Dispatches from the No Fly Zone
Episode Five: Biden, Zelensky & the Neocons, by Philip Giraldi
Editors Note: Friends, As I announced a couple of weeks ago, I’ve launched on my Substack page a new content initiative, a curated series of bi-weekly articles titled Dispatches from the No Fly Zone.
These articles will be sourced from a variety of different people whose tireless truth-seeking efforts I’ve long admired and respected, and who have kindly agreed to allow me to republish their excellent work. As newer or unfamiliar writers and analysts come to my attention, I will consider showcasing their efforts should they be interested in being part of this ongoing initiative.
For this and the following episode I am once again featuring our inaugural guest contributor Phil Giraldi. Philip is a former military intelligence officer and senior CIA counter-terrorism specialist who served eighteen years overseas in Europe; he also holds a doctorate in European History.
Along with being a highly respected authority on international security and counterterrorism issues, he is the Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest. The CNI is a Washington-based consortium whose mission is to encourage and promote a U.S. foreign policy that protects national interests, is more consistent with American values, resists ‘entangling alliances’, and contributes to a just solution of the Arab-Israeli conflict.
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A Brief from the Editor: Former U.S. president Ronald Reagan once memorably quipped, ‘It has been said that politics is the second oldest profession…I’ve learned over the years it bears a striking resemblance to the first.’ Being a show business ‘refugee’, Reagan understood this reality perhaps better than any politician. At all events the ‘Gipper’ for once weren’t whistlin’ Dixie, although it’s uncertain if the legendary ‘old hoofer’ was or was not being slyly self-referential!
That said, it’s difficult to imagine the former Quipper-in-Chief would himself recognise his old stomping ground now if he were reanimated for a day to survey the landscape, with the ‘show business’ of the contemporary Beltway even less distinguishable in so many respects from ‘Wallywood’ and the entertainment business. Which is to say they’ve never been mutually exclusive domains, and far less so now. The recent farcical antics by Sean “Showpony” Penn over the Ukraine situation is a gold standard point of reference herein. Of course one could riff for hours on end about the incestuous relationship between these metonymous institutions with allusions to spare in relation to politics and entertainment, not least that old chestnut ‘politics is show business for ugly people.’ Though we’d have to say Wallywood is not without its share of the latter!
Unlike ‘Wallywood’ though—whose output is at best patchy and predictable if not puerile in the extreme—the grand political kabuki show cum theatre of the patently absurd that passes for politics as usual in Washington is never less than enthralling, edge of your seat spectacle. In ‘Wallywood’, they can and do make s**t up (to employ the vernacular). In Washington, they do that too of course, though perhaps they’re far better at the improvisational talent required for doing so successfully. One would be hard pressed to say their output is patchy or predictable! As for puerile, that’s a whole other story.
All the same, if one is not a masochistic political junkie/voyeur or an integral member of the dramatis personae, this 24/7 spectacular by any definition pantomime all up may or may not be entertainment of a very dubious kind. It all comes down to perspective. In this the old adage ‘there’s never a dull moment’ springs to mind regardless of one’s POV. Some more sanguine folk might argue that at least there is no admission fee or entry charges, and one can always get a front-row seat any night of the week. Which is not of course the same as saying its FOC or that we don’t pay a price! Oh that were the case. However, I digress…
With all this in mind, it’s probably no surprise to discover that Washington’s au courant poster boy is none other than the Ukrainian president one Volodymyr Zelensky, a former comedian, an all singing, all dancing show business refugee himself (like POTUS Number 40). This is to be sure a political dilettante par excellence, a man whose singular (and presumably for some, impressive) achievement apart from being the unlikely president of Ukraine, was that he once ‘tinkled the ivories’ with (wait for this!) his penis!
And yet despite this—or maybe because of it—a lot of purportedly serious-minded denizens of Washington (and not surprisingly, of Wallywood too; the aforesaid Penn, Francis Ford Coppola to name just two), take this guy very seriously, including (at least when he’s compos mentis) the president of the U.S. himself, Joe Biden.
Today’s episode then involves a) a bogus POTUS who if he hasn't lost all his marbles has surely misplaced the bag they came in and yet is possibly one of the most criminally corrupt men ever to sit in the Oval Chair, a big call by any measure; b) another president who can play the ‘goanna’ with both hands behind his back whilst his ‘smalls’ are circumnavigating his ankles and whose biggest fans include some of Europe’s nastiest card-carrying neo-Nazis; and last but by no means least c) a motley, unhinged bunch of Washington-based war criminal, war-mongering dual passport carrying crypto-Jewish folks with more or less equally dual loyalties who call the shots in and around the Beltway with what ‘entertainment’ project gets the green or not and who gets the nod career-wise! As some more cynical souls might suggest, not unlike they do in the aforementioned ‘Wallywood’. It’s at this point we may have exhausted the Wallywood-Washington politics as entertainment analogies. For now at least! Tomorrow though is another day! Without further ado, let’s allow Philip Giraldi to complete this sorry tale. — Ed.
— When you are in a hole, you can always dig deeper
There are many backstories surfacing from what is going on in Ukraine and Washington that have been largely ignored amid the drumbeat of casualty counts combined with claims and counter-claims from the two sides. Two stories that I believe have received insufficient attention are the US government’s three decades long obsession with weakening and de facto destroying the Russian state and the dominant neocon plus associate liberal democracy promoter role in what has become American foreign policy.
To be sure, anyone who doubts that the US is currently on a course to not only replace President Vladimir Putin but also to crash the Russian economy is delusional. Washington has been trying to deconstruct the former Soviet Union ever since 1991, beginning with President Bill Clinton’s expansion of NATO into Eastern Europe in spite of a pledge not to do so and his unleashing the oligarchs who looted the country’s natural resources under President Boris Yeltsin.
The pressure continued under the beatified President Barack Obama, who appointed as Ambassador Michael McFaul, who saw his mission as connecting with dissidents and opposition forces inside Russia, a role incompatible with his promotion of US interests and protecting US persons.
And then we had the redoubtable President Donald Trump undoing confidence building agreements with Russia followed by the current disaster that is unfolding before our very eyes. One should not ignore the fact that the fighting in Ukraine came about largely because the Biden Administration refused to negotiate seriously regarding the mostly reasonable demands that the Kremlin was making to enhance its own security. Former US arms inspector Scott Ritter cites a reported comment by a senior Biden Administration official which sums up the current policy, such as it is:
“The only end game now is the end of Putin regime. Until then, all the time Putin stays, [Russia] will be a pariah state that will never be welcomed back into the community of nations.”
Indeed, President Joe Biden’s recent disastrous trip to Europe can likely be characterized as one wishes to see it and the media has certainly done considerable spinning, but Biden left behind a legacy of various gaffes and lapsus linguae that made clear that the US is in the game to defeat Russia however long it will take to play out. And Biden has considerable support from brain dead congressmen like Republican Senator Lindsey Graham who has called for someone to murder Putin, lamenting “Is there a Brutus in Russia?”
On his trip, Biden revealed that he expects US combat troops to go to Ukraine’s assistance and he has also taken delight in denouncing Putin as a “killer,” a “thug,” a “murderous dictator” and a “man who cannot remain in power.” In so doing, he has openly called for Putin’s removal from office, i.e. regime change, while also opening the door to an obvious false flag operation in his unwillingness to reveal when questioned by a reporter how the US might respond if Russia were to use chemical weapons in Ukraine. That he has taken those positions means that it will be impossible to restore manageable relations with Moscow post Ukraine. It is a heavy price to pay for something that is little more than posturing.
The chemical weapon issue is particularly important as President Donald Trump bombed Syria with cruise missiles in the wake of a fabricated report that Bashar al-Assad had used such weapons in an attack on Khan Shaykhun in 2017. It turned out that the anti-regime terrorists who were occupying the city at the time had themselves staged the attack and deliberately blamed it on the Syrian government to produce an expected US response.
Based on what I am seeing and hearing, I would conclude that the neoconservatives and their liberal democracy promoting friends are working hard from the inside to make something like a war with Russia happen. Note in particular that we are talking about war with shooting and deaths, not just a reincarnation or extension of the Cold War of yore.
News on April 1st, admittedly April Fools’ Day, suggests that Ukraine has staged helicopter launched missile attacks on a fuel storage depot inside Russia, which, if true, could produce a massive escalation from the Kremlin. It would be a typical neocon maneuver to dramatically increase the level of the fighting and draw the United States into the conflict.
In addition to that, I know I am not the only one who has noticed the pace and focus of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskys’ widely promoted appeals to groups and world governments to come to his country’s aid, to include establishment of a no-fly zone. The appeals are slick, convincing and carefully focused, with Zelensky being framed as a “hero” fighting valiantly against savage invaders. To put it mildly they are way beyond the capabilities and experience level of a former comedian, whose performances featured erotic dancing and playing a piano with his penis, corruptly placed on the presidential hotseat by a billionaire oligarch Israeli citizen.
The US media is, of course, lavishly praising Zelensky, but I would bet that he has a cadre of American and possibly Israeli neoconservatives working diligently behind him to get it right, coaching him on what to say and do. There might be US government players also in on the act, to include NED (National Endowment for Democracy), CIA information specialists, State Department media consultants and observers from the National Security Council. Indeed, there is as much a war going on over the airwaves and internet to influence thinking internationally as there is fighting taking place on the ground.
One should conclude that the CIA is playing the central role in the “Russia Project” because of its ability to shield what it is doing from scrutiny. Based on previous operations to overthrow governments in various places, one might assume that the so-called covert action approach is multi-level. It consists of media placements that are intended to sway opinion both inside and outside Russia and produce unrest, the identification and recruitment of Russian government officials when they travel overseas, and the support of dissidents both internally and externally who share a negative view of Moscow and its policies.
A major component in the approach is to obtain Western liberal support for harsh sanctions and other repressive measures against the Kremlin based on the fraudulent proposition that Putin and his associates are out to destroy “democracy” and “freedom.” Ironically, Americans are less “free” and also poorer because of the actions of their own government since 2001, not because of Vladimir Putin.
As was the case with Iraq, Afghanistan and the long list of American interventions, it is the neocons who are in front demanding a powerful military response, both to Russia and, inevitably, to Iran. What is particularly noticeable is how the neocons and their liberal democracy promoting counterparts have in several areas dominated the foreign policies of both parties. Leading neocon Bill Kristol, who called the Biden speech “a historic call to action on par with Ronald Reagan[‘s] ‘Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall speech,’” recently also contributed
‘There would be no real prospect of an awakening in the United States and Europe were it not for the stand the Ukrainians have made. We would still be denying the threats we face. We would still be turning away from the urgency of the task we face. We would even, I daresay, still fail to appreciate the preciousness of the freedom and decency we have the obligation—and the honor—to defend.
It is the Ukrainians who have shown us what free men and women can do, and what they are sometimes required to do, in defense of that freedom. It is the Ukrainians who have shown the world that we are in a new period of consequences. It is the Ukrainians who have given us the example of what it means today to fight back against brutality, and to fight for freedom.’
Kristol is, as so often, full of flag waving, chest puffing nonsense, peddling the notion that the United States has an obligation to police the world.
Another leading neocon and regular Washington Post and The Atlantic contributor Anne Applebaum puts it this way and in so doing expands the playing field to include much of the world:
‘Unless democracies defend themselves together, the forces of autocracy will destroy them. I am using the word forces, in the plural, deliberately. Many American politicians would understandably prefer to focus on the long-term competition with China. But as long as Russia is ruled by Putin, then Russia is at war with us too. So are Belarus, North Korea, Venezuela, Iran, Nicaragua, Hungary, and potentially many others.’
It would be nice, for a change, to end an article on a high note, but high notes are hard to find these days. If there is anything beyond Ukraine to demonstrate the insanity of US foreign policy it would have to be, inevitably, recent news out of Israel. US Secretary of State Tony Blinken was recently in Israel trying in part to sell the possibility that the Biden Administration might actually come to a non-proliferation agreement with Iran over its nuclear program. Israel strongly opposes any such move and its lobby in the US led by various neocon think tanks has been working hard to kill any deal.
So, what did Blinken do? He asked Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett for suggestions of what might be done in lieu of an actual agreement. Naftali reportedly suggested harsher sanctions on Iran. Cut it any way you want, but the renewal of 2015’s Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) is beneficial for both the United States and all of Iran’s neighbors, and here the US senior-most representative involved in the negotiations is asking the head of a foreign government to tell him what to do.
Something is very wrong in Washington.
Philip Giraldi.
Republished with permission of the author. April 12, 2022
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