whiterock said:
The_barBEARian said:
whiterock said:
Redbrickbear said:
[The Tucker Interview
Here's my take in The European Conservative.
It didn't amount to much, did it? This is not Carlson's fault; Putin blustered and rambled. I believe he failed significantly by spending the first half hour giving a history lesson. It's not that history is unimportant here. In fact, it's hugely important, as Americans fail to understand. The error Putin made was not understanding his communication purpose here. That is, if his goal was to appeal to ordinary Americans and it was then he should have spoken more precisely.
Nevertheless, it was significant that this aired, because it is important to understand how our enemies see themselves. This is why I watched Russian propaganda in the early days of the war, until it was removed from European channels. Of course it was propaganda but so too is what the US government and its allies were putting out. That is, if we define "propaganda" as the selective marshaling of facts into a narrative meant to justify a government's action. That's what governments do!
The most valuable thing from the interview, it seems to me, is the way it revealed to American viewers how important history is to Putin's thinking. This is something I've generally observed since I moved to Europe. Americans are profoundly disconnected from history. Most peoples in the world do not share this relationship to the past. We Americans err, and err consequentially, by assuming that everybody else in the world holds their past lightly, if at all. Only Americans could have been convinced by government propaganda that Iraqis would welcome us as liberators, that the deep tribal and religious divisions in Iraqi society were not a real issue when it came to establishing liberal democracy there, and that anybody who said otherwise was a racist who didn't want Arabs to have nice things.
What did you think of the interview? To me, the most significant moment came when Putin said, addressing a hypothetical American, What are you doing over here, making war where you don't belong? Don't you have enough problems at home, with your open border, and your overwhelming debt?
One more thing: CNN is calling the interview a "propaganda victory" for Putin. Absurd. Every interview with a political leader, especially during wartime, is "propaganda". Do they really think their fawning coverage of Volodomyr Zelensky isn't propaganda? I don't fault Zelensky for this, nor do I fault to a point CNN. It is the journalist's responsibility to sit down and interview these figures. If they are any good, they will ask important questions. And, subsequent journalism will help readers and viewers sort out truth from fiction in what the leader said. There is this bizarre, willful naivete that has taken over American journalism, which says that views from the leaders of whom we approve, and whose causes we favor, is "real," but the views of our enemies and their spokesmen are "propaganda." This is how we surrender thinking to those who do not have our best interests at heart.] -Rod Dreher
Tucker's interview was the solid journalism. That's why alphabet "journalists" are attacking it.
Most damning part of that interview, if true, was Putin saying the CIA was supporting Islamists in Chechnya against the Russian state.
You really need to understand better how things work. The CIA doesn't make up its own mind on such things. It does what POTUS (or Congress, if significant funding is required) tells it to do, acting within strict limits of Executive Order.
Are we even sure that is the case?
Eisenhower warned us about the MIC
I doubt the situation has gotten better over the past decades since that great man's administration.
"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.
The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eisenhower%27s_farewell_address#:~:text=In%20the%20councils%20of%20government,power%20exists%20and%20will%20persist.President Kennedy as well was very concerned about the CIA and how it operated.
Specifically he was concerned that the CIA was telling him one thing...then doing another thing behind his back without approval.
[former president Lyndon Johnson told a reporter that he didn't believe the Warren Commission's finding that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in killing President John Kennedy. Johnson felt that Cuban president Fidel Castro was actually behind it. After all,
Johnson continued,
the CIA was running "a damned Murder, Inc. in the Caribbean," giving Castro reason to retaliate. A later Senate investigation reported on the CIA's assassination operations but was skimpy with details. However, since then the secret files on the CIA's Cuban operations have been made public, allowing this more complete and troubling story about the operations and their...]
