Pasionaria of the American State
MSNBC had on Susan Rice, Obama’s National Security Advisor, who claimed there that Signalgate, as it’s now being called, is “likely the biggest national security debacle that any professional can remember.”
My first thought was, really? The biggest national security debacle that anyone can remember? Forget Vietnam, which might have well have happened under the Holy Roman Empire. What about, oh, I don’t know, the Iraq War?
My second thought was, yeah, probably from the perspective of the “professional” class in DC, who can’t remember what happened two days ago, let alone what happened two decades ago, this probably is the biggest debacle that any of them can remember.
My third thought was, wow, even when she’s obviously trying to score Democratic Party talking points for the American voter on MSNBC, she can’t speak in any other voice than that of the “professional” class of which she is a part.
My last thought is: watch the whole video. Just to see the umbrage that someone like Rice, like so many other Democratic Party people, takes at the fact that these Trump goons didn’t gather in the White House basement or wherever the fuck it is they’re supposed to gather to have these kinds of conversations.
These people have one purpose and one purpose only: the consecration of the national security apparatus. They are, all of them, Pasionarias of the American state.
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5 Comments
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Dene Karaus
I saw the Susan Rice interview in real time, and thought it was spot-on in every detail. Comparing a national security breakdown to the Vietnam war borders on idiocy. It’s just different. I’m 76 years old. I dealt with the horror of Vietnam from the summer of 1965 until the last helicopter left in 1975. I dealt with the draft, Losing in the draft lottery. Joining the US Air Force. Quitting on moral grounds after 50 days. “No, I will not bomb innocent women, children and old people.”
Comparing a security breakdown to 12 year military operation breaks every rule of logic and sanity.
Security protocols are different from sending 500,000 people 6000 miles to fight and die. See any difference here?
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John Stafford
What do you mean you “dealt with” it? Merely by being alive? Are you now “dealing with” the gaza genocide? Are you the protagonist of reality?
If you can’t understand the general thrust of the post & the overall point, no one can help you. Try again, I guess.
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Stephen Zielinski
The post-WW II history of the United States is littered with national security debacles. They are all of a class, that class being “national security” debacles”. Class membership makes them similar.
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Geoffrey DeWan
Yes. Kind of more reminds me of Iraq now that you mention it.
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Ned Balzer
I’m reacting not specifically to this post but to the Corey’s facebook post late on the 26th (I can’t comment there because I came to be a follower of Corey late in the game, when he already had the maximum number of friends allowed). I see a lot of elision of left, liberal and Democrat in that post. I am scandalized both by the fact that Hegseth et.al. discussed war plans on an unsecure messaging app *and* that we’re bombing the Houthis. It’s not one or the other. The decision to use Signal looks like an attempt to keep the conversation secret from parts of the military hierarchy that are viewed as insufficiently loyal to Trump, as well as an attempt to bury the contents of the conversation from history. Not to mention the utter incompetence of the whole thing. Why wouldn’t a leftist object to what happened for all of these reasons? Why should a leftist’s reasons for objecting not include the possibility that Trump is trying to build a shadow command structure — such a shadow command structure might undermine the effectiveness of the US military machine, but is Trump the one we want to do this, and is he doing it for reasons we agree with? And how does the objection that leftists ought to be *more* appalled by a secret bombing war than by these other things encourage solidarity in resistance to Trump?