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| Hawkish Heritage Foundation Bails on Ukraine |
| 2022-05-30 |
| [ZH] In a striking indication of the American right's increasingly skeptical view of costly foreign interventionism, the Heritage Foundation took an aggressive stance against the $40 billion aid package approved by Congress earlier this month. In a May 10 statement ahead of the House vote, Heritage executive director Jessica Anderson said, "This proposed Ukraine aid package takes money away from the priorities of the American people and recklessly sends our taxpayer dollars to a foreign nation without any accountability. America is struggling with record-setting inflation, debt, a porous border, crime and energy depletion yet progressives in Washington are prioritizing a $40 billion aid package to Ukraine." Like COVID, it's over, at least as a front-and-center political crisis for the beltway crowd to milk. It's uncertain whether the Uvalde incident has the legs to replace it all the way to the mid-terms. Noting Congress had approved a $13 billion aid package just two months earlier, Heritage blasted the new aid proposal for its lack of spending offsets and the absence of a guarantee that European countries would make proportionate financial commitments of their own. Flirting with an "America first" philosophy, the press release was titled, "Ukraine Aid Package Puts America Last." Though the aid package proceeded apace, Heritage's opposition was particularly significant because it came from conservative flagship with a profoundly hawkish history. Heritage backed the invasion of Iraq and continued to defend it well after it had been fully revealed as an unjust disaster. A 2007 Heritage FAQ about Iraq asked—given there were no weapons of mass destruction and knowing what we know now—whether Iraq should have been invaded. "Yes," replied Heritage. "Saddam Hussein's regime was a major threat to American interests and the region as a whole." Heritage was likewise a steady cheerleader for keeping U.S. troops endangered in the fool's errand that was the Afghanistan war, churning out reports with titles like "Afghan Review Shows Troop Surge Working and "Maintain Momentum in Afghanistan." In a Ukraine-vote post-mortem at the Wall Street Journal, Heritage president Kevin Roberts said his think tank had been accused of "abandoning conservative principles or embracing populist isolationism. Neither charge is true. But in one sense, both are welcome. The war in Ukraine may finally force conservatives into the intramural foreign policy debate they have put off for more than 30 years." In a promising sign of how that foreign policy debate may be nudging Heritage, Roberts has elsewhere referred to himself as a "recovering neocon," according to the New York Times. In an interview this week, he told the Times that Heritage's opposition to the Ukraine package, reflects "a real skepticism among the conservative grass-roots about the entrenched conservative foreign policy leadership." |
| Posted by:M. Murcek |
| #11 NY Times, too (article posted for tomorrow). |
| Posted by: DooDahMan 2022-05-30 22:38 |
| #10 |
| Posted by: badanov 2022-05-30 22:08 |
| #9 Rantburg’s archives start on 11. September 2001, or 9/11/2001 in the American style. We watched — and documented — events as they happened, including the observations of Rantburgers serving in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere then, before, and afterward. Rantburg’s archives document that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq had war chemicals in quantity at the time of the 2003 invasion, even after unknown quantitites had been destroyed by burning in ditches in the weeks before the invasion. The archives document the Saddam Hussein regime’s research into nuclear and biological weapons; hiding airplanes in the desert sands; the Salman Pak training facility for Muslim and Arab terror cadres that provided courses in hijacking airplanes, bomb making, and a variety of other advanced skills that Al Qaeda among others attended; the looooong caravan of trucks carrying Baathist Iraqi gold and other valuables for safekeeping in the care of Bqqthist Syria, where it was subsequently used to pay the jihadis who crossed through Syria to fight the Coalition in Iraq, first signing up with Al Qaeda in Iraq, then its successor organization Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. The Archive tab can be seen at the top of the Pages at the right, or search Rantburg by key word using the box over the list of most recent comments in the right margin. A search of “Iraq nuke” for instance, yields this, from 2006. tl;dr What badanov and Besoeker said. Bertie Lumumba1577, Saddam Hussein’s ambition was to corner the Middle Eastern oil supply, and thus control the entire world. His war against Iran failed, but he neatly conquered Kuwait, and would have taken over Saudi Arabia just as neatly if America, et al had not twice directly interfered — the second time making it impossible for Iraq to repeat the effort for the foreseeable future. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2022-05-30 20:50 |
| #8 /\ They knew WMD was a lie, just like the rest of them. It was nothing but an excuse to start a war. With respect Bertie, we've run those traps here for well over a decade. Saddam had WMD. Saddam's constant violations of the 1991 ceasefire alone, including firing on our and NATO's pilots were sufficient cause for war. |
| Posted by: badanov 2022-05-30 16:32 |
| #7 /\ They knew WMD was a lie, just like the rest of them. It was nothing but an excuse to start a war. With respect Bertie, we've run those traps here for well over a decade. Saddam had WMD. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2022-05-30 16:28 |
| #6 "Yes," replied Heritage. "Saddam Hussein's regime was a major threat to American interests and the region as a whole." They knew WMD was a lie, just like the rest of them. It was nothing but an excuse to start a war. Major threat to American interests, yeah sure. More like a threat to Israel. If they wanted Saddam gone why didn't they get thousands of their own soldiers killed doing it? |
| Posted by: Bertie Lumumba1577 2022-05-30 16:19 |
| #5 The Narrative shifts again. No more MoD planted bullshit about fumbling Russians; now it's all harrowing tales of "outgunned " Ukrainians and British, American and other mercenaries barely escaping death in ferocious firefights at close quarters with an enemy that actually has artillery and air support -- unlike the pisspoor ragtag third world fighters encountered previously in Iraq and Afghanistan. Also just starting to see reality creeping into the coverage, with comparisons to the American experience in Fallujah, which took far longer for the American forces to subdue than any city that the Russians have vanquished when up against a NATO-trained and -armed entrenched enemy in Ukraine. The Russians have been much more effective against an army that is vastly more powerful than anything the US ever faced in Iraq or Afghanistan. Every story now appearing in the Western press about US or UK mercenaries includes a lengthy discussion of how much more deadly this war is than the 3rd world expeditions in Iraq or Afghanistan. Lots of WWI comparisons ... trench warfare + drones. "Terrifyng" being used again and again. Interesting how rapidly the Narrative shifts. |
| Posted by: Palmerston 2022-05-30 15:12 |
| #4 America also has a right to question how much of the $40B would mysteriously find its way back to DC SWAMP pockets. Only about $5B will actually go for weaponry and most of that will be useless or destroyed quickly by the Russians. $9B is going right back into MIC pockets, for replenishing depleted American weapons stocks. Over $20B will disappear into the black hole of the Zelensky "government," likely for additional villas for Zelensky and his retinue in Israel and Miami and London and money laundering vehicles in Ohio and Appalachia for Zelensky's billionaire puppet master, the bandit and Azov-funder Ihor Kolomoisky. |
| Posted by: Palmerston 2022-05-30 08:49 |
| #3 I'd prefer right to the gallows. |
| Posted by: DooDahMan 2022-05-30 08:16 |
| #2 Like I said yesterday, I hope it drives the Nuland crowd into strait jackets and padded cells. |
| Posted by: M. Murcek 2022-05-30 08:00 |
| #1 Given the Biden's and others in DC well documented dealings with Ukraine. America also has a right to question how much of the $40B would mysteriously find its way back to DC SWAMP pockets. |
| Posted by: NN2N1 2022-05-30 07:58 |