{"id":319090,"date":"2022-10-01T23:00:37","date_gmt":"2022-10-02T03:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sgtreport.com\/?p=319090"},"modified":"2022-10-01T03:43:52","modified_gmt":"2022-10-01T07:43:52","slug":"the-insanity-that-grips-washington","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sgtreport.com\/2022\/10\/the-insanity-that-grips-washington\/","title":{"rendered":"The Insanity That Grips Washington"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>by Caitlin Johnstone, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.globalresearch.ca\/insanity-that-grips-washington\/5794897\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Global Research<\/a>:<\/em><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" style=\"width: 35%;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.globalresearch.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/joe-biden-400x266.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p><em>The New York Times, which consistently\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/fair.org\/home\/nyt-laments-forever-wars-its-editorials-helped-create\/\">supports every American war<\/a>, has published an op-ed by a neoconservative think tanker titled \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/archive.ph\/l1uk5\">Biden\u2019s Cautious Foreign Policy Imperils Us<\/a>\u201c.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>This would be\u00a0<strong>Joseph Biden,<\/strong>\u00a0the president of the United States who has been consistently\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/caitlinjohnstone.substack.com\/p\/biden-keeps-pledging-direct-us-war\">vowing to go to war<\/a>\u00a0with the People\u2019s Republic of China if it attacks Taiwan, and whose administration has been\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/world\/biden-request-117-bln-ukraine-aid-224-bln-covid-relief-2022-09-02\/\">pouring billions of dollars<\/a>\u00a0into a world-threatening proxy war in Ukraine which it\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/caitlinjohnstone.substack.com\/p\/its-not-okay-for-grown-adults-to-2cf\">knowingly provoked<\/a>\u00a0and from which it\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/caitlinjohnstone.substack.com\/p\/this-proxy-war-has-no-exit-strategy\">has no exit strategy<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><!--more Read More--> TRUTH LIVES on at\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/sgtreport.tv\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" data-auth=\"NotApplicable\">https:\/\/sgtreport.tv\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/w.soundcloud.com\/player\/?visual=true&amp;url=https%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F1351861180&amp;show_artwork=true&amp;maxheight=750&amp;maxwidth=500\" width=\"500\" height=\"400\" frameborder=\"no\" scrolling=\"no\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>With this administration\u2019s\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/caitlinjohnstone.substack.com\/p\/the-us-empire-is-accelerating-toward\">acceleration toward global conflict<\/a>\u00a0on two different fronts, one could easily argue that Biden actually has the\u00a0<em>least<\/em>\u00a0cautious foreign policy of any president in history.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn the aftermath of Vladimir Putin\u2019s recent nuclear threat and call-up of reservists, it was reassuring for the leader of the free world to be unflinching,\u201d writes the article\u2019s author Kori Schake, who then adds, \u201cRhetoric aside, the administration has signaled in numerous other ways that Putin\u2019s threats have constrained support for Ukraine.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As though the possibility of nuclear war should not constrain U.S. proxy warfare in that country. As though the crazy thing is not the U.S. government\u2019s insane nuclear brinkmanship with Russia, but its reluctance to go further.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">\u201cThe gap between what the administration is claiming as their foreign policy objectives, and what it is actually willing to do, is a serious problem for American security, for Russia and beyond,\u201d writes <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/KoriSchake?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@KoriSchake<\/a>. <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/SX32lJKNgM\">https:\/\/t.co\/SX32lJKNgM<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 New York Times Opinion (@nytopinion) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/nytopinion\/status\/1574452019548528640?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">September 26, 2022<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h2><strong>More Money for War<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>Schake criticizes the fact that while Biden has been saying a PRC attack on Taiwan would mean a direct U.S. hot war with China, the U.S. military would need far more funding and far greater expansion to be able to win such a war, so it should definitely do those things instead of simply not rushing into World War Three.<\/p>\n<div class=\"_magnetRelConrel_89-4\" data-widget-id=\"rel_89-4\">\n<div>\n<div class=\"magnet-row-rel_89-4\">\n<div class=\"magnet-box-rel_89-4\">\n<div>\n<div class=\"magnet-text-wrapper-rel_89-4\"><a class=\"_magnetRelLkrel_89-4\" title=\"The Record U.S. Military Budget. Spiralling Growth of America\u2019s War Economy\" href=\"https:\/\/www.globalresearch.ca\/the-record-u-s-military-budget-spiralling-growth-of-americas-war-economy\/5479264\" rel=\"nofollow\">The Record U.S. Military Budget. Spiralling Growth of America\u2019s War Economy<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>\u201cBut worse are the real gaps in capability that call into question whether the United States could indeed defend Taiwan,\u201d Schake writes, adding:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe ships, troop numbers, planes and missile defenses in the Pacific are a poor match for China\u2019s capability. The director of national intelligence, Avril Haines, has\u00a0assessed\u00a0that the threat to Taiwan between now and 2030 is \u2018acute,\u2019 yet the defense budget is not geared to providing improved capabilities until the mid-2030s. More broadly, the Biden administration\u00a0isn\u2019t funding\u00a0an American military that can adequately carry out our defense commitments, a dangerous posture for a great power. The\u00a0Democratic-led Congress\u00a0added\u00a0$29 billion\u00a0last year and\u00a0$45 billion\u00a0this year to the Department of Defense budget request, a measure of just how inadequate the Biden budget is.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-76351 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/My-Pentagon-Shot-scaled-1.jpeg\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/My-Pentagon-Shot-scaled-1.jpeg 2560w, https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/My-Pentagon-Shot-scaled-1-500x375.jpeg 500w, https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/My-Pentagon-Shot-scaled-1-1000x750.jpeg 1000w, https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/My-Pentagon-Shot-scaled-1-768x576.jpeg 768w, https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/My-Pentagon-Shot-scaled-1-1536x1152.jpeg 1536w, https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/My-Pentagon-Shot-scaled-1-2048x1536.jpeg 2048w, https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/My-Pentagon-Shot-scaled-1-160x120.jpeg 160w\" alt=\"\" width=\"503\" height=\"377\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The Pentagon. (Joe Lauria)<\/p>\n<p>As Shchake discusses the urgent need to explode the U.S. military budget [already at $777.7 billion] in order to defend Taiwan,\u00a0<em>The New York Times<\/em>\u00a0neglects to inform us that Schake\u2019s employer, the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), has been caught accepting a small fortune from\u00a0Taiwan\u2019s de facto embassy while churning out materials urging the U.S. government to go to greater lengths to arm Taiwan.<\/p>\n<p>In a 2013 article titled \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.thenation.com\/article\/archive\/secret-foreign-donor-behind-american-enterprise-institute\/\">The Secret Foreign Donor Behind the American Enterprise Institute<\/a>,\u201d\u00a0<em>The Nation<\/em>\u2019s Eli Clifton reports that, thanks to a filing error by AEI, the\u00a0Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office was found to have been one of the think tank\u2019s top donors in 2009. Had that filing error not been made, we never would have learned this important information about AEI\u2019s glaring conflict of interest in its Taiwan commentary.<\/p>\n<p>AEI is one of the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/militarist-monitor.org\/profile\/american_enterprise_institute\/\">most prominent neoconservative think tanks<\/a>\u00a0in the United States, with extensive ties to Bush-era neocons like John Bolton, Paul Wolfowitz, and the Kristol and Kagan families, and has played a very active role in pushing for more war and militarism in U.S. foreign policy. Dick Cheney\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.aei.org\/about\/board-of-trustees\/\">sits on its board of trustees<\/a>, and Mike Pompeo\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20180127220101\/https:\/\/www.cia.gov\/news-information\/press-releases-statements\/2018-press-releases-statements\/cia-director-marks-one-year-anniversary-in-public-address-at-aei.html\">celebrated his one year anniversary<\/a>\u00a0as C.I.A. director there.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Epitome of the Revolving Door<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>Schake herself is as intimately interwoven with the military-industrial complex as anyone can possibly be without actually being a literal Raytheon munition.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.aei.org\/profile\/kori-schake\/\">Her resume<\/a>\u00a0is a perfect illustration of the life of a revolving door swamp monster, from a stint at the Pentagon, to the university circuit, to the National Security Council, to the U.S. Military Academy, to the State Department, to the McCain-Palin presidential campaign, to the Hoover Institution, to the\u00a0International Institute for Strategic Studies, to her current gig as director of foreign and defense policy studies at AEI.<\/p>\n<p>Her entire career is the story of a woman doing everything she can to promote war while being rewarded with wealth and prestige for doing so.<\/p>\n<p>And now here she is being granted space in\u00a0<em>The New York Times<\/em>, a news media outlet of unrivaled influence where enemies of U.S. militarism and imperialism are consistently denied a platform, to tell us all that the Biden administration is endangering us not with its insanely reckless hawkishness, but by being too \u201ccautious\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>One of the craziest things happening in the world today is the way westerners are being trained to freak out all the time about Russian propaganda, which barely exists in the west, even as we are hammered every day with extreme aggression by the immensely influential propaganda of the U.S.-centralized empire.<\/p>\n<p>You know you are living in a profoundly sick society when the world\u2019s most influential newspaper runs propaganda for World War Three while voices pushing for truth, transparency and peace are marginalized, silenced, shunned, and imprisoned.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.globalresearch.ca\/insanity-that-grips-washington\/5794897\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>Read More @ GlobalResearch.ca<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Caitlin Johnstone, Global Research: The New York Times, which consistently\u00a0supports every American war, has published an op-ed by a neoconservative think tanker titled \u201cBiden\u2019s Cautious Foreign Policy Imperils Us\u201c. This would be\u00a0Joseph Biden,\u00a0the president of the United States who has been consistently\u00a0vowing to go to war\u00a0with the People\u2019s Republic of China if it attacks [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[139109],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sgtreport.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319090"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sgtreport.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sgtreport.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sgtreport.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sgtreport.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=319090"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.sgtreport.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319090\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sgtreport.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=319090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sgtreport.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=319090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sgtreport.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=319090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}