The Brain-Dead Fanatic

 

The Brain-Dead Fanatic

By Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.

July 11, 2022

 

 

The philosopher George Santayana said that fanaticism “consists in redoubling your efforts when you have forgotten your aim,” and by this definition, brain-dead Biden and the gang of neocons who control him certainly count as fanatics. Their policies have failed but they won’t stop. They go on with disastrous ideas that don’t work.

Biden wanted to choke off Russia’s economy through sanctions, but his policy has aided the Russian economy and hurt the American economy. As the great Dr. Ron Paul says, “Last week a New York Times reporter asked Biden how long he expects Americans to pay record gasoline prices over his Administration’s Ukraine policy. ‘As long as it takes,’ replied the president without hesitation.

‘Russia cannot defeat Ukraine,’ added Biden as justification for his Administration’s pro-pain policy toward Americans. The president has repeatedly tried to deflect blame for the growing economic crisis by claiming Russia is solely behind recent inflation. ‘The reason why gas prices are up is because of Russia. Russia, Russia, Russia,’ he said in the same press conference.

Brian Deese, Director of President Biden’s National Economic Council, was asked in a recent CNN interview, ‘What do you say to those families that say, listen, we can’t afford to pay $4.85 a gallon for months, if not years?’

His answer? ‘This is about the future of the Liberal World Order and we have to stand firm.’

Has there ever been an Administration more out of touch with the American people? If you asked working Americans whether they’d be happy to suffer poverty for the ‘liberal world order,’ how many would say ‘that sounds like a great idea’?

The strangest part of this idea that Americans must suffer to hurt the Russians is that these policies aren’t even hurting Russia! On the contrary: Russia has seen record profits from its oil and gas exports since the beginning of the Ukraine war.

According to a recent New York Times article, increasing global oil and gas prices have enabled Russia to finance its war on Ukraine. US sanctions did not bring the Russian economy to its knees, as Biden promised. They actually brought the American economy to its knees while Russian profits soared.

As Newsweek noted last week, Russian television pundits are joking that with the financial windfall Russia has seen since sanctions were imposed, ‘Biden is of course our agent.’

Washington’s bi-partisan foreign policy of wasting trillions on endless wars overseas has finally come home. Biden is clearly out of touch, but there is plenty of blame to go around. The only question is whether we will see an extended recession…or worse.”

Biden wants to support the Ukraine against Russia, but Russia is winning, The great military historian and friend of the Mises Institute Martin van Creveld says, “Like almost all other Westerners, at the time the Russian-Ukrainian War broke out in February 2022 I was convinced that the Russians would fail to reach their objectives and lose the war. . . Since then four very eventful months have passed. As they went on, the following factors have forced me to take another look at the situation.

First, the Ukrainians are not fighting a guerrilla war. Instead, as the list of weapons they have asked the West to provide them with shows, they have been trying to wage a conventional one: tank against tank, artillery barrel against artillery barrel, and aircraft against aircraft. All, apparently, in the hope of not only halting the Russian forces but of expelling them. Given that the Russians can fire ten rounds for every Ukrainian one, such a strategy can only be a sure recipe for defeat.

Second, a change in Russian tactics. Greatly underestimating their enemies, the Russians started the war by attempting a coup de main against the center of Ukrainian power at Kiev. When this failed it took them some time to decide what to do next; they may even have replaced a few of their top ranking generals. But then they regrouped and switched to the systematic reduction of Ukrainians cities and towns. Much as, in 1939-40, Stalin and his generals did to Finland. As in both that war and World War II as a whole they resorted to what has traditionally been their most powerful weapons, i.e, massed artillery. It now appears that the change enabled them to reduce their losses to levels that they can sustain for a long time. Perhaps longer than the Ukrainians who, by Zelensky’s own admission, are losing as many as 100-200 of their best fighters killed in action each day.

Third, Western military technology, especially anti-aircraft weapons, anti-tank weapons, and drones may be excellent. However, limited numbers, the result of years and years of parsimony and the belief that war in Europe had become impossible, plus the need to retrain the relevant Ukrainian personnel, means that it has been slow to arrive in the places where it is most needed. Not to mention the fact that, whereas the Russians are fighting close to home, NATOs lines of communication stretch over hundreds of miles all the way from Ukraine’s borders with Poland, Slovakia and Romania in the west to the Donbas in the east. Almost all the terrain in between is flat, devoid of shelter, and thinly populated.  Meaning that it is ideal for the employment of airpower, precisely the field in which Russian superiority over Ukraine is most pronounced.

Fourth, strict censorship is making the impact of Western economic sanctions on Russia’s population hard to asses. If there is any grumbling, it is being energetically suppressed. Meanwhile, a look at the macroeconomics seems to show that Russia is coping much better than many Westerners expected. Gold reserves have been inching up, enabling Putin to link his currency to gold—the first country to do so since Switzerland went in the opposite direction back in 1999. The Ruble, which early in the war came close to collapse, is back to a seven-year high against the dollar, trend upward. Given the fall in imports as well as the tremendous rise in energy prices, more money is flowing into Russia’s coffers than ever before. Most of that money comes from selling energy, foodstuffs and raw materials to countries such as China and India. China in turn is now the world’s number one industrial power; once its current troubles with COVID-19 are over, it should be well able to provide Russia with almost any kind of industrial product it needs, and do so for a long time to come.

Fifth, the economic impact of the war on the West has been much greater than anyone thought. Saving Ukraine form Russian’s clutches is not like doing the same with Afghanistan. On both sides of the Atlantic inflation is higher than it has been at any time since 1980. Especially in regard to energy, which Russia is refusing to provide Europe with, it is giving rise not just to confusion but to some real hardship. Should it continue, as it almost certainly will, it will give rise to growing popular discontent with the war and demands that their countries’ involvement in it be reduced or brought to an end.  Even if that end means abandoning Ukraine and allowing Putin to have his way with it.

Last not least, beginning with the Enlightenment the West has long preened itself on being a fortress where liberty, law and justice prevail. Now the repeated, highly publicized, requisitioning of the property of so-called oligarchs is beginning to make some people wonder. First, no one knows what an ‘oligarch’ is. Second, the fact that some ‘oligarchs’ have been in more or less close touch with Putin over the years does not automatically turn them into criminals. Third, supposing they are criminals, it is not at all clear why they were left alone for so long and only began to be targeted after the war broke out. Could it be that, in combating the oligarchs, the West is undermining the justice of its cause?

To be sure, we are not there yet. But as growing number of statements that the war is going to be a long one show, it is now primarily a question of who can draw the deepest breath and hold out the longest. And when it comes to that, Russia’s prospects of coming out on top and obtaining a favorable settlement are not at all bad.” See this.

A leading British strategic institute also says that Russia is winning: “The war in Ukraine risks turning into a protracted conflict that Russia will eventually win, a leading think-tank has said.

The report by the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) warned that current Russian advantages and Ukrainian weaknesses are leading to a style of conflict that favours Moscow.

The invasion is developing into a war of attrition, the authors said, where each side attempts to break down the other through continuous and ongoing losses of, personnel, troops and equipment.

After failing to take the capital of Kyiv, Russia’s forces have concentrated their attack on the south eastern Donbas region, and have managed to gain control of a number of cities in Luhansk and Donetsk.

The city of Lysychansk was claimed by Russian forces on Sunday, bringing an end to one of the biggest battles in Europe for generations, which saw Moscow bring the full might of its ground forces to a small area of the frontline.”

As the distinguished foreign policy expert Professor John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago has pointed out, Russia doesn’t want to conquer all of the Ukraine. Russia’s main aim is to keep the Ukraine out of NATO: “On 16 June, University of Chicago Professor John J. Mearsheimer visited Villa Schifanoia in Florence to discuss the current Russian invasion on Ukraine whilst exploring the potential causes and consequences of the crisis.

The event, that was organised by the Robert Schuman Centre and the Department of History, gathered almost 200 attendees in person and online.

The political scientist, well known for his realist approach, argued that the United States was principally responsible for causing the Ukraine crisis, even if Putin was the one starting the war and the person responsible for Russia’s conduct on the battlefield: ‘My key point is that the United States pushed forward policies towards Ukraine that Putin and his colleagues see as existential threat to their country […] specifically I am talking about America’s obsession with bringing Ukraine into NATO and making it a Western bulwark on Russia’s border.’

Professor Mearsheimer insisted that Moscow was not interested in making Ukraine part of Russia, but in making sure it would not become a springboard from Western aggression; and that Russia could not feel safe, develop and exist while facing a permanent threat from the territory of today’s Ukraine. He insisted that despite the Western narrative about NATO, the determinant aspect to understand the root causes of this conflict is how Moscow sees the alliance’s actions.”

Despite these manifest failures, brain-dead Biden and his gang of neocons persist in their policies. Can there be greater fanaticism and madness than this?

The Best of Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.