Wow... I started to read that review this morning but bailed out well before he went off on a tangent.
Having read McCarthy's book, I wouldn't have said at all that it was about the CIA protecting its "cozy post-World War II order". And I wouldn't have said that was what McCarthy was trying to get across to the reader at all.
My back of the cocktail napkin summary:
1. Ukrainian history is pretty complicated, not much chance a simple summary will be accurate (so he provides a detailed one that shows all the internecine battling). Key point: Manafort, while a scumbag, was actually prodding Yushenko to *resist* Russia (opposite of what press/Mueller maintain).
2. Obama admin had long history of fecklessness/inaction wrt to Russia. (Russian reset). Continued from 2014 right up to fall of 2016 when they already knew of Russian election meddling but openly scoffed at the notion that it would work and shut down attempts to combat it. https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/26/politics/brett-bruen-russian-meddling-election/index.html
3. Clinton and Uranium One, Clinton Foundation corruption involving Russia. Takeaway: Obama admin didn't see Russia as threat.
4. Brennan was a closet commie, played huuuuuuuge role in peddling dossier nonsense. Opened cross-functional team to investigate alleged Russian meddling (odd, since they never saw Russia as a threat before!).
5. FISA - abuse (lack of valid predicate - no valid grounds for belief that Page was agent of foreign power, dossier not sufficient, woods rules violations).
6. Conflation of Wikipedia leak of DNC emails that did NOT damage Hillary with Hillary's missing 30K emails that Trump asked Russia - jokingly - to find. This was conveniently "folded into" to dossier later.
7. Repeated misbehavior of McCabe, Comey, et al. because they thought Hillary would win and they didn't want prior screwups to come out.
8. Complicity of Obama admin after Trump elected. Hillary got a defensive briefing, so should Trump have (if it was true that he wasn't being investigated - McCarthy says Trump was ALWAYS the target from day 1). Admin was 'all in' on handicapping Trump administration using counterintel investigation and "any means necessary".
'My Chinese interlocutor was not impressed. “You’re trying to tell me that the people who run the world’s great superpower are complete idiots who don’t think about the consequences of their actions? I don’t believe you.”'
Cass - don't discount the importance to many people of maintaining the post-WWII order AKA the Cold War. Check out Peter Zeihan on YouTube. Really smart guy with a lot of interesting things to say about the current geo-political situation. To paraphrase him, a lot of the political relationships we see now date from the US bribing up an alliance to fight the Russians in the Cold War using global trade agreements. The people who received those bribes and the ones who got to skim off the top are getting mighty discomfited as the situation unwinds itself.
I don't doubt (or necessarily believe, either - having no knowledge on this topic) "the importance to many people of maintaining the post-WWII order AKA the Cold War."
My point was more that McCarthy spends more time talking about recent, post-911 intel reforms having been abused for partisan purposes (JCPOA, winning elections) by the Obama administration and the intel community (interagency intel/info sharing, unmasking, etc.) than he does about the post WWII order. He admits he never thought this kind of abuse would be a problem, and now sees he was wrong about that.
Given the involvement of the last administration in all of this, McCarthy's take seems quite likely to me. I don't see anyone in the Obama admin as a big defender of the status quo wrt foreign policy. They seemed determined to alienate our traditional allies and suck up to our traditional foes - to bring a *new* world order into being rather than preserve the old one. In the new order, the US was to sit at the back of the proverbial bus to make room for nations who were once colonized by the great powers :p
McCarthy spends quite a bit of his book lamenting how the last admin didn't take Russia seriously as a foe and serially failed to stand up to Putin (and how wrong he thinks that was). He also spends a fair amount of time expounding on the partisanship of players like Brennan.
So my point was more that - if McCarthy was arguing preserving the post-WWII order as a big factor, somehow I missed it. Certainly it's possible both theories came into play, though they seem somewhat in conflict.
Wow... I started to read that review this morning but bailed out well before he went off on a tangent.
ReplyDeleteHaving read McCarthy's book, I wouldn't have said at all that it was about the CIA protecting its "cozy post-World War II order". And I wouldn't have said that was what McCarthy was trying to get across to the reader at all.
My back of the cocktail napkin summary:
1. Ukrainian history is pretty complicated, not much chance a simple summary will be accurate (so he provides a detailed one that shows all the internecine battling). Key point: Manafort, while a scumbag, was actually prodding Yushenko to *resist* Russia (opposite of what press/Mueller maintain).
2. Obama admin had long history of fecklessness/inaction wrt to Russia. (Russian reset). Continued from 2014 right up to fall of 2016 when they already knew of Russian election meddling but openly scoffed at the notion that it would work and shut down attempts to combat it. https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/26/politics/brett-bruen-russian-meddling-election/index.html
3. Clinton and Uranium One, Clinton Foundation corruption involving Russia. Takeaway: Obama admin didn't see Russia as threat.
4. Brennan was a closet commie, played huuuuuuuge role in peddling dossier nonsense. Opened cross-functional team to investigate alleged Russian meddling (odd, since they never saw Russia as a threat before!).
5. FISA - abuse (lack of valid predicate - no valid grounds for belief that Page was agent of foreign power, dossier not sufficient, woods rules violations).
6. Conflation of Wikipedia leak of DNC emails that did NOT damage Hillary with Hillary's missing 30K emails that Trump asked Russia - jokingly - to find. This was conveniently "folded into" to dossier later.
7. Repeated misbehavior of McCabe, Comey, et al. because they thought Hillary would win and they didn't want prior screwups to come out.
8. Complicity of Obama admin after Trump elected. Hillary got a defensive briefing, so should Trump have (if it was true that he wasn't being investigated - McCarthy says Trump was ALWAYS the target from day 1). Admin was 'all in' on handicapping Trump administration using counterintel investigation and "any means necessary".
'My Chinese interlocutor was not impressed. “You’re trying to tell me that the people who run the world’s great superpower are complete idiots who don’t think about the consequences of their actions? I don’t believe you.”'
ReplyDeleteWhyever not?
I wasn't sure of this before and didn't have time to look it up. But I'm pretty sure my "Yushenko" should have been "Yanukovich".
ReplyDeleteToo many guys whose last name starts with Y! This is what happens when you try to get in a comment just before a meeting.
Cass - don't discount the importance to many people of maintaining the post-WWII order AKA the Cold War. Check out Peter Zeihan on YouTube. Really smart guy with a lot of interesting things to say about the current geo-political situation. To paraphrase him, a lot of the political relationships we see now date from the US bribing up an alliance to fight the Russians in the Cold War using global trade agreements. The people who received those bribes and the ones who got to skim off the top are getting mighty discomfited as the situation unwinds itself.
ReplyDeleteChristopher:
ReplyDeleteI don't doubt (or necessarily believe, either - having no knowledge on this topic) "the importance to many people of maintaining the post-WWII order AKA the Cold War."
My point was more that McCarthy spends more time talking about recent, post-911 intel reforms having been abused for partisan purposes (JCPOA, winning elections) by the Obama administration and the intel community (interagency intel/info sharing, unmasking, etc.) than he does about the post WWII order. He admits he never thought this kind of abuse would be a problem, and now sees he was wrong about that.
Given the involvement of the last administration in all of this, McCarthy's take seems quite likely to me. I don't see anyone in the Obama admin as a big defender of the status quo wrt foreign policy. They seemed determined to alienate our traditional allies and suck up to our traditional foes - to bring a *new* world order into being rather than preserve the old one. In the new order, the US was to sit at the back of the proverbial bus to make room for nations who were once colonized by the great powers :p
McCarthy spends quite a bit of his book lamenting how the last admin didn't take Russia seriously as a foe and serially failed to stand up to Putin (and how wrong he thinks that was). He also spends a fair amount of time expounding on the partisanship of players like Brennan.
So my point was more that - if McCarthy was arguing preserving the post-WWII order as a big factor, somehow I missed it. Certainly it's possible both theories came into play, though they seem somewhat in conflict.