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2019-12-01 Home Front: Politix

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Posted by Lex 2019-12-01 00:00|| || Front Page|| [11132 views ] Top

#1 Most interesting nugget from the piece is Spengler/Goldman's anecdote of his dinner with a ChiCom senior military official who asserted, "General Petraeus created ISIS in order to destabilize China,” a senior Chinese military official informed me over dinner in 2015.

Spengler/Goldman:

The individual in question appears, incidentally, as one of China’s masterminds of so-called unrestricted warfare in Michael Pillsbury’s now-celebrated book The Hundred Year Marathon.

“That’s ridiculous,” I replied.

“It is not ridiculous in the least,” the Chinese soldier continued in the benevolent tone in which one instructs low-aptitude recruits. “There are ISIS leaders whom we have identified and tracked who were trained by Petraeus during the ‘Surge,’” the counter-insurgency campaign that David Petraeus conducted in 2008-2009 to contain a Sunni rebellion against the majority Shiite government that the United States had helped bring to power in 2007.

I tried to explain: “This was a comedy of errors. ... When Obama took US forces out of Iraq, a lot of the same Sunnis who took money from Petraeus faced the same Shiite state, and became non-state actors, that is ISIS. And the CIA’s support for Sunni jihadist opponents of the Assad government in Syria made matters worse, as the Defense Intelligence Agency warned in a notorious 2012 report.”

My Chinese interlocutor was not impressed. “You’re trying to tell me that the people who run the world’s great superpower are complete idiots who don’t think about the consequences of their actions? I don’t believe you.”

Posted by Lex 2019-12-01 01:42|| 2019-12-01 01:42|| Front Page Top

#2 ^ That about summed it up.

Posted by Dron66046 2019-12-01 01:48|| 2019-12-01 01:48|| Front Page Top

#3 My Chinese interlocutor was not impressed. “You’re trying to tell me that the people who run the world’s great superpower are complete idiots who don’t think about the consequences of their actions? I don’t believe you.”

The truth exists independent of human belief.

Posted by M. Murcek 2019-12-01 06:45|| 2019-12-01 06:45|| Front Page Top

Ref 1: And the CIA’s support for Sunni jihadist opponents of the Assad government in Syria made matters worse, as the Defense Intelligence Agency warned in a notorious 2012 report.”

Rantburg 'name that fella' bonus question:

The man who was in charge at the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) at that time ?

Posted by Besoeker 2019-12-01 08:04|| 2019-12-01 08:04|| Front Page Top

#5 General Flynn

Posted by Angaiting Pheans5604 2019-12-01 08:10|| 2019-12-01 08:10|| Front Page Top

#6 Only a moron seeks to stir a steaming shit pot.

Posted by M. Murcek 2019-12-01 08:19|| 2019-12-01 08:19|| Front Page Top

Ref #6: Photo confirmation. Problem solved by the Almighty.

Posted by Besoeker 2019-12-01 08:30|| 2019-12-01 08:30|| Front Page Top

#8 2015 was the year the Iran Deal was carried out. This should have tipped him off that yes, the US leadership was idiots.

Posted by Thing From Snowy Mountain 2019-12-01 12:16|| 2019-12-01 12:16|| Front Page Top

#9 Not idiots, simply on the other side. These who voted for O are idiots.

Posted by g(r)omgoru 2019-12-01 12:20|| 2019-12-01 12:20|| Front Page Top

#10 For being on the other side, he's simply a bigger level of idiot. And the Chinese, in particular, are dependent on the US political class besides Trump being similar types of traitorous idiots, otherwise they wouldn't have an alliance with the country that was shielding Osama Bin Laden.

So they're talking out of both sides of their mouths on both of their faces, IMHO.

I gotta go off the net to cook some turkey, have a nice day, all y'all.

Posted by Thing From Snowy Mountain 2019-12-01 13:12|| 2019-12-01 13:12|| Front Page Top

#11 America works because it's political leaders dont run the country. the people do.

Now China doesn't work so well because it IS run by it's political classes and the people cant choose them either.

They really are run by idiots

Posted by Bright Pebbles 2019-12-01 17:57|| 2019-12-01 17:57|| Front Page Top

#12 The Chinese have been setting one barbarian against another for thousands of years, so they're projecting their time-honored tradition onto Uncle Sam. And they're equally familiar with the possibility that the balls don't always stay up in the air, however skilled the juggler. A case in point is the way they allied with the Mongols against their old enemy, the Jurchens. The Jurchen defeat freed the Mongols to embark upon the destruction of Song China.

Posted by Zhang Fei 2019-12-01 23:20|| 2019-12-01 23:20|| Front Page Top

#13 WARBM
[We Are Ruled By Morons]

Posted by Lex 2019-12-01 23:23|| 2019-12-01 23:23|| Front Page Top

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