Smearing J.D. Vance

NR's 'Unpatriotic Conservatives', 2024 Version

I’m sending an extra post today, because I’m here in the airport getting caught up on reading, and I’m angry at Jay Nordlinger’s repellent attack on Sen. J.D. Vance in National Review. Both men are friends of mine, though I haven’t spoken to Jay since I left National Review in 2003. Jay is an unreconstructed Reaganite, and a good man, though I strongly disagree with him on some political issues. What burns me up about his slanderous assault on J.D. Vance is that it is 100 percent the kind of neoconservative garbage that one would have thought was discredited by the Iraq War.

Nordlinger hates Vance’s Ukraine skepticism. I’m on Vance’s side on that issue, but I don’t assume that people who disagree with me are dirtbags. That’s not how Nordlinger rolls, though. His piece combines personal invective against Vance — without answering Vance’s argument — with slavering hero-worship of Volodymyr Zelensky. Now, we can agree that Zelensky has been a very brave wartime leader, but that does not make him into a saint, or render his cause holy.

Except to people like Nordlinger. Excerpts from his piece:

I think all can agree that Vance and Zelensky are as different as night and day. Admirers of Vance can agree; admirers of Zelensky can agree. Those two men come from different planets. They are barely members of the same species.

(Of course they belong to the same species. Of course they come from the same planet. But I am emphasizing a point.)

More:

Ukrainians are fighting for their very right to exist — their freedom, their independence, their nationhood. Oddly, many self-described nationalists in the West are either hostile to this or indifferent to it.

“Oddly”? I wish Ukraine were a free and independent nation. I wish Russia had not invaded. But the real world, which includes Ukraine and Russia both, is far more complicated than that simple narrative. Vance has pointed out over and over that the US has spent untold billions to fund the Ukraine resistance, which, despite Ukrainian valor, is failing. Why should we continue, especially when we have so very many domestic problems to deal with, and we are running out of weapons at precisely the time when our most serious rival, China, is preparing to go after Taiwan?

Vance’s basic case was brilliantly articulated by NR’s Michael Brendan Dougherty today. MBD lays into GOP critics of Vance and other Ukraine dissenters from the Senate Republican mainstream:

The heavy implication is that there is no argument, and that senators such as J. D. Vance, Ron Johnson, and Mike Lee are just cravenly giving in to irrational opposition to Biden. Or that representing the majority view of Republican voters is some kind of dirty trick.

So let’s lay it out in plain English. The case against appropriating another $60 billion to support Ukraine’s defense against Russia is still largely the same case against America involving itself deeply in Ukraine’s politics at all.

MBD points out that 1) Russia’s interest in Ukraine and America’s interest in Ukraine are asymmetrical; 2) “taking on Ukraine as a Western dependent is difficult, uncertain, and treacherous;” and 3) the $60 billion for Ukraine in the bill will do little to change the status quo (meaning, it’s throwing money down a rathole). I strongly encourage you to read the whole thing. MBD bolsters his arguments with facts and logic, which shame lawmakers and pundits who are attempting to insult dissidents into conformity by asserting the 2024 version of NR’s obscene “unpatriotic conservatives” smear against Bob Novak, Pat Buchanan, and others on the Right who opposed the Iraq War.

Back to Nordlinger’s column on Vance:

Think of those words. The Ukrainians are trying to repel an invasion by a monstrous neighbor. They are fighting and dying to hang on to their country — to keep from being dragged back into an evil empire. They are fighting for their very right to exist.

“We need to stop supporting the Ukraine war effort”? What a repulsive way to put it.

No wonder J. D. Vance could not sit down with Volodymyr Zelensky. Yes, they are utterly different men. Utterly different in character, understanding — everything. Each man has his fans. It has ever been thus, in history: the Vances and the Zelenskys (few as the Zelenskys are). In every generation, in every conflict.

I have written an article about Vance — I am singling him out (with the Munich conference as a peg). But frankly, it could be about many, many politicians and political personalities in America.

J. D. Vance is a darling of the GOP — and of CPAC, Fox, Heritage, Turning Point. The whole show. He may be vice president one day — or president. I hope he will exhibit a fraction of the mettle of Volodymyr Zelensky.

Well. I’m old enough to remember when neocons made a plaster saint of the Iraqi politician Ahmed Chalabi, who died in 2015. Why, look at what Jay Nordlinger wrote about him in NR on April 23, 2004. Excerpt:

Maureen Dowd seems to be nearing institutionalizability:

The Pentagon could easily have saved the national museum and library if they had redeployed the U.S. troops assigned to guard Ahmad Chalabi, the Richard Perle pal, Pentagon candidate and convicted embezzler who is back in Iraq trying to ingratiate himself with the country he left 40 years ago.

That, my friends, is an amazing stretch of words. Notice, first, the segue from the museum into reviling Chalabi. Then “Richard Perle pal” — that’ll hang you: to be a friend of a man who has been as concerned about Middle East democracy, freedom, and peace as any American. “Pentagon candidate”? That just means the Defense Department recognizes Chalabi as a key ally in building a decent post-Saddam Iraq.

Then “convicted embezzler.” Well, put it this way: Maureen Dowd’s faith in Jordanian justice is greater than mine. I quote from a USA Today story on Chalabi: “In 1989, he was accused of embezzling millions of dollars from a Jordanian bank. Chalabi says that the charges were politically motivated because of Jordan’s ties with Iraq and that the matter can be easily resolved. ‘It’s going to be more awkward for them than for me,’ he said in January.”

But she isn’t done: She accuses “conservatives” of “protecting their interests by backing a shady expat puppet.” Shady expat puppet: That’s the sort of vitriol Saddam’s “information minister” would have used against opponents of the regime. It is astonishing to read it on the op-ed page of the New York Times. Really, this is a new low.

A rival politician of Chalabi’s — they have those now, thanks to George W. Bush and Tony Blair — Mohammed Mohsen Zubaidi, “has criticized some of Chalabi’s actions, including his decision to deploy teams of armed fighters throughout Iraq.” This, according to a reporting piece in the Times. I believe that Chalabi’s decision to raise a small army, to aid the Allied liberators, was vitally important. It is important to Iraqi pride and dignity: to a sense of involvement in their own liberation. You might call that the opposite of puppetry.

Bernard Lewis, the great and humane Middle East scholar, says that Chalabi is the best hope in this historic, perilous, and pivotal period for Iraq. I believe him. But people like Maureen Dowd evidently hate George Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld so much, they’re willing to tear down Chalabi — a man infinitely better than his worst critics will ever be.

Chalabi, you may recall, is the Iraqi most responsible for leading the US into the disastrous war there. Here’s what Cato’s Doug Bandow wrote in 2004. Excerpt:

What was the Bush administration thinking when it adopted Ahmed Chalabi, head of the Iraqi National Congress, as its chief ally against Saddam Hussein? Ignore the latest allegations of blackmail, corruption and espionage. His misnamed intelligence helped mislead America and its allies into war.

Washington originally planned to install Chalabi to run occupied Iraq and recently considered turning control of the interim government over to him. But last week U.S. troops and Iraqi police raided his home and office looking for evidence of wrongdoing.

If the war and occupation belong to anyone, it is Ahmed Chalabi. He left Iraq in 1957 and became a leading Iraqi exile voice as head of the INC, which received some $40 million from Washington over the years.

He forged close ties with a number of influential American neoconservatives. The Pentagon relied on Chalabi for intelligence before the war and flew him, plus 700 retainers, into Iraq after the fall of Baghdad.

Chalabi only ended up as one of 25 members of the Iraqi Governing Council. Nevertheless, he accumulated a host of important positions for himself and his allies, even though he had no political constituency and was widely distrusted by Iraqis. Power would come only at the point of an American gun or in alliance with influential domestic interests. The former was his original modus operandi. But after falling out with the Coalition Provisional Authority’s Paul Bremer, Chalabi began pursuing the second path.

Although he described himself as “America’s best friend in Iraq,” he devoted increasing attention to leading Shiites, including militant cleric Moktada al‐​Sadr, whose followers are now in open revolt against the U.S. Chalabi pushed to increase the role of Islam in the draft constitution.

Chalabi has been a regular in Iran. Newsweek reported that some U.S. officials believe he has turned sensitive information over to Tehran, material that could “get people killed,” according to one source.

Another claim, cited by Newsday, is that the INC reflected Iranian disinformation back at Washington “to provoke the United States into getting rid of Saddam Hussein.”

Even if Chalabi did not stretch cooperation to include espionage, he put his interest before that of the United States. In early April when the Marines surrounded Fallujah and al‐​Sadr’s militia seized control of several cities, Chalabi said nothing. He finally opined that the United States should stay out.

Chalabi renewed his criticism of U.S. military operations in mid‐​May. When Bremer decided to reverse de‐​Baathification, Chalabi denounced the move as akin to “allowing Nazis” into the post‐​World War II German government.

After Iraq’s liberation, the INC gained control of Saddam’s files, leading to charges that the organization blackmailed those with influence to deploy and contracts to give.

Money also fueled Chalabi’s ambitions. Whitley Bruner, a CIA agent who worked with him in the early 1990s, notes that Chalabi always had “to spend money to gain loyalty — to rent loyalty.” Washington’s contributions to the INC ran to $4 million annually. More recently, Iraq became his bank.

Columnist Arnaud de Borchgrave writes that Chalabi has “a say in which companies get the nod for some of the $18.4 billion earmarked for reconstruction.” And, adds de Borchgrave, a generous commission is reportedly required.

Moreover, Sabah Nouri, chosen by Chalabi to be the Finance Ministry’s top anti‐​corruption official, was recently arrested for financial improprieties.

So far, Chalabi’s culpability amid the miasma of allegations remains unclear. Incontrovertible, however, is the fact that he helped mislead America into war.

Much of the erroneous “intelligence” pointing to Iraq’s possession of WMD came from INC informants. Chalabi and company also assured Washington that the occupation as well as the war would be a cakewalk.

And so forth. I bring this up to point out that some Americans have a grave weakness for building up narratives, and actors, to justify what we want to do on the world stage. American neocons fell hard for Ahmed Chalabi, who manipulated a willing US conservative establishment into launching a catastrophic war for the sake of installing him in power. It was one of the greatest mistakes in US history.

I’m not saying that Zelensky is the same kind of man as Chalabi. Chalabi was a crook. I don’t think Zelensky is, though there is no doubt that Ukraine was a deeply corrupt country before the Russian invasion, and I doubt very much that those habits and structures disappeared because the equally corrupt Russia invaded.

The point is not whether or not Zelensky is a good man, or not. The point is: regarding the Ukraine war, what is in the best interests of the United States? Zelensky might be every bit the hero Nordlinger thinks he is, and that still says nothing about whether or not the US should continue funding and supporting this war.

I believe there are among Ukraine backers good people who sincerely believe the US ought to stay in this. I happen to think they are wrong, but not evil. What I despise is the habit, widespread among the DC Republican establishment, of smearing those conservatives who disagree as scumbags who aren’t fit to tie Zelensky’s sandals. That kind of thinking, and that kind of rhetoric, helped get us into the Iraq catastrophe. Back in 2002 and 2003, I believed it, and backed that bad war. Neocon pundits can refuse to learn from history and their past mistakes, but sorry, I’m not going to be fooled again.

UPDATE: Here’s a link to the tweet below:

UPDATE.2: Politico piece says “J.D. Vance Has A Point”. Excerpt:

One of Sen. J.D. VANCE’s arguments against sending more aid to Ukraine is that the U.S. can’t promptly produce enough munitions and weapons. He has a point.

At last weekend’s Munich Security Conference, both on the sidelines and on stage, the Ohio Republican and DONALD TRUMP ally countered the prevailing narrative that the West needed to stand by Ukraine.

Here’s what Vance told reporters, including NatSec Daily, outside the Bayerischer Hof hotel: “It would not drastically increase the supply of weapons in Ukraine because we’ve already expended so many of our munitions and resources.”

“The West doesn’t make enough munitions to support an indefinite war. Ukraine doesn’t have enough manpower to support an indefinite war,” he continued, adding since there’s no clear vision of what a Ukrainian victory would look like, it’s better to save lives by pushing Kyiv and Moscow to the negotiating table.