A couple of days ago, the inveterate Chris Dunn sent me a note on Twitter about how opportune my article was that day. Timing is everything, I replied, and repeated an old joke.
A guy says, “Ask me what the secret of comedy is.“ His friend responds, “Okay. What's the secret of co…“ “Timing.” Yes, indeed, timing is everything. Man, if only William Barr had come to me first. The former Attorney General has a new book set to be released about his time in office with Trump. It’s long been assumed that one of the reasons Barr left his job only a few months before it officially ended, and him publicly saying that the election was not stolen, is that he had been planning for a long time to rehabilitate his reputation. Well, yes, this was a fool’s errand on his part because that ship had sailed years earlier, but a guy can dream, I suppose. Unfortunately, with this book, that dream will now be a nightmare, because not only has the ship sailed, it tuns out to be the Titanic, just hit a massive iceberg and has sunk to the bottom of the deep-briny. When writing a book, an author has to turn his manuscript into the publisher far in advance of publication for editing, proofreading the galleys, printing time to market it and much more. This, alas, has caused a wee bit of a problem for Barr. That’s because the Daily Beast got an advance copy and -- well, it’s not going to go well for him. You see, it's not that Barr digs an even deeper hole for himself about his transgressions blocking investigations and abusing the Justice Department, while virtually acting as Trump's personal lawyer, but bizarrely, he goes into a long passage defending Trump and slamming Democrats for – okay, wait for it… -- “demonizing” the Russian murderous despot Vladimir Putin. Yes, really. And "demonizing" isn't my word to make his book seem worse (because, believe me, it gets even worse than that...), but it's William Barr's. I'm sure that he felt oh-so sanctimonious when he first typed the chapter -- which was reprehensible even without current events -- and was chuckling his William Barr chuckle. Unfortunately for former Attorney General Barr, defender of fascism, current events have a way of catching up to us. It's just a shame for him that reality couldn't have been at least delayed a couple of months until after publication and he could have gotten more of his 30 pieces of silver for betraying the United States and democracy. Timing is everything. Pull up a comfy chair and make some popcorn. This isn’t a one-sentence “Ooops” gaff about the word "demonizing" that reads poorly after the fact. No, no, this is an “Oh, my dear God!!” treatise in which Barr picks up the biggest shovel he can find and goes on and on and on. “Unfortunately,” Barr writes (and “unfortunately” takes on a whole new meaning here that the former Attorney General surely did not intend). “Unfortunately, with the media ready to pounce on President Trump as a Russian stooge—if not a Manchurian candidate—at the slightest sign of détente, the President’s hands were severely tied, particularly during an election year. This is not the way grown-ups should think." First of all, “This is not the way grown-ups should think” should never be a sentence used against others when trying to defend the petulant, ever-whining, infantile Trump who goes into rants at even the slightest criticism. But worse, to slam others for characterizing Trump as a “Russian stooge" -- only to have Trump himself call Putin a "genius” for invading Ukraine is, and then adding how “wonderful” that thinking was, and “Here’s a guy who’s very savvy” and full of “charm” -- is a mistake of monumental proportions for a prosecuting attorney, most especially when he knows his client is, in fact, a Russian stooge. In fact, “Russian stooge” doesn’t even go far enough when defining Trump. Though Barr’s next words (which, again, he should have kept to himself) might come closer, “…if not a Manchurian candidate.” That’s pretty much like a “slap yourself in the forehead,” what on earth was I thinking??, face-plant moment. But here's the thing -- Barr is still just warming up. As you read this, remember something: though he was in the Trump cabinet, William Barr is not a foreign policy expert. That was never, ever his field. He’s a lawyer. That’s not to say he can’t have an opinion about foreign affairs. Of course he can. The pesky problem is when you present your opinion in the guise of expertise. And again, to be clear, the issue here isn’t whether his opinion is based on expertise or not -- it’s that (non-expert or Rhodes scholar) he’s about to dive into the deep end defending the murderous Russian despot Vladimir Putin. And since Barr is not a foreign policy expert, perhaps he’d have been better served sitting on his typing hands for a while. And remembering the words of his party's founder, Abraham Lincoln: "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than speak and remove all doubt." As Putin threatens the world now with nuclear attack, and Russia soldiers started a fight at the largest nuclear power plant in Europe – where a fire broke out – and Russian invaders have seized control of nuclear power plants in Ukraine, attorney William Barr gives his analysis of foreign policy today. A heads-up – it doesn’t age well. “The threat posed by Russia has changed dramatically since the fall of the Soviet Union. The Russian Federation of today has roughly half the population the old Soviet Union had, and less than half the U.S. population. The larger Warsaw Pact countries—Poland, the former East Germany—are now part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The combined defense budgets of the three big Western European countries—Britain, France, and Germany—are comparable to Russia’s. While Russia still has a potent nuclear arsenal, the prospect of Russian tanks rolling to the English Channel—a realistic scenario during the Cold War—is just not plausible now. Further, while some Russian foreign policy goals are in tension with our own, Russia’s leaders no longer promote a revolutionary ideology that foreordains general antagonism with the West. For them, foreign policy is now more purely a matter of Realpolitik.” And that’s not all. Barr goes on against Democrats’ position and President’s Biden strong stance on supporting NATO (something Trump spent four years demeaning and trying to break apart – and whose Biden-led unity is now a major reason why crushing sanctions have been put on Russa, undermining their economy and creating widespread protest across their country, leading to most of the world supporting the U.S. position and NATO, and making Russia a pariah of the world), and how it fits into national security, along with protecting the power grid. And Barr’s words come after the past five years of Republican supporting Putin as a strong leader, stronger they kept saying than President Obama, enabling Trump as he stood in Helsinki next to Putin and said how he trusted the word of Putin and did not trust all the U.S. intelligence services. Barr writes snarkly that he’s afraid of how President Biden, being so befuddled he's only “wavering, intermittently alert," may give Putin the room and confidence to "pursue Russian strategic goals more assertively." Actually, it’s Biden’s expertise on foreign policy and his relationships which helped unite NATO as a powerful force against Putin. And Barr’s words also ignore that it was Trump who allowed (and helped) Putin divide the U.S. with Republican Party support which likely is what allowed the Russian despot the most confidence to pursue those goals. And also, as the world has seen very clearly, while Putin might be pursuing his goals assertively, “strategic” is nowhere to be found. It’s a mess, almost rushed, virtually inexplicable to military experts. With no comprehensible end game in sight. And then, for good measure, former Attorney General William Barr decides to throw in just a little more snark. “Given Biden’s manifest weakness, Putin is likely to feel he’s better off making no concessions at all.” This from a man who threw away a lifetime of semi-credibility to act as consigliere for an incompetent, painfully-insecure, con man fascist who undermined democracy, even to to point of pushing an insurrection to overthrow the government. A man so criminally weak he laid down for a murderous Russian despot who was leader of America's oldest adversary, telling the world he believed him and not the Americans who swore an oath dedicating their lives (some risking them) to protect and defend the United States. And that's why Vladimir Putin didn't have to make any concessions about anything, because he know Trump would give him whatever he wanted. And he got his way with everything -- until President Joe Biden united NATO and much of the world to sanction and block him. Pro Tip: If you're going to try to be snarky, it's best not to do so on behalf of a murderous despot enemy of America, because he's going to come back and bite you on the snark every single time. And so is the fascist you knowingly enabled. And all the more so and all the more literally knowingly when you know you knowingly lied as Attorney General about Robert Mueller's report on Trump colluding with Russia -- which you read unredacted -- and then redacted as much in it as you could about Trump being a Russian stooge. If not a Manchurian candidate. But even for all that, it’s how former Attorney General William Barr wraps up his Christmas present to Democrats that puts it into full perspective, attacking them for daring to "demonize" Putin (ah, there's that word) as a threat to America -- and now, as we've seen, the world). And then buries himself even deeper. Trust me, yes, it's possible. “Demonizing Putin is not a foreign policy,” he writes with regrettably-poor foresight, and then returns to his default style of snark -- with even worse effect. “If the world is still in one piece after Biden’s term, the United States needs to explore the feasibility of putting our relations with Russia on a more positive footing.” Yes, William Barr really wrote that. Showing in flying colors why he is not a foreign policy expert. And that when wandering into a dark forest, where you don't belong, without a map (or a clue), you risk getting eaten by goblins. Just a guess on my part – “putting our relations with Russian on a more positive footing” is not going to be happening any time soon. And the worst thing for Barr in his effort to rehabilitate his reputation -- beyond further tarnishing himself, and putting executives at his publisher into hell for deciding to do this book in the first place -- is that this is just one more document (in full book form, no less) to join with Trump’s “genius” comments on Putin, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s “very shrewd, very capable" and "I have enormous respect for him” praise of Putin, and Tucker Carlson’s loving defense of Putin that all together provide Democrats the blatant reminders they will use to make sure voters remember in the mid-terms that as “outraged” as so many Republicans say they are by Putin now, the reality is that Trump, Pompeo, Barr, Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham, Ron Johnson, MT Greene, almost all Republicans in Congress, and the right-wing media have spent four years enabling the murderous Russian despot as a great, genius leader who they have enormous respect for. And until they state how profoundly, monumentally and dangersously wrong they were before and repudiate their own previous words -- like those William Barr writes so bluntly in his book that live in print -- those exist as their true feelings, not just a sudden "outrage" that Vladimir Putin has disappointed them by acting differently from who they long-believed he was, giving Putin the confidence about a divided U.S. With great clarity, William Barr has helped define the political world we live in: where one party did indeed "demonize" Vladimir Putin rightly and fought to defend democracy, and the other party -- led by a white supremacist, pathologically lying autocrat -- enabled support of a murderous Russian despot and defended him as a genius leader, right up until the time he attacked a democracy, threatened nuclear war and got the world united against him. Oh, by the way, the name of William Barr's book is One Damn Thing After Another. Tell me about it. Timing is everything.
1 Comment
Don Friedman
3/7/2022 09:04:17 am
You're absolutely right that Barr is far from a foreign policy expert. Arguing that Russia is no longer "revolutionary" completely misses the point of modern Russia under Putin. This is no longer about competing economic ideologies, but that doesn't mean that the danger of an autocratic, aggressive ruler with ambitions of territorial expansion and a view of the NATO alliance as an enemy isn't dangerous. And claiming that Trump was called a Russian stooge every time he tried "detente" is a ridiculous and dishonest characterization of the suspicions of Trump's allegiance to Putin. Look, I'm glad that Barr is more or less candid about his view of Trump--a view, by the way, shared by nearly everyone who worked for him in the White House--and I appreciate that he stood his ground on the Big Lie. But there is so much about Barr that belongs to an earlier era--one that shouldn't be resuscitated.
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AuthorRobert J. Elisberg is a political commentator, screenwriter, novelist, tech writer and also some other things that I just tend to keep forgetting. Feedspot Badge of Honor
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