plastered in gold. He can’t conceive of concerning himself about others, or the autonomy of the nation he’s been elected to lead.
Seven more months.
Adam L Silverman
@trollhattan: They are. Though they got spanked by the Turks the other day.
Bill Arnold
Sort of related (I’m working on a mental model of V. Putin; huge cultural differences.), this story about Putin’s rise to power has been circulating for about 20 years. (I had discussions about it with a fresh-from-Russia software contractor in the early 2000s. He took the side of Putin, of course. Per my style, I argued the other side but it was certainly not clear at the time, and still not clear.)
Chilling conspiracy theory behind Vladimir Putin’s rise to power (15 Sep, 2019, no byline)
VeniceRiley
Maddow wend ballistic on this, and I’m glad. Will anyone in the Conservamedia cover it at all? Doubtful. Though they can still shout Benghazi! at the top of their lungs. I hope the white guys in cammo regret their votes for him, but I’m not holding my breath.
Adam L Silverman
@trollhattan:
If we’re very, very, very lucky!
Adam L Silverman
@Bill Arnold: My understanding is we know that Putin ordered the bombings. Just as he ordered other “Chechen” terrorist attacks against Russian targets around the same time.
Carlo
@Adam L Silverman: Getting into a wet ops match with Russia in Afghanistan doesn’t really hurt them in any important way. They might not even care, and count on the US media to report it as a new war front in Afghanistan.
We should choose our own ground to hit them back. In my opinion, that’s their oil revenue.
Adam L Silverman
@VeniceRiley: Maddow and her ridiculous Commander In Chief’s Forum in 2016 is partly responsible for this shit show. She should stick to the things she actually knows something about, which is environmental policy.
Adam L Silverman
@Carlo: That’s not what I mean by reduce.
Jeffro
@Adam L Silverman: Thank you. I guess I would say, when the tools are inadequate and the systems are breaking down, it’s incumbent upon those who will still stand for justice and/or the defense of this nation to find new tools, or to give the system a boost, or find some other ways to act.
(severely edited for future use in an op-ed called, “open auditions”)
Mike in DC
Hell, we could offer bounties to Kurds and Arab rebels in Syria to collect the heads of Russian special forces and military officers operating there. To call what Russia’s doing “provocative” is an order of magnitude too weak. They crossed the “provocative” line in 2014. It is a low intensity war. Raise the price for them to continue it until Putin cries uncle.
Jay
Does this not count as State Sponsorship of Terrorism?
Adam L Silverman
@Jay: Potentially.
Morzer
@Heywood J.: I am sure that a nuked Omaha would produce variants on “Our valued ally and partner Kim Jong Un gave those godless liberal hellhole Commies what they deserved.”
sanjeevs
I watched up close how social media armies could be used to take over a country back in early 2016 with the Duterte election.
Later that year saw the same techniques used for Trump and Brexit.
i told my wife in late 2016 that we’re in the middle of WW3 but it’s mostly fought in cyberspace.
Putin won’t give up his gains without an all out fight
trollhattan
@Adam L Silverman:
Thanks. Confess I have not seen nor heard word one about Syria for months. (Wonder why?) Things were looking very dire there late winter and Assad and Putin were bombing with impunity.
Carlo
@Mike in DC: Again, this sort of thing is not really “retaliation”. It’s pretty ticky-tack nonsense that the Russians don’t give a shit about.They might even welcome an opportunity to “fight” us on those terms.I doubt that they regard the lives of their intelligence officers and soldiers as being as precious as we regard ours.
You hurt Russia by going after their oil revenues. And we could do it easily, after January.
The Moar You Know
@Adam L Silverman: Agreed. Otherwise we end up as the second version of the UK, where the Russian government has been having hunting sprees on both their own citizens as well as the British, using such sporting weaponry as nerve gas and polonium tea.
Needless to say, I don’t want to see that sort of crap here.
trollhattan
@Adam L Silverman:
Am accepting any and all offers of luck, at this time. Skill, education and sparkling personality aren’t doing thing one for me, so luck it is.
Cheryl Rofer
@Adam L Silverman: It’s the totally military aspect that I disagree with. I love your idea of Seal teams targeting the GRU in Afghanistan – tit for tat, just right.
But we, as a country, have to regain our stature in other ways too. Working more closely with our European allies on their defense would be one obvious step. Controlling our plague would be another. And yes, none of this, even the military side, can happen until we have a president who understands what it means to be president.
And this is making me think about Trump’s comments about glassifying Afghanistan but following his humanitarian instincts not to kill 10 million people. It’s too late at night for me to fuss with trying to find that, but I wonder if that coincides with his learning about this and having no other idea for dealing with people who might be hard to find but he wants to dispose of.
debbie
@Bill Arnold:
PBS’s Frontline had a doc on Putin* and indicated that years later, an unexploded bomb was found in a neighboring building that had the “signature” of the FSB.
*It was called “Putin’s Way” I believe.
trollhattan
@Adam L Silverman:
A full-throated push for renewable energy among industrialized and developing nations would do a lot to put Russia and many Middle Eastern bad actors (et al) into a much smaller box. The technology and price competitiveness seem to have advanced to a point where this is not only possible, but mandatory.
Recall
Jesus fuck what is this warmongering bullshit?
Let’s get ourselves into a land war with Russia, that ALWAYS ends well.
Aleta
@Adam L Silverman: What’s your estimate of the cost of that? What are the worst case scenarios in your mind of what could go wrong?
Bill Arnold
@Adam L Silverman:
COVID-19 is doing a number on Putin’s popularity[1], and on global oil prices. (It’s a start.)
If Putin were somehow removed from power (including being emdeadened, e.g. heart attack, a Russian tradition), would matters improve enough?
[1] The Coronavirus Could Hit Putin Most of All – New surveys show a surprising decline in the Russian president’s popularity. The pandemic will accelerate a trend of mistrust in the Kremlin. (Maria Snegovaya, Denis Volkov, Stepan Goncharov, June 5, 2020)
Carlo
@trollhattan: Yes.
A military response of any realistic kind makes no sense at all. The Russians want every asymmetric warfare opportunity that they can fool us into.It would be idiotic and childish (but very American) to take them up on the offer. We should strangle their oil revenue instead.
Carlo
Bill Arnold
@Adam L Silverman:
That sounds like the US has intercepts or something similarly solid.
prostratedragon
@Recall: Has “land” been mentioned?
Yutsano
@Recall: No one is calling for a land war with Russia. Calm down. We’re not gonna act with President Toadface sitting as the commander in chief anyway. Bringing in SEAL and Green Beret teams to deal with the Russian malefactors is doing their jobs, but Vlad won’t risk a war over that. It’s not going to be fun with this neat revelation hanging out there.
Recall
@prostratedragon: Yes:
“Putin’s invasion of Crimea needed to be met with force. The US and NATO should have mobilized to retake it for Ukraine and, while doing so, rolled up Russia’s little green men – whether Russian intelligence and special forces or Wagner Group mercenaries – and the Russian backed separatists in eastern Ukraine at the same time.”
Carlo
@Recall:
NATO. Retake. Crimea. From Russia. By force.
You need meds.
Recall
@Carlo: That’s called war, dumbshit.
BruceJ
@Adam L Silverman:
It’s those 78 days between Nov 4 and January 21 that will be the most dangerous. trump will have everything to lose, and so may well be inclined to burn everything down.
prostratedragon
@Recall: I think there are other ways of doing that that are not like the Battle of the Bulge, or Kursk, or Napoleon’s ill-fated thrust or something. Especially the little green men part.
Adam L Silverman
@trollhattan: I have been making that argument to senior leaders for years.
Recall
@prostratedragon: When Obama described his foreign policy as “Don’t do stupid shit” what sort of ideas do you think he was talking about?
Adam L Silverman
@Aleta: High. Very, very high. And unless we’re very effective in the opening of the conflict and if Russia were to actually fight to their doctrine, we’re talking a nuclear exchange within the conventional theater at least.
Adam L Silverman
@Carlo: I’m not talking about a low intensity response.
Adam L Silverman
@Bill Arnold: I only know what’s been reported on in the news reporting.
Bruuuuce
@Morzer: Not Omaha. It’s full of Real Murkins. San Francisco, on the other hand…
jonas
That’s a tougher strategic option than it used to be, given that the US is one of the — if not the — largest oil producer in the world now. Of course we need to wean ourselves off fossil fuels, but this is no longer something that’s just easily projected on to Mideast countries anymore. It’s our problem now, too.
Adam L Silverman
@BruceJ: The early election period through election day will also be very dangerous.
lumpkin
Adam, it seems like you said in the OP that similar things to the bounties were going on when Obama was president and that there was no US response then either. Am I reading that correctly?
Adam L Silverman
@Recall: The corollary to that should have been “Don’t be stupid when not doing stupid shit”.
Adam L Silverman
@Bruuuuce: I’m Omahaphobic. I have an intense fear of anyone or anything from Omaha.
prostratedragon
@BruceJ: Is the next Inauguration Jan 21? There are 6696001 seconds between Nov 4 and noon Jan 20. We have to get through every damn one.
(Think I won’t scream with joy?)
Jeffro
@Adam L Silverman: is this because Putin basically sees no Russia, no Russian interests/future beyond himself?
Which wouldn’t surprise me and would make me hope that we find ways to weaken him (even at a high cost to ourselves, if necessary) before we finally end his ‘reign’
piratedan
Well… i guess a relevant question would be is if our cyber black hats and white hats are up to the task of slagging Russian troll farms and psy ops teams to turn the worm… so to speak and if there is anyone with the wherewithal to unleash the cyber kracken
Adam L Silverman
@lumpkin: I don’t think so. Would you copy and paste the section where you think I did so and then I might have a better idea how to reply other than “I don’t think so”.
Recall
@Adam L Silverman: You’re a fucking moron.
Adam L Silverman
@Jeffro: I don’t know. It would not surprise me. But I think the reason for it is that the Russian military leadership understands that their conventional forces cannot fight the US and/or NATO. Therefore they keep the threat of using nuclear weapons as an option within a conventional conflict as a deterrent.
Comrade Bukharin
@Recall: You’re the only one talking sense here. What would a second Crimean war have looked like?
Ronno2018
Putin had been doing pretty much the same thing during the Obama administration. The solution is just to get out of Afghanistan completely. Yes, attack if another Osama starts to plan something there, but really we have spent trillions on Iraq and Afghanistan and I do not see anything other than modest human rights gains for the people in those countries. I wish we could have done more but Bush II screwed the pooch by lying us into stupid wars. Get out now.
Adam L Silverman
@Recall: You are fucking welcome to go hang out somewhere else. I don’t remember seeing you in the conference room when this was being discussed in spring 2014.
scott (the other one)
Previously, when it’s been suggested that Trump has committed treason, by clearly acting in ways which would benefit Putin, over the objections of his own intelligence agency, people would (accurately) point out that it can’t actually be treason, as we’re not in a state of war.
But it’s time for talking heads on the left to come out and unambiguously state that the president may not technically be committing treason, but that’s only a technicality, and his actions are absolutely treasonous.
Trump is disloyal to the United States of America and doesn’t care that a hostile foreign power is targeting our soldiers.
Impeach again.
prostratedragon
@Adam L Silverman: Yes, and as you indicated earlier, the trouble with not doing prudent things in due time is that one is more likely to have to do riskier or more costly things to make up later. Another item on the long bill to the MOTU.
Mike in DC
@Adam L Silverman:
I mean, they have a grand total of 30 major surface ships spread out among 3-4 fleets. We could sink all that in an afternoon. Just one example.
Cheryl Rofer
Quick Twitter search shows that Trump’s comments about glassifying Afghanistan were in August 2019. So quite a bit before he knew about this.
piratedan
@lumpkin: i think that the fact there were a shitpotful of economic sanctions in place that the 45 admin has been trying to circumvent since they walked in means that there was a response in place and in progress.
Jeffro
@piratedan:
@Adam L Silverman:
Here’s hoping we figure out how to take away his ‘football’ in the not-too-distant future. And also his keys, his microphone, short-wave radio…
Bruuuuce
@Adam L Silverman: I suppose you blame Marlin Perkins?
Carlo
@jonas:
I don’t believe it’s tough at all to keep gas prices high and oil prices low.The difference is a carbon tax. It doesn’t even have to bite immediately – even the promise that it will go up by 10c a year would send investment scrambling out of oil. Which is what is needed to really screw Russia: uncertainty and doubt about future oil prices.
West of the Rockies
I haven’t read the comments yet, so maybe this has been covered, but won’t this (specifically the lack of a US response under Trump) cause some erosion in the military officer/enlisted support for Trump?
Attempting to shred the ACA sure won’t build his base.
Is he trying to lose or just quintripling down on his base of mouth breathing Morlocks?
Adam L Silverman
@scott (the other one): Putin has been stating publicly, as well as Russian senior military leaders, that Russia and the US are at war since at least 2014. And that from their perspective, the US attacked Russia.
Adam L Silverman
@prostratedragon: You are 100% correct. That’s my major difference of professional opinion with Cheryl on this. My take is we’ve run out of time to use all the easy options and are almost out of time for the reasonable options as well. We’re fast approaching the point where all we have left are the really bad, painful, and costly options.
Adam L Silverman
@Mike in DC: Yep. And their one flattop is a very easy target. As it’s sitting on the ground next to its now broken dry dock.
jonas
I’m sure Russia sees this as a simple tit-for-tat given how the US supported the mujihadeen against them in the 80s and all that. And I’m also sure we have ways of “dealing” with the Russians on the DL with special forces, CIA, etc. But I do hope that stories like this impress upon active service military and (esp) vets that Trump has absolutely no interest in protecting them, from diverting funding from their base infrastructure for his wall boondoggle to looking the other way on Russians paying bounties for their corpses. Oh, and not giving a shit when they’re trapped on board an aircraft carrier dying of Covid. I could go on.
Omnes Omnibus
@Bruuuuce: It was that fucker Jim. He knows what he did.
Mike in DC
And here I thought my idea to transfer and consolidate US bases in East Asia into a single megabase on Taiwan was outre.
A military intervention to recover Crimea in 2014 is one hell of a counterfactual scenario. Maybe it could have worked, though the world would be shitting bricks waiting to see what happened next.
Adam L Silverman
@piratedan: As long as Putin and most of the oligarchs that he is the krysha for can still access the fortunes they’ve amassed by stealing from the Russian people, as well as those in the other post-Soviet states and anything they could scarf up in the rest of the world, the sanctions don’t really matter. Putin really doesn’t care how much pain actual Russians are in.
Jeffro
@scott (the other one): always seconded here on ‘impeach again’…so very many charges, so very many things to air in front of the American public, over and over again
@Mike in DC: honestly, one adverse/disproportionate calculation (when dealing with a nuclear power) is that they decide to say, “scratch one of our ships and we loose the whole nuclear arsenal”. Not exactly proportional, right? But an option for them.
The important thing is to (somehow?) reach out to their generals and everyone below Putin (the oligarchs?) and make them understand that if they follow through on those kinds of orders…they’re ashes. Everything else is negotiable, but if they reach for the trigger (or let Putin do it), that’s it, no more life of luxury, no more Russia, ever. Maximum ‘stick’, and no ‘carrot’.
And then talk with them about ‘carrots’ ;)
Recall
@Adam L Silverman: I should have had your place, clearly, because you are an idiot. I’ve been trolling warmongers like you since the Iraq war, and you motherfuckers are always fucking wrong. Every fucking time, you’re fucking belligerant fuckasses who hide behind your credentials and titles.
You are a deeply, profoundly, stupid person.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mike in DC: This blog would have gone batshit.
Adam L Silverman
@West of the Rockies: One would hope.
Adam L Silverman
@Omnes Omnibus: And that’s why Marlin let the lions eat him.
Bruuuuce
@Omnes Omnibus: :-)
Omnes Omnibus
@Recall: A military response is never the answer?
Comrade Bukharin
All the smart people on this blog want to destroy Russia’s navy and ‘degrade’ their army? How many casualties are we willing to accept in this escapade? This really surprises me.
piratedan
@Recall: tyvm new nickname that we’ve never seen before… how awesome for you to join us and share with us your wisdom
Recall
@Omnes Omnibus: What makes you think it is?
Aleta
@Adam L Silverman: So you’re saying that ‘a nuclear exchange within the conventional theater at least’ is not the worst case scenario you envision if things don’t go according to plan?
Have you taken a stab at estimating in numbers any of the costs of your idea — things like military spending, damages and reconstruction, the number of military and civilian casualties you imagine, the cost of disruption in areas outside the conventional theater? How wide do you imagine the conventional theater would stretch; and how many countries? What length of time are you envisioning?
Adam L Silverman
@Recall: Yep, I’m sitting here drooling and playing with my toes. Perhaps you should learn to read. In 2014 I advised against doing anything on behalf of the Ukrainians other than diplomatic initiatives, economic sanctions, and some military aid. This course of action failed. And because it failed it encouraged Putin to continue doing what he was doing and to escalate. And as a result we now have fewer, if any, good options left. I’m almost always the person in the room advising for other options. For taking the context and finding a way to use it to our advantage so we don’t have to fight. Unfortunately some times that doesn’t work. And when it doesn’t, rather than continuing to simply saying “we shouldn’t fight”, one should reexamine one’s priors, mark one’s beliefs to market, and consider other options. Unfortunately, we’re fast approaching the point where our past decisions, good and effective, bad and ineffective, and everything in between, have changed the operating environment where all that will be left are the most dangerous options. You seem to be interpreting my recognizing this reality with my desire for it to happen. That’s not the case.
Omnes Omnibus
I have to say that right now I really cannot process this information. That POTUS could be informed of something like this and take no response just floors me.
Martin
That’s not true. Since that time Trump invited Putin to come to his hotel in Florida for the G7. That was probably a trap or something.
Comrade Bukharin
You only have to kick in the door and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down. Can’t quite recall who said that.
lumpkin
@Adam L Silverman:
The excerpt below suggests that Russia was committing acts like putting bounties on US soldiers during the Obama administration with impunity.
Omnes Omnibus
@Recall: I am not suggesting one now. I was just checking on what you were saying. If you really are a true pacifist, I respect your principles, but I disagree with you. If, as I suspect, you are an isolationist masquerading as a pacifist…. Well, I have less respect.
Recall
@Adam L Silverman: “This course of action failed.”
In comparison to what war exactly?
prostratedragon
A military response is never the answer?
I recall when those suspicious bombings and the like began in Russia and we were seeing a new, pouty face on the news a lot, discussing with my Dad the vet-turned-peacenik (even moreso than I) and our shared conclusion was, “Oh shit.” In other words, here’s someone likely to make it difficult to deal with him in any other terms. Whatever you decide to do about it in the end, it’s important to learn to recognize the type.
Sally
Jeffro
@Omnes Omnibus: I’m with you, but only sort of, because almost nothing this bought-and-paid-for clown does surprises me anymore.
It’s why he’s (sometimes! ok not really!) hard to rail against – no one could imagine that someone this corrupt even exists, much less is (nominally) in charge of our government.
Phrase it in the opposite – as if Obama or Hillz had done this – and have fun with your TCNJ friends and relatives whether in person or on social media. It’s a bit. of. a. stretch. even for them!
Adam L Silverman
@Aleta: Unfortunately. And I have not. I am also not every going to make the recommendation. There is what I think is necessary and there is what I recognize is a professionally appropriate and acceptable recommendation for courses of action and options for dealing with the problem. They are not the same thing. As a professional, I owe whomever I’m advising my candid assessment and honest recommendations. But, these have to be within the bounds of reality. And, frankly, reducing Russia is not within the bounds of reality even if I think it will ultimately be the only option left that isn’t just living with having them destroy us and the global system.
scott (the other one)
@Adam L Silverman: Well. Treason it is, then.
Jeffro
@lumpkin: I guess the difference would be, the Obama Administration kicked Putin out of the G-8, while the trumpov maladministration wants to bring him back in? Is that enough of a difference?
Another Scott
Gin&Tonic’s comments in this thread from 3/2014 are interesting.
E.g.
Cheers,
Scott.
Recall
@Omnes Omnibus: My philosophical position is that anyone who advocates for war is a grade-A moron, and that they should be fired and replaced with faded FREE MUMIA tshirts in all levels of government.
Adam L Silverman
@lumpkin: Okay, I see where the confusion is. I’m referring to his actions towards our NATO allies in the Baltics, as well as Finland who we are partnered with. And his cyber and influence operations against the US, which includes the interference in the 2016 elections and that is still ongoing. As well as the trail of poisoned and assassinated people that run across several EU cities to England and, most likely, to Washington, DC.
The Thin Black Duke
All that’s left for Trump to do is to shoot a guy on Fifth Avenue. He’ll get away with that too.
Chetan Murthy
Adam, is it just me, or have we attracted a couple of GRU trolls?
Also, I wondered when you were going to mention Russian oligarchs’ overseas bank accounts and possessions. We run the world’s banking system. We could cut Russia off at the knees anytime we wanted — just refuse ’em access to it. And systematically impound every asset of their we find, wherever it is.
Yeah, BoJo would cry. Fuck him, let him cry.
Adam L Silverman
@Recall: That’s not how it works. All we have is the counterfactual, or, actually, several counterfactuals of possible other responses. We have no real idea if any of them would work. All we know is what we actually did at the time did not work. Nor has anything we’ve done since then. This itself changes the operating environment. It changes the strategic reality just as surely if we had chosen another option and it had been successful or also failed. I think there is a subtlety to my argument that you’re missing. Which is knowing what we now know, which is that what we actually did in 2014, which made perfect sense given how we understood the problem set or related problem sets at the time, did not work. And therefore if we had to make a similar decision today, knowing what we now know and didn’t then, then it would make sense to choose a different option, even if that option means we have to assume more risk.
Adam L Silverman
@Chetan Murthy: It is what it is.
Major Major Major Major
Blech.
Mike in DC
@Recall:
How do you solve a problem like Putin, then?
Adam L Silverman
@Major Major Major Major: Gesundheit!
Recall
@Adam L Silverman Again, you are a fucking moron, because that’s how fucking morons talk about war.
Recall
@Mike in DC: Wait for him to die.
Comrade Bukharin
@Chetan Murthy: I’m not a GRU troll. I’ve been around since the ‘Comrade John Cole’ days. I was just surprised to see such a blithe discussion of war with Russia. Out of character for this blog.
debbie
@Comrade Bukharin:
Blithe? No, but clearly there doesn’t seem to be any other way to stop Putin. And waiting for him to die is Trump-level brilliance.
Chetan Murthy
@Comrade Bukharin:
“My son displays a general garment and you claim it’s cut to your fit?” Jessica asked. “What a fascinating revelation.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune
Adam L Silverman
@Comrade Bukharin: We’re committed to bringing you new and provocative content.
Carlo
@Adam L Silverman:
I understand your argument, but I disagree with nearly every part of it.
You appear to believe that some short-fuse military response exists that would (a) hurt the Russians in a way that they care about, and (b) not wind up hurting us just as much, or more, in the long run. In my opinion no such option exists,and none has existed since 1949 (or perhaps 1955 or so, if LeMay is taken seriously).The same logic that prohibited NATO from retaking Crimea is in force today. Certainly nothing in your post or in the subsequent discussion has even the faintest plausibility as a satisfactory response fulfilling these criteria.
Feel free to educate me if I’m wrong.I’ll just observe that “hurt them enough to teach them a lesson”‘is a strategy that has never ended a great-power conflict. Degrading their capability could be effective, temporarily, but as I said that hasn’t really been in the cards these past 70+ years.
As to “marking beliefs to market”, I find it unbelievably frustrating that attacking Russia at it’s true vulnerable spot – it’s oil wealth – has never been seriously tried, even by the Obama administration. And yet we have all the necessary economic tools, and they have no defense against them. We could completely destabilize the Putin government by driving oil prices to near-zero, and keeping them there for years, as a matter of national policy.
Why the U.S. military leadership would fail to understand, advocate for, and support this is an inscrutable enigma to me.It’s not that different from the way the end of the USSR was triggered, after all.
Jay
@Recall:
plausable deniability works both ways. Putin used “Little Green Men” and has pretended that Russia didn’t seize Crimea or invade Ukraine.
So theoretically, a military response to the invasion of Ukraine and the seizure of Crimea would not kill any Russians as there are no Russians there.
Unfortunately, NATO would have had to set up a Quick Reaction Force after Georgia, but you know, they had their own wars on their plates.
prostratedragon
@Comrade Bukharin: The revelation that the titular President of the United States might be openly treasonous is bound to get some of us thinking outside the box.
Mike in DC
@Recall:
He’s not going to die for 20 years and in the meantime he will do tremendous harm not just to our interests and to European democratic institutions, but to real human beings in many places.
So, again, what do you do about Putin?
Recall
@Adam L Silverman: It’s actually really old content:
https://balloon-juice.com/2002/08/23/i-dont-get-it-new/
Spoiler alert, he does eventually get it.
Omnes Omnibus
@Comrade Bukharin: What do you think would be an appropriate and proportional response to Russia’s actions?
Raoul
I’ll try to get caught up on this thread, but I’ll go ahead and ask this and apologies of already answered: The NYT piece I saw tweeted earlier said US, British and allied forces.
So when do you think Boris Johnson would have known about this? In March? Some time later? Or via the US news media in the past 14 or so hours. I’m hoping it’s not the latter.
But whichever it is, won’t this roil the UK as well? (My ‘as well’ supposes this story gets more traction than it has in this 24 hours, but Covid was really big and awful news today).
Kay
@The Thin Black Duke:
I think Trump probably gets some pushback on this one:
Bad. Sometimes I think about all the things we don’t know about that they’ve done, or really more likely with these people, not done. Don’t know yet.
Comrade Bukharin
@Adam L Silverman: Indeed you are!
Adam L Silverman
@Carlo: You don’t have to agree with me. I do not disagree that destroying their oil sector would be harmful, but I don’t think it would make a difference unless the Russians then decided to overthrow their government because of the pain. Putin and those he is the krysha for have insulated their ill gotten wealth from the realities of Russia’s economy. Unless you can make their wealth and resources go poof, destroying Russia’s petroleum sector will only immiserate Russians. Not Putin and not those he’s the krysha for.
Recall
@Jay: And let Ukraine into NATO, of course.
Villago Delenda Est
@Adam L Silverman: Unfortunately, such a course of action is in direct conflict with fossil fuel interests.
So we have something of an impasse between smart strategic thinking and boundless, insatiable greed.
Recall
@Mike in DC: It’s funny, no matter how bad American presidents get, no one ever wants someone to invade us.
lumpkin
@Jeffro:
I figured somebody would misread the nature of my question and jump to the conclusion that I was Obama bashing.
I thought Adam’s post could be interpreted to mean that Obama had also let Russia get away with attacks on our soldiers. At least he understood my question and gave me an answer.
O. Felix Culpa
@Omnes Omnibus: I’m with you. Just gobsmacked. Horrified. I mean, the man is awful, we all knew that, but this is beyond imagining.
Recall
@Omnes Omnibus: I’m assuming that withdrawing our troops from Afghanistan is not an option in your mind.
Comrade Bukharin
@Omnes Omnibus: Sanctions, cyber attacks, going after their irregulars in the Middle East in a targeted manner? I’m not an expert. Destroying their navy doesn’t seem proportional to me.
Omnes Omnibus
@Recall: I would say it is irrelevant to the question at hand.
Mike in DC
@Recall:
I am going to keep asking the question and eventually you can answer or expose yourself as not having one.
Kropacetic
Well, now that we know that he knows, I’m sure we can count on him to act. And by act I mean choose the worst option in front of him then screw up the implementation.
Major Major Major Major
Oh look at that I already had one of you yahoos in the pie filter on my phone browser.
Omnes Omnibus
@Comrade Bukharin: Where in this thread do you see a consensus for destroying the Russian navy?
Adam L Silverman
@Recall: The difference is that unlike what Cole was writing about in 2002, when I had never even heard of Balloon Juice, was an inaccurate understanding of what actually happened on 9-11. Specifically a purposeful attempt by the Bush 43 administration and its surrogates to propagandize Americans into believing that Saddam Hussein had a significant amount of responsibility for 9-11. That was a lie then and it is still misinformation and agitprop by those who repeat it today.
In the case of Putin and Russia, we actually know what he has done. We have significant documentation of it. And that is just in open sources like news reporting and unclassified reports by congressional committees. We know what he is responsible for. And we know what we’ve done or tried to do as the responses. And we know they have not worked. We know what has actually happened. And we know what has not worked in response. We have only three options:
1) Keep doing what isn’t working hoping that it will suddenly start working.
2) Do nothing, ceding the victory to Putin and rewarding him for his attacks on us, our allies, and our partners, which means we are willing to live in a global system remade to his liking and where Russia is a major rule maker.
3) Try something else. Not because we’re sure it will work, you can never be sure of something like that, but because we are smart enough to recognize that option 1 isn’t working and option 2 is unacceptable.
Do you want to live in a United States that has been remade into a fully kleptocratic organized crime state built on reactionary white Christian herrenvolkism within a global system that has been leveled to the point where states and societies like what the US would become, and which Russia and Hungary have already become, are the norm, acceptable, and the rule makers? Do you really think that is going to be better than the flawed and imperfect attempt we’ve been making at liberal democratic self government?
Recall
@Mike in DC: Wait for him to die was my answer. Asked and answered as the debate folks would say.
patrick II
@Adam L Silverman:
That sounds so … . . . . symmetrical.
Another Scott
@Carlo: You don’t think Obama’s “all of the above” energy policy was intended (in a non-trivial part) to reduce oil prices to hurt Putin?
Cheers,
Scott.
Aleta
@Adam L Silverman: Thanks for explaining that difference.
Adam L Silverman
@Raoul: I would expect it would. But Johnson and his merry band of Hard Brexit Tories have managed to keep the report that indicates that Russia is responsible for Brexit and has been deeply manipulating British politics and thereby policy for years now bottled up and under wraps for over half a year. I have no doubt he’ll do the same here. He knows where the Brexit money really came from. And he knows who is really responsible for it, and thereby he being prime minister. What he also knows is he can’t ever allow that to be confirmed for the British citizenry.
The Pale Scot
The best way to deal with this is to exclude Russia from the SWIFT banking monetary transfer system. Threaten tax havens with kinetic destruction if they don’t force their banks to reveal their clients. Launch cyber attacks on the dark money banking g system. Send hit squads to whack the executives of those banks.
There would be a plethora of benefits to ripping the dark money system apart. Pay your fucking taxes, or lose it all.
Adam L Silverman
@Villago Delenda Est: There’s that too!
Martin
It would be fascinating to figure out how much money Putin has parked in the US and western nations. It would be equally fascinating to see what the total damage would be if seized all laundered money in the US.
I’m guessing the latter would be so catastrophic that we haven’t dared explore the former.
Adam L Silverman
@Major Major Major Major: It’s me!//
Comrade Bukharin
@Omnes Omnibus: Not a consensus, but early on somebody said they only had 30 ships and Adam said their carrier was a sitting duck.
Mike in DC
@Recall:
And that’s a complete non-solution, worse than anything the alleged”warmonger” suggested. Because it literally solves nothing and makes the situation worse.
We’re debating how to solve the problem posed by Putin, not how to pretend it doesn’t actually exist or doesn’t actually affect us.
Recall
@Adam L Silverman: You want to declare war on Hungary, too? You realize they’re in the EU?
Mike in DC
@Comrade Bukharin:
I was adding to a comment about Russian relative weakness in conventional arms. They have an especially weak and outdated surface fleet. Adam had commented that because Russia has apparently concluded they can’t win a conventional conflict with NATO or the US, that they have adopted a policy of going nuclear the minute they start losing.
Adam L Silverman
@Aleta: You’re welcome.
Adam L Silverman
@The Pale Scot: That would all be helpful.
Recall
@Mike in DC: He’s been in power for two decades. We waited out Stalin and Mao. You’re being a fucking drama queen.
Adam L Silverman
@Comrade Bukharin: It’s more of somewhere between a lounging and sort of propped up on the ground next to what’s left of its dry dock, which caught fire about a year or so ago, duck. When it went into dry dock it was supposed to be their being refit until 2024. Now they have to first rebuild the dry dock before they can then rebuild the carrier.
Omnes Omnibus
@Recall: Way to twist people’s words. One starts to get the impression that you are not interested in honest discourse.
Kropacetic
I’ve only heard sparse reporting on this, but my understanding has been that the stress this was putting on Russia’s economy has created some difficulty for Putin.
I agree with the general idea that we should keep the pressure on them financially. Yes, oil prices. Also their money laundering operations.
Let the oligarchs be Putin’s downfall.
danielx
This may have been remarked upon before, and if so I don’t want to run it into the ground. But…
I have to wonder how this will be taken by troops. The question that comes to mind is, why should they stand up for a commander-in-chief who won’t stand up for them?
West of the Rockies
@Comrade Bukharin:
Tonight on a very special episode of Balloon Juice…
Mike in DC
@Recall:
Stalin and Mao didn’t interfere in our fucking elections, ace.
Try to venture a real answer. It’s liberating.
Also, we did respond strongly to provocations by both Stalin and Mao. We didn’t sit on our ass doing nothing about it. Some responses were wiser than others, but we definitely responded.
Adam L Silverman
@Recall: Yep, you caught me, I want to declare war on Hungary.
Of course I don’t want to declare war on Hungary. My stating accurately that Orban took a once promising transitioning liberal democracy and turned it into an illiberal democracy where he has one party control over all elements of government and has assumed dictatorial powers and authority, which he claims are temporary, is not the same thing as saying we should bomb them into the stone age. Or any age for that matter.
As for being an EU member, they are in violation of their EU membership, but the EU has to enforce that.
Bill Arnold
@Mike in DC:
Yes. An interventionist petrostate (Russia) is going to manipulate the world, or try to, to maintain demand for it’s fossil carbon products. A lot of money is in Russian ground to be extracted, or not.
This means the loss of hundreds of millions of human lives in the fullness of time caused by [incrementally worse] global heating. Maybe upwards of a billion. This is not acceptable. And the pathologies in large part are being driven by a paranoid and ruthless autocrat, V. Putin.
Ural crude is struggling back up from the COVID-19 demand shock, but mainly because of dramatic production cuts[1] and unfounded optimism about COVID-19 and the global economy. Russia is … fragile. And Putin is arrogant and overconfident.
[1] Russia’s Huge Oil Cuts Help Drive Up Physical Crude Prices (Alex Longley, Sherry Su, June 22, 2020)
Kropacetic
And Russia and China have had stellar leadership ever since; good to their people and wonderful global partners…
Adam L Silverman
@Omnes Omnibus: I have a craving for paprikash, we’re in a pandemic, and I’m not fussy about how I get it!//
Eolirin
@The Pale Scot: Unfortunately a lot of our own plutocrats take advantage of those same systems. There’ll be intense pressure to not do that just like there is for oil.
Comrade Bukharin
@West of the Rockies: Yes, a very interesting thread!
Kropacetic
Never heard of it before, looks rather good.
I could be persuaded to cook. Leave the usual payment in unmarked currency
Mike in DC
My real position is to reinstitute containment(2.0, I guess) to deal with Putin, but that can and is likely to include some fairly strong action in response to provocations and asymmetric aggression(e.g. cyberwarfare).
West of the Rockies
@danielx:
Yeah, I agree (and did make that inquiry upthread). I can’t imagine Trump’s continued puckering up for Putin’s sack will play well come November among military members and their families.
Adam L Silverman
@Kropacetic: I tumbled onto a YouTube channel called Souped Up Meals. It’s by a Chinese woman, living somewhere in South America. She’s a hoot to watch, the recipes are easy to follow, and they turn out very well. I’ve added several new meals to the repertoire. I keep meaning to do a post on it.
Omnes Omnibus
@Adam L Silverman: Dude, there has to be a Hungarian joint that delivers. Or a Viennese place with pretensions to Empire. My god, you are the warmonger that they said.
Recall
@Kropacetic: I’m sure after killing Putin the Russians will greet us as liberators.
Also, you might want to hold off on the China comparisons until we get this COVID thing under control.
Kropacetic
@Adam L Silverman: I’ll check it out. The main two things that get me passionate about cooking are trying something new and feeding someone else.
Bill Arnold
@Adam L Silverman:
Now you’re talking. That could be done without war. Probably the (ruthless) Russians involved would respond ruthlessly with (possibly lethal) targeting of western adversaries.
Kent
My understanding of Russia and Russian politics is admittedly weak. But my sense is that the Russian oligarchs who surround Putin and aid/abet his regime have basically sucked Russia dry and have mostly spread their immense wealth across the globe. A truly asymmetric response by the US would be to target the top 100 or top 200 oligarch families in Russia, hunt down every last dime that can be found and seize/freeze it all. All those condos and buildings in NYC and London. Gone. If some oligarch has a billion dollars in a Cayman Island bank, we seize every time. And if the Caymans doesn’t play ball, we take over the Caymans and any other Caribbean banking state that is in league with Russia and other bad actors. They are using Malta to launder money? Malta doesn’t cooperate? They find an aircraft carrier strike force parked outside their main harbor. Every banking money laundering state on the planet will have to decide to do business with the US or Russia. They won’t get both.
Basically use US power in the financial world to turn Russia into an international pariah state with no financial connections to the outside world like Iran. Step by step. Devote billions of dollars to a US effort to tracking down every dime of Russian overseas wealth. Give it back to them when Putin is gone.
Keep cranking up the screws until we reach some sort of mutually agreed armistice that guarantees zero Russian interference in any US affairs from elections to other institutions from this day forward.
Tit for tat stuff between their special forces and our special forces is playing their game. I don’t see the point of it. Play our game, not theirs.
Omnes Omnibus
@Recall: Who has advocated assassinating Putin?
Adam L Silverman
@Omnes Omnibus: Maybe at the bottom end of the county. Up here we’ve got mostly family owned Asian restaurants (Thai, Malaysian, Indian, Japanese, fusion), family owned Mexican restaurants, family owned Greek restaurants including the breakfast places (we don’t really have diners down here the way you do up north), BBQ, and chains – from fast food to up scale. With a bunch of family owned seafood places along the water.
Kropacetic
@Recall: Sorry I don’t recall suggesting we kill Putin. I suggested we go after them financially (and bad actors in the financial sector generally) and let internal pressures deal with him.
Also, I don’t see you engaging much with what people are actually saying and you opened up with primarily personal insults.
Try to bring down the temp a bit and we can brainstorm legitimate peaceful ways to address this situation. We even have a few knowledgeable people here whom we could ask questions.
Adam L Silverman
@Kropacetic: I’ve made this one twice now:
Adam L Silverman
@Omnes Omnibus: You can’t make proper paprikash without assassinating the president of Russia.//
Yutsano
@Martin: More than half the London real estate market is propped up by Russians buying/renting properties at insane values then never occupying them. It’s all about getting the rubles out and laundered.
Adam L Silverman
@Kropacetic:
That’s just crazy talk!
Adam L Silverman
@Yutsano: Like the home Roman Abramovich owns, but doesn’t occupy right next to Kellyanne Conway’s house in DC.
Recall
@Adam L Silverman: Do you honestly think that if we kill Putin, the next guy up is going to be any more friendly?
Omnes Omnibus
@Adam L Silverman: That was the real point of the Olympic water polo match between the USSR and Hungary in 1956?
Kropacetic
If you’re operating under that assumption, I find myself somewhat surprised at being jealous of the restaurant diversity in Wisconsin.
burnspbesq
@Miss Bianca:
Would being voted out of office by an overwhelming margin count as a repercussion?
Adam L Silverman
@Recall: Where have I said kill Putin? Or assassinate Putin? I said we needed to bloody his nose and knock him on his ass and that was obviously a metaphor.
Take it somewhere else, your disingenuous bad faith bullshit is tiresome.
Yutsano
@Adam L Silverman: Oh. Is that what I keep doing wrong? :P
Kropacetic
@Adam L Silverman: OMG my ex used to watch this channel, maybe still does. Good call on the chow mein. A personal favorite, but I’ve only ever gotten it as take out.
Kropacetic
Depends whether this moves any votes. What will it take to get through to the hardened core of his support?
Kropacetic
No. Only if we if wait for him to die…
ETA: Sorry guys, usually better about appending responses to people into one post when I’m still allowed to edit. This three posts in a row shit is sloppy.
Recall
@Kropacetic: “We even have a few knowledgeable people here whom we could ask questions.”
No, we don’t. Indulging in that lie killed millions of people in Iraq. People who advocate for war are morons, every last one of them.
You wonder how people fall for Trump’s shit. This is how.
Recall
@Kropacetic: It’s a better chance than if we invade.
Adam L Silverman
@Omnes Omnibus: That explains a lot.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Kent:
What are the odds a Biden (or any Dem) admin will follow through with this?
Adam L Silverman
@Kropacetic: It is very easy to make.
Omnes Omnibus
@Kropacetic: Madison has German places would will probably have some Hungarian on the menu. Milwaukee is really pretty good with what you would broadly call Eastern European cuisine. OTOH, I was coming home on a plane once and overheard a conversation in very New York accents that concluded that you can’t get good deli in Wisconsin.
Mike in DC
@Recall:
You have a really simplistic way of thinking about this. We can deal with Putin as a geopolitical problem actor without killing him and without dropping bombs on Russian soil or sinking ships or anything else. BUT…handing out bounties for killing our troops is super, super bad. You start with the most pointed demarche as Adam said to “cease and desist” such activity. If they don’t, well, being a GRU agent in AfPak just became a much more dangerous gig, and we’re likely to engage in cyber war against the support system for such ops.
Adam was saying, all things considered and in hindsight, all the non-military approaches to Putin’s aggression in Ukraine utterly failed to deter him from further provocations and aggressions, so maybe they should have considered a limited op to push the Russians out of Ukraine quickly.
A terrible option, but…the decent options were exhausted and didn’t work, and now things have gotten worse, so only bad options are left. Inaction is unacceptable as well, given the consequences thereto.
Kropacetic
@Recall: So just because someone comes to a conclusion you disagree with doesn’t mean they don’t have a grasp of the material facts. Also, I don’t recall invasions or assassinations or a lot of these other bad ideas you’re shooting down actually being proposed. I assume you’re familiar with the idea of the straw man fallacy.
BTW this is my last response to you. Have a good night.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Recall:
The CCP lied to the world when this thing began.
Adam L Silverman
@Mike in DC: Save your fingers. He’s not arguing in good faith. It’s all ad hominems and whatabout things no one has actually suggested. He’s about one comment away from being banned.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Adam L Silverman:
Sounds like a headache. Glad I missed this thread. Is Recall an old nym or somebody new? The name sounds really familiar to be honest.
Anyway, it’s really annoying how certain individuals who (often rightly) criticize the actions undertaken by the US, especially under the Bush 2 Admin), will argue in bad faith. I especially hate the ones that try to claim Trump isn’t as bad as Bush because he hasn’t killed 500,000 Iraqis yet. As you know, Trump is a different kind of bad because he hollows out and weakens our institutions themselves
James E Powell
@Omnes Omnibus:
Agreed. Even though Trump is a moron, I would expect his national security people to come to a consensus and push for it.
Omnes Omnibus
I have to say that this should be automatic. The other steps are where the questions come in.
Omnes Omnibus
@James E Powell: They probably have, which of course makes Trump’s inaction more (!!!!!!) appalling.
Kropacetic
@Omnes Omnibus: Well, I’ve never been to a New York deli, but there’s this Polish deli the next town over from me that I adore. I look at their meats and cheeses and have no idea what any of this shit is*. But I’m never unhappy with what I order. And the bread, OMG.
We have a wealth of Asian options around here. Italian, but I never order Italian because my dad and I make it better. Mexican, Brazilian, Middle Eastern, maybe Greek if you’re lucky. I’ve been trying to find Spanish food for ages, no luck so far.
*My favorite I believe is called rolled bacon
I don’t Recall.
burnspbesq
@Recall:
Nice to see you’ve utterly missed Adam’s point. We’re in it. The only relevant question is what do we do about it.
Omnes Omnibus
@Recall: Well, just the European parts.
ETA: And there is a whole generation of army officers who were trained for just that. Pull out the old woodland cammo BDUs, fight nice, simple armored warfare. After all this desert stuff? What a relief.
Kropacetic
…
He went with the rubber/glue gambit, John, Let’s see how this play works out for him…
Recall
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Really old, but very infrequent.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Recall:
How is Adam is advocating for armed conflict with Russia?
Bill Arnold
@Adam L Silverman:
I came close in #72. Wasn’t saying that we should arrange for VP’s death in any attributable way. That would be stupid. The Russians so far have been pretty careful to not obviously assassinate non-Russians (non-miilitary non-Russians, it appears), AFAIK. (Exiled Russians they target.) And V. Putin has a lot of domestic enemies, some with resources.
Yutsano
@Kropacetic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Ru8DMW-grY
Adam L Silverman
@Recall: Actually I’m just banning you. Take it somewhere else. Your welcome here is worn out.
dopey-o
@Recall: ill-informed banter. Please bless us with your wisdom to get us out of the problem and into the solution.
Omnes Omnibus
@Adam L Silverman: Aw, we were just starting to have fun with it.
Kropacetic
@Yutsano: Funny, that’s actually what I was thinking of but didn’t remember quite well enough.
Now, now, don’t play with your food. You see how awful it is when the cat does it to a mouse, don’t you?
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Kropacetic:
LOL. That was pretty good
Adam L Silverman
@Kropacetic: He’s already accused me of writing Cole’s post from 2002 that he linked to. He’s also now banned.
Adam L Silverman
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): He’s not going to answer because he’s now in the sin bin.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Adam L Silverman:
The warmongering tyrant reveals himself for what he is! Goodbye cruel blog! I shall rise again like a phoenix from the ashes and defeat you! History will absolve me! For it is not you who pass judgment on me. That judgment is spoken by the eternal court of history. Pronounce me guilty a thousand times over: the goddess of the eternal court of history will smile and tear to pieces your verdict; for she acquits me!
/Recall, probably
Kropacetic
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Sometimes the most obvious jokes are the best ones.
Also, too, he didn’t answer the first 50 or so times someone asked him to support his claims that did not derive from the original text.
Adam L Silverman
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): It is what it is.
Kropacetic
Good thing we have all sorts of safeguards preventing him from just getting a new nym, huh?
spudgun
@Adam L Silverman: Thank you! The aggressive attitude and blockheaded-ness was really annoying and distracting me from the rest of the comment thread.
Back to lurking…
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Adam L Silverman:
Oh, I’m not criticizing you, just mocking Recall
Mary G
James E Powell
@burnspbesq:
Not nearly enough. Even if he goes down like Mondale.
Origuy
There are a few places in San Francisco that serve chicken paprikash. I think there’s still one in Sacramento, too. It’s one of my favorite dishes. My housemate made it for my birthday last year. The paprikash isn’t that hard to make, but I asked him to do spaetzle as well. I even bought a spaetzle maker. He put a lot of work into that. Maybe next time we’ll just have rice.
Bill Arnold
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
2020/04/09/ first comment i see. (Really old and infrequent might mean something else.)
dopey-o
I am not an expert on anything. But it is obvious that a nuclear-armed weakling is a dangerous adversary. War is a dangerous and costly experiment with unpredictable outcomes. Worst of all coukd be the unimagined outcomes.
This is a very big factor in Putin’s Brexit and 2016 gambits: low cost, low risk tactics with the possibility of massive payoff. If Putin thought he might hobble the UK and the US by spending a billion rubles on IT teams, he would have been foolish to neglect that course. War is expensive and dangerous. IT shenanigans are cheap and easy.
We may all be guilty of fighting the last war, and of not perceiving the war we are presently engaged in. The question we need to answer is “What are Putin’s next moves likely to be?”
I doubt that Afghanistan – as nasty as the bounties are – is central to Putin’s strategy to Make Russia Great Again.
Captain C
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@dopey-o:
Putting a toddler in charge of the nation with the largest nuclear arsenal in the world was dangerous and irresponsible. How could Putin have known that Trump wouldn’t have triggered WW3 with China, for example?
Captain C
@Mike in DC: Certain privileged purity people are fine with watching others suffer for their claimed ideals from afar. Also paid or volunteer trolls.
Mallard Filmore
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Because Putin had no intention to tell Trump to do that. //
ballerat
Word.
I suspected since his campaign he was at best a russian asset, likely a russian puppet, at worst a russian agent. Now we have some proof.
Boussinesque
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Wow, you really nailed the typical hyperbolic flounce by these types. Color me impressed!
ballerat
If Putin is as reckless as Trump.
That doesn’t seem to square with a guy who ran the KGB.
But even rational people might bet what’s left of their entire stake on a pair of deuces. When they are desperate.
I wonder if he has an ace in the hole.
The Pale Scot
We could give Poland a couple dozen nuclear tipped cruise missiles. Lock down the guidance system so they can only fly east. For protection from those fascist hooligans in Ukraine don’t you know. Russia has nothing to fear from the peace loving people of Poland. They’ll even promise to never launch first. What more could Ivan ask for?
Jay
@Kent:
tiny flaw in your brilliant plan,
crapload of “our” plutocrats, “jerb creators” and politici’s are neck deep in the offshoring of Russia’s wealth.
Yurtle the Turtle will have issues with this, given the source of his funding.
You seem to have forgotten who actually “runs” our Democracies.
The Pale Scot
@Recall:
No. But I’ll lay cash on the chance that the next guy isn’t a KGB agent who’s portfolio was to degrade NATO’s political cohesion.
Stuart Frasier
The way out is to aggressively get out of oil into renewable energy. This would kneecap a bunch of bad actors, not just Russia. It would also be a blow to malign interests in the US. We have the technology to transition away already. There are no petrochemicals that we can’t produce synthetically. Electricity from renewable sources is already cheaper than fossil fuel. There is no reason to be in bed with Russia or KSA anymore. The greatest harm we could do to them is to turn their reserves in the ground into stranded assets.
ballerat
Nyet, useful idiot. You make no sense.
I think US attacking oil commerce is a big expansion and a very high visibility one at that. It would be perfect for Putin. He would love that opportunity.
I’m with Adam in that failing diplomatic satisfaction, the SEALs should seek them out, and the Green Berets to follow up.
The world now knows this has happened. The cat is out of the bag. Respond in kind. And our guys are better. Much better.
prostratedragon
@Omnes Omnibus:
[No doubt Adam’s gone by now.] Maybe these folks can uber something down to Florida for him. Damn good cake and coffee, damn good. Oddly enough, there used to be a Viennese place just up the street from them, but I think it’s gone now.
ColoradoGuy
Tinfoil hat firmly screwed on here, so fair warning, this is pure speculation.
Ii seems reasonable that Trump owes the Russians not just hundreds of millions, but a billion or more. Well, I can think of one way for Putin to offer Trump (and his family) to pay off this blood debt to the most dangerous Mafia in the world.
Simple: Putin pays Trump (or discharges the debt) for about $1000 to $10,000 for every American that dies of COVID-19. Get much past 100,000, and Trump is well on his way to getting out of debt to Putin. Meanwhile, Putin has the satisfaction of knowing that an American President has killed more of his own countrymen than all of the Vietnam war. Basically, war by proxy.
I know this sounds appalling. But … would anyone put it past either Trump or Putin? It’s only a scaled-up version of what we know for sure has already happened in Afghanistan.
Morzer
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): For you shall be as dust beneath the wheels of the golf cart of human history! etc etc.
Chetan Murthy
@ColoradoGuy: Thing is, there’d be no need. All Vladi has to do, is to work to keep Shitler in power. Maybe, at most, to ensure that any capable deputies/secretaries/etc are dismissed. As long as Shitler is surrounded by sycophants and imbeciles, all of Vladi’s dreams come true.
Chaos is Vladi’s dream, right? We’re in chaos, and he wanders around the world, picking up the pieces, unhindered.
Jay
@Chetan Murthy:
Syria has stalled,
Libya, yup, disaster,
Crimea, money pit,
Ukraine, stalled with Ukraine fixing a lot of the economic, political, corruption, military, cultural weaknesses that left them vulnerable to begin with.
Morzer
@Jay:
Mark Galeotti in his book We Need To Talk About Putin starts by pointing out that Putin is a judoka, not a chess player. He’ll exploit an opponent’s weakness or miscalculation, but he’s not a long-term strategist.
Jay
@Chetan Murthy:
oh, and Wagner’s little African Adventures are getting a lot of Russians killed by ISIL and other locals, for no gain. Even the cash flow that is keeping them on the ground is money laundering.
Jay
@Morzer:
yup, and curtesy of the Turks and the GNA, Pantsir sales are in the toilet. Gotta suck that a $100k drone in the hands of a decent operator can trash a $25m air defence system.
Aleta
@Chetan Murthy: If chaos is his dream all he has to do is announce he helped Bi. win … (and J. Bond would have to stop him just before he made the announcement).
ColoradoGuy
The only reason I put that paranoid fantasy out there is that Shitler really seems to be aiming for maximum casualties while pretending he’s stoking a culture war. The culture war is to be expected, of course, since that’s the GOP’s stock-in-trade since Nixon, and before that, Joe McCarthy.
But the “mask war” as a cultural signifier is distinctly American, and has an outcome that is obvious to all but the death-cult members. How does GOP benefit, aside from sheer nihilism? Well, something as crude as cash payments to various parts of the GOP doesn’t seem that off-the-wall, considering the Russians were heavily funding the NRA not that long ago. Putin has a definite attraction to mass murder, and GOP has an exploitable attraction to nihilism, so the Russians saw seeding weapons of war into civilian American society as a cheap way to sow chaos and fear into America, all at very low cost.
Forgiving Trump’s debt to the Russian mafia is nothing more than a bookkeeping exercise to Putin … he and his pals can certainly afford it, and it’s way cheaper than a hot war. In terms of destabilizing America and terrorizing its citizens, doing exactly what Trump is not-doing with CV19 seems to be very cost-effective. He’s actively blocking an effective response, and stirring up his supporters into a zombie death army who are utterly resistant to reason or even self-interest.
Besides, what has Putin to lose? Worst case, he gets found out, and the Trump family flees to Russia as Putin’s little pets. Meanwhile, the GOP disintegrates after the Trump family flees. Still not a bad outcome from Putin’s perspective. Maybe not the Grand Prize of an American colony, but a gamble he’d be willing to take.
Sebastian
@Kent:
THIS! A thousand times this!!
ballerat
@Stuart Frasier: Damn. Another russian troll. Or maybe the same one under a different alias.
Deflect. Deflect. Deflect.
Assuming they’re unique, there’s been had a rash of russian trolls popping out of the pixelwork in this thread to lay it all out point by point how not to respond to an act of war by their GRU comrades in anything less than a year. In which case it becomes improbable if not impossible to respond to, just as NATO responding to russian annexation of Crimea now is impossible, or the russian invasion of Ukraine.
Sure, increase alternate energy. It’s a long term strategy. I’m sure Putin’s economy would feel the impact in a year or two. After the elections. Assuming the Dems win enough to make that strategy possible. But there’s no reason such policies can’t be pursued simultaneously with a swift kick in Putin’s GRU nads.
Stuart et al Carlo and Recall advocate a Susan Collins-type sternly worded concern letter when what is needed, right now, is an unmistakable response that we are very much willing and able to put a boot into Putin’s groin. And it won’t give him pause until we do. Which is why we have the Stuarts and the Carlos and the Recalls here. That’s their job. It’s maskirovka.
low-tech cyclist
Trump hasn’t done jack shit about >125,000 mostly preventable COVID-19 deaths here at home. Why should anyone be the least bit surprised that he doesn’t do jack shit about a couple dozen U.S. soldiers getting killed on the other side of the world?
And that’s without taking into account the nature of the Putin-Trump relationship over the past several years.
Not that I disagree with Adam or Cheryl about what we must do, or the importance of doing it. Not in the least. This has been one of my big themes on the domestic front lately: if the bad guys keep doing bad stuff, and the good guys don’t push back, then guess what? The bad guys will do more of the same, and quite possibly escalate to doing worse stuff.
It’s important to stand up to the Russians if we don’t want them to incite more bad shit against our people overseas. We can’t prevent the deaths of those they’ve already killed, but we damned sure should be doing what we can to bring a stop to it, to prevent future American deaths.
Meanwhile, here at home, another 4000 Americans will be killed by the coronavirus next week. And another 3000-4000 (if we’re lucky, the numbers won’t go up again, but who knows) the following week, and the week after that, and probably every week between now and Biden’s hoped-for inauguration next January. And all because the President of the United States is MIA in the fight against the virus. You can put details on it, but it all comes down to that.
But these people haven’t died yet. Most of them haven’t even gotten infected yet. A change of President for the next several months, even to Mike fucking Pence, might save many of them. So maybe the Dems should try to replace Trump with Pence? Or at least say with a unified voice that Trump is MIA in this, and should resign on that account?
Pushback. When the bad guys are doing bad shit, you’ve gotta push back. They’re not gonna change for the better by themselves.
And there’s starting to be a chance in hell that it might work. Now that the plague is hitting red states, GOP Senators are getting nervous about their chances for this fall. If your opponent is drowning, throw them a fucking anvil. Make them vote on whether or not the deaths should continue to pile up. Make them publicly choose between Trump and American lives.
low-tech cyclist
Speaking of people who’ve been MIA in this – and this is another big Dem opportunity, IMHO, that comes out of impeachment – there’s the “pro-life” movement.
Yeah, I know, big surprise, huh? But I checked to make sure; didn’t take long. National Right-to-Life has nothing about it on their website. Their evaluation of Trump from a ‘pro-life’ perspective doesn’t mention the 125,000 coronavirus deaths. The American Life League mentions the coronavirus, but only as a hindrance that can’t be allowed to stop their work of saving the precious ‘unborn babies.’ You keep going – Anglicans for Life, Lutherans for Life, funny, none of them care about the lives that Trump sacrifices every day. Once they’re born, kill ’em if you want.
My point is that the Dems have a chance to say, “WE are the true pro-life party. We’re trying to remove Trump because doing so would save many thousands of lives of people who’ve already been born. The fact that they don’t matter to you alleged pro-lifers says it all: you aren’t pro-life. None of your alleged concern for the lives of fetuses and embryos prevents you from being concerned about the lives of people who’ve already been born – and if you’re really pro-life, they should matter just as much. Yet you’re silent while 120,000 people die extremely preventable deaths in three months.
“So you are lying about your concern for ‘life.’ Don’t talk to me about life – you don’t give a damn about life. You’re just anti-abortion for reasons that, whatever they may be, have nothing to do with life.
“When it comes to people who’ve already been born, WE are the true pro-life party – we’re going to the mats to try to save the lives of thousands of Amerians, while the allegedly pro-life party protects the President who keeps on killing them. We are pro-life; the Republicans and all those allegedly pro-life organizations are not.”
Being “pro-life” is practically the last leg the Republican Party has to stand on. Cut it the fuck out from under them.
But it doesn’t work nearly as well if, in fact, the Dems aren’t trying to save those people.
Geminid
@Adam L Silverman: Thank you for this post. I wonder if you or Cheryl could do a post sometime on clean energy transition. A lot of topics these days are negative, and we have to consider them, but clean energy transition is a positive story, and would almost serve as a respite thread. Just a few excerpts from the interview with economist Robert Pollin in the March ’19 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, titled “We Need a Better Green New Deal” would supply plenty of grist for the mill. British scientist Myles Allen worked on the recent IPCC report, and also wrote a good article featured in the same publication, May ’19 I think.
Chris Johnson
@ColoradoGuy: No, Trump doesn’t get to flee, and there’s no hero’s welcome waiting for him. Maybe for McConnell, who’s been doing much more coordinated work. Maybe for Barr. Trump is not in their class.
What I’m wondering this morning is: this came out in the New York Times, yes? The problem there is that I’ve had the NYT pegged as Russian-controlled for at least a decade. Why? Money, quite simply. Newspapers in the age of the Internet are fucked, no exceptions. Most simply folded. The NYT considers itself FAR too important to simply fold, and the difference between its self-estimation and the economic reality is total vulnerability.
Vulnerability to what? To Russian oligarchs and/or the Russian state ‘investing’ in them and then owning them. Shenanigans with folks like Trump and Epstein also possible but hardly even necessary: it’s the exposure of the Times to failure that leads them to become traitors, and of course we have Trump because key media sources were compromised, and it’s been starkly obvious the NYT was taken, for many years.
So why are they suddenly allowing dangerous material against Trump just days after Trump has demonstrated that he’s no longer capable of effectively helping Russia as an American President, due to his catastrophic failure of a rally?
(yeah, should have seen this coming)
So then, since the NYT is actually run out of Russia and now Russia is seeking to take out Trump and orchestrate maximum damage to the US and can back up its ‘leaks’ because they’re leaks of the truth that they themselves have been covering up for many years, who do they have as a back-up?
In other words, assuming Russia has targeted Trump for the final act of his catastrophe, which is deeply predictable, what next? How is revealing Trump, since they have no choice to ditch him, supposed to help them, and what is their tactical game here? They don’t do long term plans, it’s all managed chaos. They’ll get chaos, sure, but where are their levers of control and what are the Russian agents trying to flood the internet and media with?
If they want a physical war to show how we suck and are the aggressor, I say nope. If they want to depend on being an oil power, I’m with Carlo (though I hate fracking: can’t go along with actually increasing fossil fuel usage, we’re getting slammed by climate already, I assume there’s another plan possible).
I want to watch critically for whatever the trolls are pushing, and then learn from that.
Mark's Bubbie
@Mary G: And gay people too I assume.
Chris Johnson
And bear in mind Putin’s primary tactic with disinformation (see Adam Curtis ‘Hypernormalization’, and Adam Silverman can probably agree with this too) is to back BOTH sides of the opposition. So expect trolls taking contrary positions.
Another Scott
@Chris Johnson: You’re assuming that this revelation is somehow different from all the others. It’s not a difference in kind.
Timothy O’Brien at Bloomberg in 2017:
TheWeek from 2019:
(Emphasis added.)
“Other than that, how was the play, Mrs. Lincoln?”
We know who Donnie is. We know he is a monster. We know he lies about everything. The timing of this probably has more to do with FTFNYT fears of being scooped than anything else. I guarantee it’s not based on it somehow being timed to do +1000 Damage to him or his campaign (as opposed to the fall).
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
The Moar You Know
My favorite thing to do in a dead thread; comment.
A few people bought up, if I can paraphrase, the idea of “taking the war to Russia in cyberspace”.
The Russian Navy is a rusting, largely landbound joke. Even their subs are no longer anywhere near the latest and greatest, and those are the only things that have been funded. The rest of the service is literally falling apart, with their one aircraft carrier basically sunk by negligence during attempts to repair it. Compare and contrast with the US Navy. Literally the owners of the world’s oceans.
Well, that’s the situation we are in with regards to any sort of cyber action, save the actors are reversed. Russia owns the networks. Pretty sure they could shut down, oh…the world banking system, would that be catastrophic enough? They could have that done by Monday morning.
We have the equivalent of one burned-out aircraft carrier that can’t even leave the dock.
Constance Reader
@The Moar You Know: The same way he squared the oaths he took to all three of his wives. Just puffs of air with sound.
J R in WV
If I recall correctly, the New York Times is 50% owned by Carlos Slim, a Mexican multi-billionaire, who is in theory a “silent partner.” Given the state of civil society in Mexico (cartels funding by kidnapping, drugs, etc) there’s no way to know who has a vise-grip on Mr C. Slim’s parts. Does Russian intelligence have control over at least some Mexican cartels? Who knows, cheap at the price, and the Russians are probably more creatively violent than even drug cartels.
And the idea that someone who owns 50% of a business is actually a “silent partner” is laughable on the face. Running a giant news organization is very complicated, and exerting control in secret would be even more complex and difficult. So a good story (like Russian GRU paying bounties on US troop deaths) that runs against the interests of “silent partners” could easily slip into print/bits at any time. IF we don’t see any followup going on, that’s one clue that the paymasters have stepped in in the deep background.
And the reporters will only know that they have a new assignment, somewhere completely disconnected from their big breaking story about… what was that again? I dunno for sure what was big yesterday, or maybe the week before that!! Who can keep up with the scandal of the day, yesterday, or last week?
the utter dregs
Mary Longstreet : Oh Charles, I can’t imagine you’re advocating a Carthaginian peace.
Professor Charles Rankin : Well, as a historian, I must remind you that the world hasn’t had much trouble from Carthage in the past 2000 years.
Raoul
@Adam L Silverman: Dang. That’s a lot to take in.