Coyote Blog

The admissions by the media and government insiders just keep on coming. We've had:

• We knew all the time that COVID likely was a Wuhan lab-leak
• We knew all the time that the vaccine did not stop transmission
• We knew all the time that Biden was increasingly frail and senile
• We knew all the time that the inflation-reduction act infrastructure spending was burdened by unwieldly bureaucratic rules

Each and every one of which was not only vociferously denied at the time but contemporaneous critics pointing out the obvious truths were labelled as conspiracy theorists and targeted for censorship. Now to these we can add:

• We knew all the time we were risking nuclear escalation with our actions in Ukraine
• We knew all the time we were really engaging in a proxy war with Russia as much as a defense of Ukraine

The linked article above -- Matt Taibbi reacting to reporting from the NY Times -- is just infuriating for those of us who -- while greatly disliking Russia and its aggression -- were skeptical about our role. A couple of examples since the article is paywalled (Taibbi in regular font, NY Times quoted in italics)

To many watching from afar, it seemed like simple common sense that using American weapons and American support personnel to attack Russians in Russia risked drawing this country into a shooting war with a nuclear enemy at any moment. Those of us who said these things were dismissed as alarmist, Putin-loving fellow-travelers. Now we have Entous describing American officials feeling the same after the opening of “ops box” attack....

In some ways, Ukraine was, on a wider canvas, a rematch in a long history of U.S.-Russia proxy wars — Vietnam in the 1960s, Afghanistan in the 1980s, Syria three decades later… It was also a grand experiment in war fighting, one that would not only help the Ukrainians but reward the Americans with lessons for any future war....

If you’re counting, that means we were lied to about the risk of World War, the chance of “victory,” the desire for negotiations, the success of last year’s counteroffensive, the solidity of our relationship with Ukraine, and the significance of U.S.-backed incursions into Russia. This was before Democrats lost the election last November, after which Biden crossed one more line:

Mr. Trump won, and the fear came rushing in… In his last, lame-duck weeks, Mr. Biden made a flurry of moves to stay the course, at least for the moment, and shore up his Ukraine project… He crossed his final red line — expanding the ops box to allow ATACMS and British Storm Shadow strikes into Russia — after North Korea sent thousands of troops to help the Russians dislodge the Ukrainians from Kursk… The administration also authorized Wiesbaden and the C.I.A. to support long-range missile and drone strikes into a section of southern Russia used as a staging area for the assault on Pokrovsk, and allowed the military advisers to leave Kyiv for command posts closer to the fighting....

There are a hundred details in this “Secret History” that serve as stark warnings to anyone who thinks protection from Armageddon is secure in the hands of career military and intelligence officials. Not only did we allow ourselves to be “blackmailed” into escalating a conflict with a nuclear power, the management of the “partnership” broke down because of a Heathers-style spat between the key brass twits, Ukrainian general Valery Zaluhniy and Mark Milley.

When Milley second-guessed Zaluhniy, the latter would respond with teen-like silence, or by avoiding Milley’s next call. Underscoring: the country to which we were giving hundreds of billions in aid didn’t feel a need to pick up the phone. Entous describes the general lack of communication via a moment of levity: “Biden administration officials would joke bitterly that they knew more about what the Russians were planning by spying on them than about what their Ukrainian partners were planning.”

Aggravating from first to last. The news briefly made a big deal about supposed releases of Epstein Clients and JFK Shooting Documents. But these have little interest to me when compared to what we are finding out about the secrets the government has kept these last 5 years. I will end with what I have written before on Ukraine:

The biggest question is -- what is the alternative? The implication is that there is somehow a hope to get the territory under Russian occupation back by military force. But I just don't see it. The Ukrainians have certainly been scrappy and creative and did a better job beating back the Russian thrusts at Kiev in the early days of the war than I would have guessed they would. They are now, though, fighting a static war of attrition with a county 4x its size. So what, at this point after 3 years, is the alternate plan that preserves territory? If that plan is to send a million American soldiers to Ukraine and risk escalation of the war, a nuclear exchange, and possibly a Chinese attack on Taiwan while our back is turned, then I am not going to agree.

Again, I would be happy to see Russia lose, but short of sending the American military into the line of fire, what is the plan? Perhaps Russia's will collapses before Ukraine's, but no one has presented me any evidence of that. That would be a sort of WWI outcome, where one side was eventually exhausted (though only after the intervention of US troops). As an aside, I wonder sometimes, would peace in 1915 perhaps with Germany retaining control of Alsace and Lorraine have been worse than all the deaths that followed, not to mention the platform the war built for the later rise of Hitler and the Nazi party?

As I said before, I am amazed that our ex-peace-protesting-hippies of the Left who would 100% retroactively say that the US should never have escalated in Vietnam after 1964 are in the lead of those who want us to fight in the Ukraine to the very end. Someone needs to tell me what's different, and I have not heard a good answer yet.

In late 1964, the United States faced a decision about Vietnam. The war had dragged on for 10 years, and the US had steadily poured more dollars and arms and "advisors" into supporting the South Vietnamese against North Vietnamese aggression. "Saving" the South Vietnamese and punishing the North Vietnamese, along with their Chinese and Soviet backers, for their aggression clearly was going to require a larger US commitment, both of arms and probably men. Was it time to ramp up, or find a formula for peace? Here are some of the elements, partially in hindsight, of this decision:

• Everyone wanted to see military aggression punished
• Most Americans at the time would would have been thrilled to hand the Soviets and Chinese communists an "L". There was an definite attraction to fighting the communists down to the last Vietnamese in a proxy war far from home
• Many were increasingly skeptical of the South Vietnamese -- the South Vietnamese government was a corrupt mess and not even really democratic after a military coup the US winked at. But we liked them better than the Russians and Chinese
• After 10 years, it was clear that the military stalemate could not be broken except for an extraordinary infusion of US arms and manpower.

I know there are folks who hold out that America and the South Vietnamese could have won if the war was fought smarter. But I think a majority of folks -- including most everyone on the Left -- would agree the post 1964 escalation was a mistake that cost over a million deaths on both sides and did not prevent -- and maybe even made worse -- a horrific aftermath of reeducation and genocide. All to try to prevent the emergence of the unified Vietnam of today, that appears to most American visitors as one of the most capitalistic countries they have visited.

I set this up all as an unsubtle analog to the Ukraine today:

• I think most people would like to see Russia's military aggression punished. I saw General Milley speak at Princeton and this was his main argument, that we have to establish a red line against military attempts to move borders.
• Many of us find the Putin regime in Russia to be distasteful and would be happy to hand it an "L". It is not much of an exaggeration to say that many Americans would like to see us fight Russia down to the last Ukrainian. I often wonder if the average X user with a Ukrainian flag icon is really knowledgeably pro-Ukrainian or just anti-Russian.
• Until the moment of invasion, the Ukraine was considered by the Left, Right, and media to be on of the most corrupt nations in the West. Their current strong censorship regime and suspension of elections smell bad, particularly given that we live in a county that managed to hold free elections during our Civil War (Lincoln until a few months before the 1964 election was sure he was going to lose and let elections go forward anyway -- god bless general Sherman).
• After 3 years, the war is in a stalemate and Ukraine finds itself in an extended war of attrition with a country four times its size. It strikes me that the only way to break the stalemate is to have some kind of order of magnitude larger external intervention, eg US and NATO troops on the ground

I got started on this post as the result of a pro-Ukraine meme I saw the other day. Unfortunately I cannot find it because X is a river that flows really fast and stuff from a day ago is a few miles downstream and hard to find. But basically it asked this question -- what part of your country would you willingly give up? If the answer is nowhere, don't ask Ukraine to give up Donbas and the Crimea for peace.

Totally reasonable question. And except maybe for parts of California and the District of Columbia, I would answer "nowhere." But there are problems. The first is that the Ukraine did indeed voluntarily give up the Crimea in exchange for peace in 2014. One thing I have never understood is that the same people in this country who are rabidly against any Ukrainian peace deal and want to fight on forever mostly had a collective YAWN over the 2014 Russian invasion of the Ukraine.

The biggest question is -- what is the alternative? The implication is that there is somehow a hope to get the territory under Russian occupation back by military force. But I just don't see it. The Ukrainians have certainly been scrappy and creative and did a better job beating back the Russian thrusts at Kiev in the early days of the war than I would have guessed they would. They are now, though, fighting a static war of attrition with a county 4x its size. So what, at this point after 3 years, is the alternate plan that preserves territory? If that plan is to send a million American soldiers to Ukraine and risk escalation of the war, a nuclear exchange, and possibly a Chinese attack on Taiwan while our back is turned, then I am not going to agree.

Again, I would be happy to see Russia lose, but short of sending the American military into the line of fire, what is the plan? Perhaps Russia's will collapses before Ukraine's, but no one has presented me any evidence of that. That would be a sort of WWI outcome, where one side was eventually exhausted (though only after the intervention of US troops). As an aside, I wonder sometimes, would peace in 1915 perhaps with Germany retaining control of Alsace and Lorraine have been worse than all the deaths that followed, not to mention the platform the war built for the later rise of Hitler and the Nazi party?

As I said before, I am amazed that our ex-peace-protesting-hippies of the Left who would 100% retroactively say that the US should never have escalated in Vietnam after 1964 are in the lead of those who want us to fight in the Ukraine to the very end. Someone needs to tell me what's different, and I have not heard a good answer yet. Comments are open and I would love to be convinced. I can't stand Putin and would be thrilled to see him disgraced but don't know how to do it at any acceptable cost.

Postscript #1: I have a tradition here of pissing off everyone to make sure my followers and readership never get very high. So I would apply much of the same logic above to the war in Gaza. I see conservatives saying stuff like "the Gazans need to know they are defeated" but I must say after over a year of war I sure don't see it. After the cease fire the Hamas army emerged from the rubble with clean uniforms and huge crowds of crazed civilians still braying for Jewish blood. I continue to support Israel and was frankly a supporter of their trying to kick ass in Gaza in retaliation for the October massacres. But I wonder, did the last year of killing and levelling seemingly all the buildings in Gaza do a bit of f*cking good? I don't know.

Postscript #2: Gato Malo, who I enjoy and respect greatly, is among those who make the case that a peace deal with no territorial loss was available early on, but was blocked by US and UK officials who wanted a proxy war with Russia and at the end of the day likely didn't give a sh*t about the people of Ukraine.

Postscript #3: Apropos of nothing in this post, this is pretty funny. I am still looking for the Ukrainian refugee with the lhasa apso.