[rad-green] The Delusions Of The Impeachment Witnesses Point To A Larger Problem

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2019/12/the-delusions-of-the-impeachment-witnesses-point-to-a-larger-problem.html
Moon of Alabama          December 5, 2019The Delusions Of The Impeachment
Witnesses Point To A Larger Problem

During yesterday's impeachment hearing at the House House Judiciary
Committee one of the Democrats' witnesses made some rather crazy
statements. Pamela Karlan, a Stanford law professor, first proved to have
bought <https://twitter.com/NewsHour/status/1202348412504379392> into
neo-conservative delusions about the U.S. role in the world:

America is not just 'the last best hope,' as Mr. Jefferies said, but it's
also the shining city on a hill. We can't be the shining city on a hill and
promote democracy around the world if we're not promoting it here at home.

As people in Bolivia and elsewhere can attest the United States does not
promote democracy. It promotes rightwing regimes and rogue capitalism. The
U.S. is itself not a democracy
<https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/files/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc.pdf>
but
a functional oligarchy as a major Harvard study found:

Economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have
substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average
citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent
influence.

But worse than Karlan's pseudo-patriotic propaganda claptrap were her
remarks <https://twitter.com/BBuchman_CNS/status/1202267180219478024> on
the Ukraine and Russia:

This is not just about our national interests to protect elections or *make
sure Ukraine stays strong and fights the Russians so we don't have to fight
them here*, but it's in our national interest to promote democracy
worldwide.

That was not an joke. From the video
<https://twitter.com/aaronjmate/status/1202373882960908293> it certainly
seems that the woman believes that nonsense.

<https://www.moonofalabama.org/images9/karlan-s.jpg>
[image: image.png]

For one the Ukraine is not fighting "the Russians". The Kiev government is
fighting against east-Ukrainians who disagree with the Nazi controlled
regime which the U.S. installed
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CL_GShyGv3o> after it instigated the
unconstitutional Maidan coup. Russia supplies the east-Ukrainians and there
were a few Russian volunteers fighting on their side but no Russian
military units entered the Ukraine.

But aside from that how can anyone truly believe that the Ukraine "fights
the Russians so we don't have to fight them here"?

Is Russia on the verge of invading the United States? Where? How? And most
importantly: What for?

How would that be in Russia's interest?

One must be seriously disturbed to believe such nonsense. How can it be
that Karlan is teaching at an academic level when she has such delusions?

And how is it in U.S. interest to give the Ukraine U.S. taxpayer money to
buy U.S. weapons? The sole motive behind that idea was greed and corruption
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/this-is-when-the-inquiry-gets-real-former-us-special-envoy-to-ukraine-testifies-in-impeachment-probe-today/2019/10/03/51365c1b-5a01-4e44-872a-299b67949a5e_story.html>,
not national interest:

[U.S. special envoy to Ukraine] Volker started his job at the State
Department in 2017 in an unusual part-time arrangement that allowed him to
continue consulting at BGR, a powerful lobbying firm that represents
Ukraine and the U.S.-based defense firm Raytheon. During his tenure, Volker
advocated for the United States to send Raytheon-manufactured antitank
Javelin missiles to Ukraine — a decision that made Raytheon millions of
dollars.

The missiles are useless in the conflict
<https://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/americas-javelin-missiles-are-going-ukraine-can-they-stop-23858>.
They are kept near the western border of Ukraine
<https://www.ukrinform.net/rubric-defense/2453731-trump-called-upon-to-let-ukraine-deploy-javelin-antitank-missiles-along-front-line.html>
under
U.S. control. The U.S. fears that Russia would hit back elsewhere should
the Javelin reach the frontline in the east and get used against the
east-Ukrainians. That Trump shortly held back on some of the money that
would have allowed the Ukrainians to buy more of those missiles thus surely
made no difference.

To claim that it hurt U.S. national interests is nonsense.

It is really no wonder that U.S. foreign policy continuously produces chaos
when its practitioners get taught by people like Karlan. In the Middle East
as well as elsewhere Russian foreign policy runs circles around U.S.
attempts to control the outcome. One reason it can do that is the serious
lack of knowledge and realism in U.S. foreign policy thinking. It is itself
the outcome of an educational crisis. U.S. 'political science' studies
implement a mindset that is unable to objectively recognize the facts and
fails to respond to them with realistic concepts.

The Democrats are doing themselves no favor by producing delusional and
partisan witnesses who repeat Reaganesque claptrap. They only prove that
the whole affair is just an unserious show trial.

In the meantime Trump is eliminating food stamps
<https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/12/04/food-stamps-trump-administration-tightens-snap-work-requirements/2608297001/>
for
some 700,000 recipients and the Democrats are doing nothing about it. Their
majority in the House could have used the time it spent on the impeachment
circus to prevent that and other obscenities.

Do the Democrats really believe that their voters will not notice this?

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