1) These podcasts are great. They’re smart, pithy and focused. To my mind, they are much more valuable than the longer podcasts which require a bigger time commitment from the listener. I hope they will become a regular feature.
2) As usual, Claire is wrong about almost everything she says. She hates Twitter not because Elon Musk is a Russian agent or an antisemite. She hates Twitter because she preferred the platform in the old days when it’s primary purpose was suppressing free speech and promoting ideas she agrees with and suppressing ideas that Claire personally finds odious.
A perfect example of this can be found outside of the world of international affairs. Anyone who takes the time to review this article about how the deep state (that Claire reveres) suppressed controversial views about COVID will see compelling evidence of how pre-Musk Twitter became an agent of the State. See,
3) In the podcast, Claire extols the American military as the greatest military in the world. Of course, she’s right if you grade on the curve. If you’re not grading on the curve you get a less robust result. The American military hasn’t won a major shooting war in 80 years.
The North Koreans fought us to a draw. The North Vietnamese defeated us. The United States snatched defeat from the jaws of victory in Iraq. In two decades, the American military couldn’t figure out how to defeat the Taliban. It’s a record of failure that is horrific to contemplate.
Who can forget that less than a year ago, the American military mapped a strategy for our allies in Ukraine to prosecute their offensive against the Russian invaders? Did the offensive fail because the Ukrainians weren’t brave enough? I doubt it. More likely, the offensive failed because the plan the American military presented to the Ukrainians was deeply flawed just like their strategy in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan was.
The enthusiasm of the American military for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory continues unabated. It’s really something to behold. The DOD and our blinkered intelligence services are now urgently begging the Israeli military not to invade Rafah. Better for Hamas to remain intact to fight another day. Just like the United States was defeated in Iraq, the American military wants Israel to fail just like America failed.
Donald Trump famously said “America never wins anymore.” He was right. Just as we failed in our Middle East conflicts, the Biden Administration wants Israel to fail in Gaza.
4) Does anyone take the American intelligence services seriously? The Russians may be a threat to American security but aren’t our intelligence services also a threat? Who’s a better metaphor for our intelligence services, James Bond or Maxwell Smart?
Who drafts these intelligence reports? Isn’t it mostly graduates of America’s most well-respected colleges and universities? Aren’t the analysts who do the research for these reports the best and the brightest from places like the Kennedy School, Johns Hopkins and similar contemptible institutions? Are alumni of these institutions intelligent, insightful and perceptive or has every ounce of intelligence and common sense been robbed from them by the time they graduate?
Weren’t these highly credentialed intelligence analysts the experts who assured us that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction? Going back several decades, aren’t they the experts who conceived of and executed the Bay of Pigs?
Are the Russians the bigger threat to American security or is the incompetence of the American intelligence services a bigger problem?
The compliments were entirely accurate. So is the content of the comment I wrote.
Thanks very much by the way, for linking to the actual threat assessment document itself. I read it cover to cover. It was so much drivel. It had all the alacrity of an eighth grade book report submitted by a bored student to his social studies teacher.
You published a very interesting piece at the end of February riffing on the “Decline of American Competence.” Has the decline of competence manifested itself any more frankly than it has in the sphere of international relations? Hasn’t the last quarter century or so been characterized by unremitting failure by the West in general and the United States in particular?
There’s more than enough blame to go around but a healthy dollop of that blame can be laid at the feet of the faculty and the alumni from the Kennedy School, the Fletcher School, the Woodrow Wilson School and the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. Face it, Claire, our foreign policy and intelligence elite ain’t what they used to be.
To paraphrase Bill Buckley, America would be better off with a foreign policy run by the first two thousand names in the Boston phone book than it is with a foreign policy run by the graduates of the schools I mentioned above. Note that I said the Boston phone book, not the Cambridge, Newton, Brookline or Wellesley phone books. Way too many faculty live in those bedroom communities.
A “Threat Assessment” assembled by the crew credentialed by those institutions and others like it should be viewed with suspicion simply because of who wrote it.
To repeat what I said above, the main function of the universities that provide the personnel to the American intelligence and foreign policy communities is to insure that their students are drained of any common sense and perspicacity that they may have had when they first matriculated.
Where has all the competence gone? In my youth, Peter, Paul and Mary asked “where have all the flowers gone.” Perhaps you’re old enough to remember the song. The trio answered their own question. They concluded that the flowers went to grave yards everywhere. American competence sadly resides in the same place. It was brutally murdered by those teaching and studying at America’s institutions of higher education.
Who wrote the report? Jeff Yass?
1) These podcasts are great. They’re smart, pithy and focused. To my mind, they are much more valuable than the longer podcasts which require a bigger time commitment from the listener. I hope they will become a regular feature.
2) As usual, Claire is wrong about almost everything she says. She hates Twitter not because Elon Musk is a Russian agent or an antisemite. She hates Twitter because she preferred the platform in the old days when it’s primary purpose was suppressing free speech and promoting ideas she agrees with and suppressing ideas that Claire personally finds odious.
A perfect example of this can be found outside of the world of international affairs. Anyone who takes the time to review this article about how the deep state (that Claire reveres) suppressed controversial views about COVID will see compelling evidence of how pre-Musk Twitter became an agent of the State. See,
https://www.city-journal.org/article/harvard-tramples-the-truth
3) In the podcast, Claire extols the American military as the greatest military in the world. Of course, she’s right if you grade on the curve. If you’re not grading on the curve you get a less robust result. The American military hasn’t won a major shooting war in 80 years.
The North Koreans fought us to a draw. The North Vietnamese defeated us. The United States snatched defeat from the jaws of victory in Iraq. In two decades, the American military couldn’t figure out how to defeat the Taliban. It’s a record of failure that is horrific to contemplate.
Who can forget that less than a year ago, the American military mapped a strategy for our allies in Ukraine to prosecute their offensive against the Russian invaders? Did the offensive fail because the Ukrainians weren’t brave enough? I doubt it. More likely, the offensive failed because the plan the American military presented to the Ukrainians was deeply flawed just like their strategy in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan was.
The enthusiasm of the American military for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory continues unabated. It’s really something to behold. The DOD and our blinkered intelligence services are now urgently begging the Israeli military not to invade Rafah. Better for Hamas to remain intact to fight another day. Just like the United States was defeated in Iraq, the American military wants Israel to fail just like America failed.
Donald Trump famously said “America never wins anymore.” He was right. Just as we failed in our Middle East conflicts, the Biden Administration wants Israel to fail in Gaza.
4) Does anyone take the American intelligence services seriously? The Russians may be a threat to American security but aren’t our intelligence services also a threat? Who’s a better metaphor for our intelligence services, James Bond or Maxwell Smart?
Who drafts these intelligence reports? Isn’t it mostly graduates of America’s most well-respected colleges and universities? Aren’t the analysts who do the research for these reports the best and the brightest from places like the Kennedy School, Johns Hopkins and similar contemptible institutions? Are alumni of these institutions intelligent, insightful and perceptive or has every ounce of intelligence and common sense been robbed from them by the time they graduate?
Weren’t these highly credentialed intelligence analysts the experts who assured us that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction? Going back several decades, aren’t they the experts who conceived of and executed the Bay of Pigs?
Are the Russians the bigger threat to American security or is the incompetence of the American intelligence services a bigger problem?
It seems to me, it’s a pretty close competition.
You're lucky you remember to flatter me every now and again, Wiggo.
The compliments were entirely accurate. So is the content of the comment I wrote.
Thanks very much by the way, for linking to the actual threat assessment document itself. I read it cover to cover. It was so much drivel. It had all the alacrity of an eighth grade book report submitted by a bored student to his social studies teacher.
You published a very interesting piece at the end of February riffing on the “Decline of American Competence.” Has the decline of competence manifested itself any more frankly than it has in the sphere of international relations? Hasn’t the last quarter century or so been characterized by unremitting failure by the West in general and the United States in particular?
There’s more than enough blame to go around but a healthy dollop of that blame can be laid at the feet of the faculty and the alumni from the Kennedy School, the Fletcher School, the Woodrow Wilson School and the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. Face it, Claire, our foreign policy and intelligence elite ain’t what they used to be.
To paraphrase Bill Buckley, America would be better off with a foreign policy run by the first two thousand names in the Boston phone book than it is with a foreign policy run by the graduates of the schools I mentioned above. Note that I said the Boston phone book, not the Cambridge, Newton, Brookline or Wellesley phone books. Way too many faculty live in those bedroom communities.
A “Threat Assessment” assembled by the crew credentialed by those institutions and others like it should be viewed with suspicion simply because of who wrote it.
To repeat what I said above, the main function of the universities that provide the personnel to the American intelligence and foreign policy communities is to insure that their students are drained of any common sense and perspicacity that they may have had when they first matriculated.
Where has all the competence gone? In my youth, Peter, Paul and Mary asked “where have all the flowers gone.” Perhaps you’re old enough to remember the song. The trio answered their own question. They concluded that the flowers went to grave yards everywhere. American competence sadly resides in the same place. It was brutally murdered by those teaching and studying at America’s institutions of higher education.
That transcript is something else - 'Berlinksi.