Of Dubious Value

Neo-Conservative Foreign Policy

Bloomberg:
Putin Thinks He's 'Vladimir the Great,' Condoleezza Rice Says
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-11-05/putin-thinks-he-s-vladimir-the-great-condoleezza-rice-says?cmpid=yhoo.headline&ref=yfp

As former U.S. Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice knew Vladimir Putin up close. One thing he liked to remind her during her time in the Bush administration was how Russia had "only been great when it has been led by great men, like Alexander II and Peter the Great.”

Hearing him eulogize former tzars, there was a little voice in her head that wanted to suggest “and Vladimir the Great?,” Rice told a group of investors and bankers at an annual forum hosted by Fitch Ratings Ltd. in New York on Wednesday. As a diplomat she never did out of politeness, “but that is how he thinks.”

Her musings on Putin’s motivations seek to put Russia’s growing assertiveness on the world stage, from the annexation of Crimea to the bombing campaign in Syria, as part of a grander scheme to restore Russian influence to its heyday. International sanctions and its first recession since 2009 have done little to blunt Putin’s standing among Russians.

“He has decided that he will find a way to avenge what he considers the greatest tragedy of the 20th century, which is the collapse of the Soviet Union,” said Rice, who served under President George W. Bush and was a diplomatic adviser to his father during the dissolution of the Soviet Union...

No mention of the 21st century's great tragedys.... like Yellow-Cake-Gate and the ensuing disasters in Iraq which befell us all, like a deadly, infernal line of dominoes, falling one after another.

Ms. Rice is reasoning by Analogy:
Oswald Spengler, The Decline Of The West

The means whereby to understand living forms is Analogy...

...Thus, in the case of Ranke, a master of artistic analogy, we find that his parallels of Cyarxes and Henry the Fowler... possess morphologically no significance, and his oft-quoted analogy between the Hellenic city-states and the Renaissance republics very little, while the deeper truth of his comparison of Alcibiades and Napoleon is accidental.

I can't find any Rice-ean analogies for the recently deceased Ahmad Chalabi, but throughout the period from 1991 - the first Iraq War - to the present, it is doubtful she ever said nor thought by any significant or deep analogies. (She may have envisged him as an Iraqi Patrick Henry, which would be consistent with the Cloud-Cuckoo-Land nature of Neoconservative foreign policy.)

Ahmad Chalabi (Image by © Patrick Robert/Corbis)

In Commentary two days ago, we read on the death of Chalabi:
Mourning Ahmad Chalabi
Michael Rubin / Nov. 3, 2015
https://www.commentarymagazine.com/foreign-policy/middle-east/iraq/mourning-ahmad-chalabi/

...The press also lazily accepted other false narratives and never actually conducting basic fact checking. Consider today’s obituary from the Washington Post, written by Loveday Morris. She writes, “After years in exile in the United States and Britain, Chalabi returned to Iraq after Saddam’s fall, becoming interim oil minister.”

This is false. Chalabi had a house in Beirut and London, but lived primarily inside Iraqi Kurdistan after the 1991 uprising freed the region from Saddam Hussein. When war broke out, he had been in Iraq for 12 years, and he was one of the few politicians to live exclusively outside the Green Zone in the wake of the war...

"This is false"?!
The nature, the essence of political Neoconservatism : to argue about whether their Man in Baghdad lived in Kurdistan or in London.

NO mention of the Falsehoods of yellow cake uranium; no mention of the falsehoods on Weapons of Mass Destruction, no mention of the myriad lies and subterfuges that committed us to this Trojan War which has no end.

If you want a reminder on how ignorant, clueless, and corrupt the Bush Administration was, go and re-read"
The New York Times
THE STRUGGLE FOR IRAQ: THE EXILE;
Conservative Allies Take Chalabi Case To the White House
By ELISABETH BUMILLER
Published: May 29, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/29/us/struggle-for-iraq-exile-conservative-allies-take-chalabi-case-white-house.html

...Mr. Wolfowitz's spokesman, Charley Cooper, said in an e-mail message that Mr. Wolfowitz believed that Mr. Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress ''have provided valuable operational intelligence to our military forces in Iraq, which has helped save American lives.'' Mr. Cooper added in the message that ''Secretary Wolfowitz hopes that the events of the last few weeks haven't undermined that.''...

This was the Mr. Wolfowitz who - in his best George C. Scott imitation as General Buck Tirgidson in Dr. Strangelove -  said famously:

"This war will cost, ohhh, a billion dollars... TOPS!"

Nice to hear from you, Condoleezza.

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