RFK, Jr., charming, but dangerous!

His vision of war and peace sounds great - except it's nuts.

Early this morning I listened to an RFK, Jr. speech on our foreign policy and potential for peace making. It startled and alarmed me. Not just because I think he’s dead wrong, an appeaser and Obama foreign policy acolyte, but because he is so charismatic, intelligent, passionate and possesses that ability that Obama had to sound eminently reasonable while running down the worst possible path for us.

My fear, of course, is not that radicals will like him. Some may. But, they are all going to vote the wrong way no matter what, by my lights. My fear is that this charming and sincere man with a big smile, who, unlike most of our leaders, speaks well, will convince many moderates and Rs that he’s better than Trump or whomever is the R nominee. First, although he is by no means a by-the-book lefty, and I can agree with him on a number of things, he is still a lefty who will likely continue us down a ruinous road. Because, if he ends up replacing Biden, who could physically or mentally cross a line at any time so that even many Ds couldn’t justify sticking with him, RFK, Jr. would be a very attractive candidate, a pleasant and vital man (he looks ripped) from America’s favorite royal family, one literally associated with Camelot.

And he will not let you forget his family, particularly his father and uncle, who he repeatedly invokes, and of whom he continuously writes his own hagiography. Oh, isn’t it wonderful that JFK and Khrushchev wrote letters to each other and Khrushchev said the earth is an ark (making all environmentalists knees weaken) and my dad would bring home a Russian spy and he taught us to dance like Cossacks - good times. What he remembers is that JFK did not send fighting troops to Vietnam, just advisers who didn’t fight and all of whom he would have recalled if he hadn’t died and he would do nothing to risk war, especially against a nuclear power, by baiting or irritating them. His memories are his memories.

Perhaps he forgets that JFK permitted the invasion of Cuba which ended at the Bay of Pigs, or, thereafter, Operation Mongoose. You can look Mongoose up yourself, but the covert operations program against Cuba (started under Eisenhower) was run for his JFK by his brother RFK. Perhaps Jr. forgets that his uncle’s administration also armed the men who assassinated the Dominican Republic’s Trujillo (though, to be fair, at the end, JFK made at least some effort to call it off after the disastrous Bay of Pigs, but did not warn Trujillo). Perhaps he forgot that shortly before his own assassination, JFK was aware of the coup against Diem, and we stood aside while he was assassinated. And does he forget that his uncle risked nuclear war by facing down Khruschev (his pen-pal) over Cuba and over East Berlin, the provocative “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech? How about these famous words at his inaugurations –

“Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”

Maybe if someone points it out those words he’ll remember – these do not sound like the words of someone who will not fight if it is a challenge to liberty. Especially that part about “support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.” That sounds like it was made for the Ukraine crisis. These do too-

“We dare not tempt [our adversaries] with weakness. For only when our arms are sufficient beyond doubt can we be certain beyond doubt that they will never be employed.” If we do not back Ukraine and help, along with Europe, provide necessary weaponry, until they succeed, Russia will have even more proof of our weakness under this administration, if Afghanistan was not enough.

I know, you will say, well, Ukraine isn’t an ally. Okay, technically. But, somehow the fact that we talked them into giving up their nukes to an evil regime that had oppressed them so long on account of that we would have their back – If you have no idea what I’m talking about, take a look at the Budapest Memorandum, where Russia, the U.K. and the U.S. made security guarantees to Ukraine in exchange for giving up its nukes. 2-23-22_ukraine-the_budapest_memo.pdf (harvard.edu). Not a few nukes either – 1900 warheads.

Fine, he’s allowed to have blinders about his own family and assure himself they would agree with him (though some of his living family members have made it publicly clear they do not always). There’s much worse.

He actually blames America’s military-industrial complex for the violence in our streets. It’s not the growing number of childless fathers, the claims of systemic racism (in a country where 3 out of the 8 last elected presidents and vice presidents are black), not the violence of BLM and George Floyd supporters across the country, not the left-wing cities where the D.A.s and mayors have literally allowed criminals to destroy business, murder people, among other crimes, not the antipathy to and legal handcuffing of the police by radical or just stupid politicians. Jr. makes no logical connection between our wars and modern violence – just says it. In the same way, he blames the Ukraine-Russian war on our mentality. Seriously? Did we invade Ukraine? I thought it was Russia, who signed a security accord with them just like we did and does exactly what it promised not to do. He even asks why Biden can’t meet with Putin? Why does he ask that? Does he want Biden to help Putin carve up Ukraine like Britain and France helped Germany to carve up Czechoslovakia at Munich, with Czechoslovakia’s own leaders not even being allowed in the room. I think that is what he does mean.

We killed a million Vietnamese, he says, almost as a non-sequitur. He doesn’t say that over a million and a half South Vietnamese risked their lives to flee on unsafe craft by sea, so desperate were they to escape and that likely 100,000s died doing so. Nobody knows how many of South Vietnamese who stayed were tortured or died after the fall in 1975 or how many sent to re-education camps (where they were also tortured and died). Not important to him, I suppose, or he would have said something about it. It’s hardly a secret history. I guess he feels it is better that people listening to him think we just wandered over there one day and began shooting people in the North, as there is no bad guy in his stories except for us. Why not mention that the North was supported by the USSR and China as we supported the South? Were we vainglorious, vicious and violent and the other side victorious, virtuous and valiant, so that they don’t deserve to be criticized by him? Maybe. They were certainly more loyal.

Worse still, he says we have to put ourselves in our enemies’ place, at least try, reach out to them and try to avoid war – as if we haven’t always done these things. Does he forget we tried to sit out WWI and II, how long it was we were in Vietnam before we started fighting ourselves, how much rope Sadaam Hussein was given before the attack? Does he not know that we stick with the U. N. no matter how they stick it to us?  It’s so Obama-like – we are arrogant, we need to apologize to the world, and if we would just be nice to all these people we saddle as evil – they’d be nice to us. Sure.

Does he not remember the disaster coming from Obama’s attempt to “reset” with Russia, how long Obama waited while ISIS, who he deemed the J. V. team, wrought hell in Syria and Iraq? Literally hell. They burned people in cages. The ones they shot were lucky.

He treats Russia and China as if they are just like us, just in different places on the map. He mentions none of the horrors of the Soviet Union’s long reign of terror, the starvation of Ukraine by Stalin, the Iron Curtain drawn across Europe, the murderous KGB and its successors, even all the obvious murders of Putin’s modern-day opponents. Does he forget the horrors and massacres of the cultural revolution, Tiananmen Square, the Uighurs and Falun Gong persecutions, the organ harvesting, the balloons, the Chinese police in our cities? It’s as if he never read any history and thinks countries are like boardgame pieces that are interchangeable.

Does he think the leaders of China and Russia are thinking if they are nice to us, then we’ll be nice to them or that they have to reach out to us and think about how we would feel in a given situation? No, they are looking to win, to dominate, to literally replace us – for their own sake and that of their own countries. Churchill understood this. Very often he is quoted as saying that “Russia is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.” But, that is a truncated version. This is the full quote -

"I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma; but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest."

National interest, get it. And these countries will laugh at anyone who says “diplomacy is back,” or who thinks they want anything but what’s in their interest.

Perhaps RFK, Jr. thinks it is not national interest that controls. After all, he tells us, the reason war happens is that we – the United States – make it inevitable. If only we – apparently always the bad guys – would just exercise self-restraint and avoid unnecessary irritants and rhetoric, no war would happen. It seems we are responsible for all wars. We are even responsible in his world for the conflicts between Pakistan and India, Israel and the Arab countries. Wars are not, it seems, because of bad guys invading other countries, like Germany invading Poland, Japan invading China, Iraq invading Kuwait, Russia invading Ukraine, or even one of our allies (sometimes) France reinserting itself in Vietnam after they became independent following WWII – it’s because of us. Uh huh.

The scary thing is that he sounds so reasonable and confident when he says these things and there are so many self-loathing Americans that want to believe it, love when someone has the decency to put us through the ringer. Not that we don’t have our black marks and faults, even still, but to compare us to China and Russia? He asks if we are going to stick with this story where America is categorically good and our opponents irredeemably evil? Honestly, I don’t think everyone believes that, not most people. But, it is okay that we should think that Russia and China are irredeemably evil when that’s how they behave. Not that all Chinese and Russians are, but their governments? After so many years, yes, until they prove otherwise.

Peace, he says, comes from a change in attitude - which, of course means, our attitude, as we are always at fault. So, when bad things happened in the world, let's say Iraq invading Kuwait, we would say, years ago, we'd go to war over this. But now we're gonna shake our finger at you and tell them that we're better than they are - have a better attitude, and we don't have any weapons anyway, because we changed our ways. Sorry, Ukraine, Taiwan and Kuwait, sorry, NATO countries, sorry Israel, sorry smaller countries as opposed to larger ones, sorry, but we’ve seen the light.

I’m going to tell you how the Ukraine-Russian war really happened – it’s not because of our bad attitude or our warlike nature. It’s because of the projection of weakness by two of our recent presidents.

When Obama was president, talking just like RFK, Jr. now, about our arrogance, our need to apologize to the world, and his damn reset button (hah, hah, hah, wasn’t that cute?) Putin knew he could walk all over him. He took Crimea and we did nothing. Ukraine could do nothing because it didn’t have any nukes. Why? Under Clinton, we made them give them up for “security.” Even Clinton has admitted that but for this, Russia would not have invaded Ukraine twice now, and he regrets it. ISIS too, seeing this weakness, wreaked havoc in the Middle East, actually made itself a country by force and terror, during his time too.

Obama also did nothing when Russia took an airbase in Syria – and you can look this up, it was immediately after Putin met with Obama. Either he had Obama’s approval or he didn’t even feel the need to tell him. Russia did what it pleased in Syria and all Obama’s administration could say about Russia’s activities was that it was “confused.”

Putin wasn’t confused. He is a bully who knows weakness when he sees it. When Charlie Rose asked him in an interview if he was really in Syria to rescue Assad – who we were trying to get out, he answered, “Well, you are right” and went to explain that he wasn’t going to let us decide who ruled Syria. Similarly, the feckless Obama drew a red line with Assad about the use of chemical weapons, and when it was ignored, did nothing except have his own henchman no. 1, John Kerry, lie about the U.N. treaty of which Syria was not a member, and say mean things. But, they were really mean and I’m sure Assad’s feelings were hurt. You might, if you pay attention to these things, notice that Assad is still there and Russia still has its airbase in Syria permanently along the Mediterranean.

And when Obama met with Putin’s henchman and they discussed our missiles in Europe, Obama casually told him that Putin shouldn’t worry, he’d be more flexible when he was re-elected. In other words, told Putin the truth and lied to us. Why not? He has done it a number of times. Many liberals I’ve met have told me they don’t even believe it because they haven’t seen it on the media they watch.

When our greatest 21^st century president and now martyr to modern American fascism was in power, he had our troops wipe the floor with ISIS, he reduced American deaths in Afghanistan and prepared to sensibly, in an orderly, leave. You notice Russia stood down when he was in office, bided its time, with Ukraine. It wasn’t taking the chance with Trump in office.

Within about a month of Biden’s inauguration Putin gave the order for troops to begin marshalling on the Ukraine border and about a year later attacked. Biden had already shown how weak we were in Afghanistan and in removing our ships from the Black Sea. Biden was Obama redux and he probably thought we’d roll over. When he took office China began to become even more aggressive, which it was much less so during Trump’s term, and even N. Korea is much more aggressive (look at its increase in missile launches).

But, I might have to give Biden credit for one thing. Where even many Republicans and conservatives are for abandoning our duty to Ukraine, and I believe many for domestic political reasons, Biden is sticking with them. Biden is the worst president in living memory. Maybe ever - yes, worse than Nixon - have you been reading my Why I don’t like Joe Biden series? I had to add the “might” because it might be true that he is afraid that Ukraine will reveal his and his family’s business dealings there while he was VP and is therefore doing Ukraine’s bidding. I hope not. Then he gets no credit, but we might not ever know that.

We won the Cold War for one reason, and many countries are free of the plague of the USSR, because Reagan understood that our economic power, if we remained free, allowed us to leave the USSR in the dust. We helped win WWI and especially WWII (admittedly, the latter with Russia as an ally, really our frenemy, taking much of the brunt), not because we had a bad attitude, but because there is such a things as good or evil, freedom and slavery, democracy and totalitarianism and over time we have been, at least most of the time, simply better than the bad guys. This is true even as Biden takes us down a very sick and dangerous path now, and many of us are deeply worried for our country.

RFK, Jr. is very impressive and has his good ideas and charms. He’s not an anti-vaxxer as his opponents claim and his approach actually makes sense. I don’t know what he thinks on all issues yet, and I don’t think he has a good chance to win if Biden doesn’t collapse physically or mentally (or both), though in many, probably most ways, he is far superior to him. But, I do not think his attitude towards war and peace is healthy or wise in any way, though it sounds nice if you don’t think about it. His attitude towardds war against our enemies is very dangerous, worse than Biden’s, who even rattles sabers against China invading Taiwan despite our longstanding policy (since Carter) that China is one country and it’s capital is Peiping. I wouldn’t vote for RFK, Jr. based his views on war alone, though there are probably many good reasons not to, yet to be revealed.

Si vis pacem, para bellum.