The American war-mongering media is now back to its Iraq War form. Leading the way are the usual suspects, and FOX News – once again revealing the ugly face of the establishment wing of the Republican Party and ‘conservatism’ in America.
“For the right, war is a permanent crutch, a way to ignore real issues (the issues where they are losing) and live in a comforting fantasy world of easy moral clarity and absolute American dominance. Demanding escalation in Eastern Europe is a way for Republicans to feel tough when they have totally lost control of their own country.”
By Revolver
In 2016, Donald Trump showed that a Republican candidate can run, and win, without swearing fealty to the permanent war party. He ran on a platform of “America First,” and since that moment almost all Republican politicians and commentators have at least paid lip service to the idea.
Yet now, all of that is being thrown aside for the sake of Ukraine.
In 2019, would-be America First Senator Josh Hawley delivered a speech about “Rethinking America’s Foreign Policy Consensus,” condemning “endless wars” and “metastasizing commitments” to far-off countries, and demanding a new narrower focus on keeping America and Americans safe and prosperous.
And then Ukraine came along, and Hawley suddenly looked like any other Republican from 2006.
Just finished a briefing with President Zelensky of #Ukraine, whose courage on behalf of his people is inspiring. Zelensky urgently asked the US to stop imports of Russian gas and oil. More important than almost any other sanction, he said. When will Joe Biden listen?
— Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) March 5, 2022
Powerful message this morning from President Zelensky of #Ukraine – said he wished Joe Biden would step up and lead the world. Biden needs to get serious and shut down Russian energy production, open up ours, and arm the Ukrainians with MiGs to defend the skies
— Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) March 16, 2022
It is one thing to see the Democrats eagerly join the CIA, State Department, and Pentagon in demanding the escalation of U.S. involvement in the Ukraine-Russia conflict. That alignment makes perfect sense politically—why wouldn’t the left align with the same national security state that embraces all of its values, and which has repurposed itself to target the left’s domestic political enemies on the right?
Seeing lawmakers on the right take the same stance, though, is both puzzling and pathetic. The relationship between the national security state and most GOP lawmakers and pundits increasingly resembles the relationship between an abusive husband and his battered spouse. Like a wife who believes her husband still loves her even as he sends her to the hospital, the same lawmakers and Fox News figures who claim to have embraced the Trump realignment are yet again letting themselves get played by a Regime that hates them.
Sure, it’s not nice when the Regime drinks too much and suddenly labels us all domestic terrorists, but patriotism requires that we unthinkingly serve this same regime when it wants to endanger American lives for another misadventure thousands of miles from our shores.
After all, freedom isn’t free!
When Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky spoke before the U.S. Congress Wednesday morning, Republicans fêted him with a standing ovation before his remarks and then another ovation afterwards.
A standing ovation from the most unpopular institution in America. https://t.co/4T0V5jzU2k
— Second City Bureaucrat (@CityBureaucrat) March 16, 2022
In his speech, Zelensky pleaded for a no-fly zone, fighter jet shipments to Ukraine, and even more punitive sanctions on Russia. It was a plea for a dramatic escalation in the conflict towards World War 3. And Republicans gave him two standing ovations in a row. With the world on the edge of nuclear holocaust, Republicans cheered on a leader who says that World War 3 has already started.
After Zelensky’s speech, saccharine Republicans took to the airwaves to demand that President Biden ship fighter jets into Ukraine, despite the dangers of such a provocation:
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) told reporters Zelensky had made a strong case for what Biden should do.
“I think there’s a bipartisan movement right here, provide them the MiGs, provide them the planes where they can create no-fly zone, providee the armaments that they need to continue to fight a war that they did not create,” McCarthy said.
Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said he was moved by video Zelensky showed during his speech that highlighted the atrocities Russia is carrying out in Ukraine against women and children.
“We need to help Ukraine, give them everything they need to fight this war, and the video we saw was very reminiscent of Nazi Germany. … And history will judge us,” he said. “What did you do? What did you do when the bombing started? When the maternity hospitals were bombed and the pregnant women were taken out — blood, children, what did you do?”
“This is not a time for partisan rhetoric; this is a time to unify the nation behind Ukraine against one of the most evil forces we have seen since my father’s war — and that’s World War II, Adolf Hitler,” he added. [New York Post]
Hannity has tied himself into knots trashing President Biden over rising oil prices while also advocating for the drastic escalation of sending fighter jets to Ukraine.
Our @trafalgar_group poll released by @seanhannity on @foxnews #Hannity reveals strong support for sending Polish Soviet-era #MiG29s to #Ukraine replaced by US #F16s:
36.0% Definitely Yes
32.8% Yes
11.5% No
8.6% Definitely No
11.1% Not sureSee Report: https://t.co/aaRiHJapXU pic.twitter.com/dERLXBHrMj
— Robert C. Cahaly (@RobertCahaly) March 12, 2022
On his radio program, Hannity has concocted wild ideas like assassinating Putin or bombing Russian convoys while saying we didn’t:
Sean Hannity proposes NATO fighter jets bomb Russian convoy “and then nobody takes credit for it, so then Putin won't know who to hit” https://t.co/7jYGYmxMsK pic.twitter.com/CcVUvYglw8
— Brendan Karet (@bad_takes) March 2, 2022
For those confused by what they are witnessing, here is a simple explanation: Fox News, Sean Hannity, and the GOP are reverting back to the leading roles they played in the run-up to the Iraq War.
Of course, we don’t want to just bag on Hannity, who is likeable enough. But the whole history of the Iraq War really leaves us no choice.
Back in 2003, 90 percent of Republicans supported the decision to invade Iraq and violently topple Saddam Hussein’s government. But “supported” undersells the intensity of the Iraq moment. Out of 272 Republicans in Congress, only seven voted against authorizing the invasion. For three years, House Republicans renamed French fries to “freedom fries” and French toast to “freedom toast” in the House cafeteria. Fox News hyped the war relentlessly during the leadup, and its hosts defended nearly every facet of it for long afterward. Pat Buchanan, Scott McConnell, and Taki Theodoracopulos founded The American Conservative in 2002 precisely because every other institution on the right, from the White House to Fox to National Review, was marching towards war in lockstep with the military-industrial complex. Even in 2008, with WMDs still yet to be found and the Iraq insurgency roiling on, 73 percent still stood by the invasion.
American conservatives got bamboozled badly on Iraq, but nobody got bamboozled more than Hannity. In the months leading up to the invasion, Hannity bought every claim, every allegation, and every lie that was used to sell the war. Months before the Iraq invasion, in November 2002, Hannity was already chomping at the bit for Saddam’s destruction. Why? To get rid of those dastardly WMDs, of course:
“He’s had 11 years to play his cat-and-mouse game, and, frankly, one of the people unhappy with Tuesday’s elections, I have no doubt, is Saddam Hussein. He would have, I’m sure, preferred appeasement liberals to have been elected and to be in charge, and it probably would have helped his cause. … Where do we go from here in terms of Iraq in real terms? I don’t believe he’s going to allow unfettered access. I don’t think you believe that. So it’s really just a matter of time. The first indication we have that he is not abiding by this agreement — don’t we have to be ready to act immediately?
On December 9, 2002, Hannity told Fox News viewers that Saddam’s Iraq was full of camps training terrorists plotting new 9/11s:
In northern Iraq today, this very day, al Qaeda is operating camps there, and they are attacking the Kurds in the north, and this has been well-documented and well chronicled. Now, if you’re going to go after al Qaeda in every aspect, and obviously they have the support of Saddam, or we’re not.
Even years afterwards, Hannity couldn’t accept he’d been sold a load of hokum by Beltway warmongers. In 2016, Hannity still clung to his theory that the WMDs were real, and sneakily smuggled off to Syria just before the U.S. invasion.
Thanks to Republican credulity, the Pied Piper of the Globalist American Empire took all of America off to war, and the result was calamity. The “weapons of mass destruction” that justified invasion did not exist. Perhaps to avoid admitting such a humiliating blunder, the Bush Administration switched to an agenda of “democracy-building.” 140,000 U.S. troops settled in for a long occupation whose final cost exceeded $2 trillion. More than 4,400 of those troops did not return.
America has made plenty of blunders as a global superpower, but the Iraq War was the worst. It was entirely optional, easily avoidable, strategically worthless, hideously wasteful, and far too often, morally compromising.
As bad as a mistake as Iraq was, in the moment it can be understood. The 9/11 attacks were a profound shock to the national psyche, and for years the nation remained paranoid that deadly enemies were everywhere and 9/11 would just be the prelude to future, much deadlier attacks. Not only that, but the national security state had not spent 20 years lying about Afghanistan then, and had not declared war on American conservatives as a class, so the need to distrust them was not quite as obvious.
Falling for the Iraq War the first time may be excused. What cannot be excused is falling for the Deep State’s fanatical war rhetoric again, as it tries to drag the nation into World War 3. Yet incredibly, inexcusably, that is exactly what is happening across the board, and it’s not just Hannity, either.
On Fox and Friends just the other day, Dan Crenshaw said that critics of further escalation were doing the work of Vladimir Putin.
“I don’t care what Putin says. I didn’t realize Putin was our national security adviser.” – @DanCrenshawTX this AM pic.twitter.com/S9lRxRVjpQ
— Justin Discigil (@JDiscigil) March 16, 2022
Continue this story at Revolver
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