The Zeitgeist

Bromance Breakup: Tucker Carlson’s

Anti-Ukraine Tirades Send Me Packing.

 By HOWARD BARBANEL

True confession: I’ve been a loyal and regular viewer of Tucker Carlson’s program on Fox since its inception. About 95 percent of the time, until recently, I’ve been in agreement with him (hey, I’m a mainstream Republican) but lately I have been turned-off (and have been turning-off the show) because of his strident opinions on Ukraine and the war there. To put it simply, our views and paths on foreign policy have diverged dramatically. To find myself in agreement with Joe Biden on something is quite a shock.

To listen to Mr. Carlson, we are on the precipice of Armageddon, twisting the nose of Russia’s nuclear-armed Vladimir Putin who would have no compunctions about ending the world as we know it over US and NATO support for Ukraine. Never mind that would also mean the end of Mr. Putin’s Russia as well. Tucker calls for an immediate negotiated end to the war, as if there were willing participants for such a discussion and easily reachable terms to end the hostilities to everyone’s mutual satisfaction. There are also his rationalizations that a Ukraine tethered to the West is a mortal strategic danger to Russia. How is that so? Do the Poles, Estonians and Bulgarians have imperialistic designs on Russia? Hard to imagine. A normal, democratic Russia would want to be a part of Europe too, not feel threatened by it.

According to Mr. Carlson, fear of Russia’s alleged military prowess should impel the US and our allies to do a Munich on Ukraine because, hey, why is this any of our business? For those who’ve forgotten history, Britain and France in the late 1930s acquiesced to Hitler’s reoccupation of the Rhineland, Anschluss of Austria and finally the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia in an orgy of appeasement because the major Western powers were cowed by the specter of war. We all know how well that policy turned out.

Tucker constantly harps on the allegation that Ukraine is not a democracy. Yet, Ukraine’s president was in fact elected in a nationwide popular vote in two rounds of voting that ended on April 21, 2019, garnering about 75 percent of the vote in the run-off. Tucker decries the imposition of martial law by President Zelensky in what by any definition and measure is most clearly an existential crisis, yet, Great Britain went a full 10 years from 1935 to 1945 without a national general election owing to the comparable crisis of World War Two which started in 1939. In fact, Churchill was never elected Prime Minister before or during the war and was defeated in the 1945 election. He only won a personal mandate for the first time in 1951. Yet Tucker has never called the UK a “fascist regime” for its lack of elections during its fight for survival against Germany.

According to Google, on April 27, 1861, President Abraham Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus for a large part of the country “to give military authorities the necessary power to silence dissenters and rebels. Under the order, commanders could arrest and detain individuals who were deemed threatening to military operations” in what was also obviously a fight for the America’s survival. During World War One draconian censorship measures were introduced in the US to control the war message and stifle dissent owing to the war emergency.

With Ukraine’s cities under bombardment night and day, with civilians being slaughtered, with cities being leveled, with fierce battles being waged on a constant basis, how is Ukraine’s situation different from the examples above? Ukraine wants to be a part of the EC and NATO and to do so they would have to be a democracy adhering to the rules of law in those institutions. They are fighting for the opportunity to join the West. Ukrainians want to be free. What is the whole point of America if not to stand against violent dictators, tyranny and the crushing of human rights? Should our country just be about NFL football, pizza delivery, the latest iPhone and inane TikTok videos or do we stand with brave people fighting for their freedom?

Mr. Carlson also constantly alleges that Ukraine is a cauldron of corruption and that US and NATO tax dollars are going to “oligarchs in track suits” instead of to fund the war effort. Yet he offers not one scintilla of proof to those charges. Tucker additionally spews wholesale barrages of personal insults against Ukraine’s president. Zelensky is a guy who could have hopped a US plane for Dubai and cozied-up next to Afghanistan’s last leader but instead chose to stay, stand his ground, rally his people and fight.

Finally, supposing the US were to cease support for Ukraine, how it is in the strategic and political interests of the US to empower and embolden Russia’s Vladimir Putin? What good would come from a Russian victory? A significantly strengthened Russia would be a very real threat to Western democracies, especially those in Eastern Europe and the Baltic. A much stronger Russia could make more mischief across the globe in league with China and Iran. How does that help America?

Tucker’s constant attacks on Ukraine come across (inadvertently, I’m sure) as though he wishes Russia to win and become a reincarnated USSR. The US supports many countries that support us, even if they are not perfect democracies and even if we don’t agree with all of their policies. The key idea being fought for in Ukraine is that wars of aggression to subjugate other peoples are illegitimate and cannot prevail. Reasonable people can debate whether aiding Ukraine is worth $40 or $60 Billion but belittling Ukraine in its struggle to defend its people and territorial integrity surely does nothing to enhance global security or American interests and belittles Tucker’s otherwise important and compelling program.

The Zeitgeist

 

The Chief Mutant Human Clergyman worshipping the "Holy Weapon of Peace" in Beneath the Planet of the Apes (left) and a typical shoulder ground to air missile launcher.

How Malaysian Flight 17 and the Gaza Situation are Connected

What does the Israeli ground incursion into Gaza and the downing of Malaysian Flight 17 over Ukraine have in common? Seemingly, it would seem nothing, but in actuality, everything.

Over the past two weeks hundreds of missiles have rained down on Israel from Gaza, with some of them actually reaching Israel’s major cities. The level of rockets fired by Hamas are an upgrade from their last fusillade of a few years ago but still not fully at first world standards – not because Hamas doesn’t want better weapons, but because of Israel’s continued interdiction of Iranian arms shipments. The lack of Hamas missile lethality is a credit to Israel’s missile defense systems, not a diminution of Hamas’ intentions.

Last Thursday over the Eastern Ukraine, in an area being held by an ad-hoc group of so-called ethnic Russian freedom fighters (but really in the main by Russian special forces units in Vietcong-style camouflage) a Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777 with 298 people aboard (including three infants) was shot clear out of 33,000 feet of sky by a sophisticated ground to air missile supposedly launched by these ethnic Russian patriots. Ukraine doesn’t have an Iron Dome missile defense system so the wreckage of Flight 17 became a horrific debris field of body parts and mechanical detritus.

Israel’s Ben Gurion International Airport (and its only major airport) is a scant 11 miles from the heart of Tel Aviv, Israel’s largest city. But really, Tel Aviv is a megalopolis like Los Angeles or Miami with dozens of governmentally independent municipalities comprising a sprawling metropolitan area where about three million of the country’s seven million people live. Most significantly, Ben Gurion is situated a mere four miles from the Palestinian Arab town of Rantis in the disputed West Bank. It wouldn’t take sophisticated weaponry as was used to down Malaysian Flight 17 to wreak havoc with Israel’s commercial and civilian air travel. Gaza-caliber missiles fired from West Bank rooftops would effectively shut down air travel into and out of Israel and in a horrific specter, shoulder-launched ground to air missiles could take down civilian aircraft with men, women and children aboard in a matter of seconds. US airlines have already suspended flights just out of concern from Gaza missiles.

The Gaza war was undoubtedly initiated by Hamas at Iran’s urging to get the Iranian nuclear negotiations with the West wiped off the front pages and major newscasts. And it worked.  The Iranians (who supply materiél and money to Hamas and Hezbollah in the North)  convinced the U.S. and the West to give them more time to negotiate over their uranium enrichment program. Time is money – with economic sanctions eased considerably in consideration for yammering with the Western diplomats, the Iranians can enrich more uranium, install more centrifuges and make life better for their people all at the same time. The Iranians have made it crystal clear that their ultimate objective is world domination and the obliteration of Israel as part and parcel of that process. Hamas is a proxy in this effort.

The public blandishments by the Iranians about their supposed peaceful nuclear program reminds me of the 1970 sci-fi film Beneath the Planet of the Apes starring James  Franciscus, in which the subterranean mutant human survivors of a 20^th Century nuclear conflagration are the guardians of a doomsday hydrogen bomb that their chief clergyman calls a “holy weapon of peace” and a “divine bomb.” Upon hearing this, Franciscus, as the astronaut Brent can’t restrain his emotions of derision, disdain and ludicrousness and stammers in a mocking way, “holy weapon of peace!” while half-laughing. But the bomb was no joke and in the end of the film (spoiler alert here if you’ve not seen it in the last 44 years) the Earth is destroyed by it.

The Iranians are on that track and if they had their druthers they’d propel Hamas to control of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank (just as Hamas forcefully ousted Fatah from Gaza) and would supply them with thousands of missiles with which to shut down central Israel, sow terror on land, sea and air and actively fulminate for a second Holocaust against the millions of Jews in Israel.

Hence the Israeli government’s determination not to have El Al, Delta, United, Air France, British Airways and other airlines’ flights blown to bits in the air over central Israel or bombed while on the tarmac by allowing the proliferation of dangerous missiles adjacent to its very narrow territory and its equal determination not to allow more genocidal extremist regimes to camp out on its doorstep.

While the so-called Russian separatists in Ukraine are not exactly Hamas, the net result of their recent actions and ambitions are the same and in a sense the struggle of the Ukrainians and the Israelis for freedom and security in the face of bloodthirsty bullies are very much in alignment.