CHECK IT OUT: A New Podcast From Kelley Vlahos
Plus: The Dumb 'Red Line' Argument Won't Die
A New Podcast From Kelley Vlahos
Washington has been called the swamp, the Imperial city, and in the words of that infamous 80’s show, Tales of the Darkside, an underworld, a place that is just as real as the one we see with our own two eyes, but not as brightly lit... a Darkside. To be frank, the nation’s capital is all of these, and a few more choice descriptions. It can be very slimy, with various corrupting special interests dominating policy in a revolving door that guarantees that’s what’s best for regular American people never has a chance. It’s militant, thriving off the bedtime story that the United States is an indispensable nation that can and must use force to impose its values on other people and nations. It’s hypocritical because it does not exhibit those values or demand them of others when it is not convenient.
Finally, it is dysfunctional, in that it is bloated by a seemingly endless supply of your tax dollars, money-making machinery, and an administrative state that is so disconnected from reality that it is sitting on a ticking time bomb. Hyper-partisanship has actual governing in gridlock while beneath the surface, unelected minions are making decisions that affect you and me every day. What could possibly go wrong?
On my new show, Trip the Beltway Fantastic, we want to expose all of this and more. That’s why we will only talk to individuals dedicated to shedding a light on at least one aspect of this Darkside: the wars, the corruption, the dirty politics, the hubris, the special interests and the hypocrisy. This won’t be all horror, we’ll have plenty of fun, because Washington is ultimately a circus, too. With plenty of clowns. Please join us each week as my friends and I trip the Beltway Fantastic!
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From Daniel Larison
David Lammy’s case for “progressive realism” includes this delusional claim:
The fact that the United States did not police its redline against the use of chemical weapons in Syria not only entrenched Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s monstrous regime; it also emboldened Russian President Vladimir Putin. He concluded that the West no longer had the stomach to defend the rules-based order [bold mine-DL] and, by annexing Crimea, applied the logic of what David Miliband, another former Labour foreign secretary, has called “the age of impunity.”
It is silly to think that choosing not to bomb Syria in 2013 encouraged Russia to act aggressively somewhere else later on. This is another tired appeal to the dumbest version of the hawkish credibility argument. I won’t waste my time or yours explaining once again why the world doesn’t work this way. The more important error is Lammy’s claim that bombing Syria in 2013 would have had something to do with defending the “rules-based order.”
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