Bad Chemistry

The column below appeared in the May 2018 issue of The Sturbridge Times Town & Country Living.  The Long Hill Institute believes it is worth posting here.

Bad Chemistry

By Richard Morchoe

The good news is we did not have a nuclear war in April.  The bad news side of the equation is up for grabs.  Any time two nuclear powers have forces close together, with different agendas, Murphy’s Law should come into play.

So why did we not have global incineration last month?  Maybe because the president of the United States is not completely crazy.  Up here on Long Hill, we are not sure of the level of mental stability possessed by any office holder and we would never accuse Trump of sanity.   

Yet he huffed and puffed and threatened war and devastation and other than a few forlorn buildings that had been evacuated, the damage was almost non-existent?  What happened?

It can be explained as Kabuki Theater.  Now, Kabuki is elaborately costumed performers using stylized movements, dances and songs in order to enact tragedies and comedies.  What that all means we are not completely sure, but in geopolitics, it meant we throw some bombs some place the Russkies don’t care about.  They don’t have to nuke us over it and everybody pretends to have done the macho thing and that is that for now.

Did he and Vladimir Putin choreograph a ballet so that each got off the hook?  We referred the question to our official think tank, The Long Hill Institute for the Study of Geopolitics.  With their usual shoot from the hip style, they decreed, “Boy do we hope so”.

Maybe not.  Eminent historian and Russia expert Stephen F. Cohen said before the missile strike that “I am more worried than I have ever been in my life, at least since the Cuban missile crisis.”

Is he being an alarmist?  

I was in the eighth grade at the time and Professor Cohen was in his early twenties.  During the confrontation, the fear was palpable.  No American in any later generation has lived through anything like it,  

The missiles the Soviets sent to Cuba had only one target and we did not want them there.  As it would turn out, our missiles in Turkey were not a source of amusement to the Kremlin.  An agreement was made where both sides removed the offending weapons.  Afterward, came the era of detente and, with more than a few bumps along the way, relations improved.

Is Cohen right?

The huffing and puffing is the worst we have seen since the implosion of the Communist regime.  We are in a war theater with troops, if not cheek by jowl, too close for comfort.  Yet the alarm is not all that loud.

During the Cuban Missile Crisis, life was primitive.  There were at most only three TV channels and in many markets, just two.  The only national newscasts of any authority were CBS with Walter Cronkite and NBC with Huntley and Brinkley.  Everybody got their news from those outlets plus newspapers and a couple of newsmagazines.  We were all on the same page.

Today, the landscape is different.  The old networks still exist and are joined by cable news.  Add to that talk radio and online outlets.  There is a plethora of sources for news and yet precious little diversity of opinion that one might expect.  The narrative goes something like this: Syrian President Assad is evil and uses chemical weapons on his own people, ergo the Donald has to slap him down or he is complicit.  Putin backs Assad and thus is bad and The U.S. must oppose Putin with an appropriate level of force if necessary. 

Not completely absent from the discussion is the possibility that an explosion could occur that is measured in megatons, but it might as well be.  Indeed, there is a blitheness to the danger in the coverage.

You have to search it all out to get any mention of the risk.  Well regarded as Professor Cohen is, to quote Rodney Dangerfield on the subject at hand, he “don’t get no respect.”

So, what is the justification for wanting to bomb Syria.

That is something that is usually explained with a heavy dose of obfuscation.  There was no hard evidence found or even an investigation beforehand.  The indispensable Consortium News reported that General Mattis had been pressing for evidence almost up until the attack but was overruled.  According to Consortium News,

“The Pentagon conducted a briefing immediately after the US strikes the next day, on April 13. One reporter asked: “What’s your evidence it was delivered by the Syrian regime? Are you quite clear it was?” Mattis dutifully responded: “I am confident the Syrian regime conducted a chemical attack on innocent people in this last week, yes. Absolutely confident of it.”

Another reporter queried: “So up until yesterday, and I’m going to quote you here, you said, ‘I cannot tell you that we have evidence.’ So when did you become confident that a chemical attack happened?

Mattis: “Yes, yesterday.”

Reporter: “Since yesterday, after you said that?”

Mattis: “Yes.”

And those inspectors Mattis had only the day before made clear to Congress would be coming “probably within the week?”  They were just hours away from starting their work in Duma(sic) when the first U.S. cruise missile hit its target.” 

The president had been tweeting and had to do something and at least did the least stupid thing he could, and who knows, doing that might appease some in the howling mob, but not everybody.

On April 16th, NPR Morning Edition’s, Noel King spoke with Kori Schake.  Ms. Schake served on George W. Bush’s National Security Council and King asked her about strategy in Syria after the airstrikes.

She would definitely want Assad taken out of power but does not address what would happen after his removal.  Kori would love to see a more active policy.  Ms. Schake speaks from the same playbook as the rest of the media,

“every time Bashar al-Assad needs a battlefield victory that he can't achieve by conventional forces, he employs chemical weapons to try and terrorize the rebels into submission.”  

The kindest thing one can say about the woman is that she does not display absolute fidelity to the truth.  The regime had liberated Aleppo, without chemical weapons.  It had cleared all the pockets east of Damascus other than the one in question and was on the verge of doing that. Sans chemistry.  Why would they have risked the trouble the nerve agents would have brought them and if the purpose was to achieve victory, why would they have targeted civilians instead of combatants?

Maybe looking into what Kori does now would give us a hint about where she is coming from.  She is Deputy-Director General of the International Institute of Strategic Studies.  

 the International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS) is a think tank based in London that does think tank stuff, but has interesting funding.

It appears that they have secretly taken a lot of money from the Bahraini royal Family.  Now Bahrain is an island country where the Sunni Royals lord it over a not too happy Shia majority.  Also, they are buddies of the Saudis who back the destruction of the secular Syrian state and are waging genocidal war in Yemen.

That did not get mentioned when Noel King was speaking to the sinecurista.

We asked The Long Hill Institute* to opine on what this says about journalism in this day and age.

The finding is: News is propaganda.

If you do not believe that, please contact the Long Hill Institute as to the location of the Weapons of Mass Destruction that the media promised us were surely present in Iraq back in 2003.

*As we have often mentioned, The Long Hill Institute, our official think tank is the only think tank not in the tank.  We have never received donations of millions of dollars as has the IISS.  Not that we are complaining...too much.