The day before the meeting, Khan addressed a rally and responded directly to European calls that Pakistan rally behind Ukraine. “Are we your slaves?” Khan thundered to the crowd. “What do you think of us? That we are your slaves and that we will do whatever you ask of us?” he asked. “We are friends of Russia, and we are also friends of the United States. We are friends of China and Europe. We are not part of any alliance.”

One month after the meeting with U.S. officials documented in the leaked Pakistani government document, a no-confidence vote was held in Parliament, leading to Khan’s removal from power. The vote is believed to have been organized with the backing of Pakistan’s powerful military. Since that time, Khan and his supporters have been engaged in a struggle with the military and its civilian allies, whom Khan claims engineered his removal from power at the request of the U.S.

Pakistan’s foreign policy has changed significantly since Khan’s removal, with Pakistan tilting more clearly toward the U.S. and European side in the Ukraine conflict. Abandoning its posture of neutrality, Pakistan has now emerged as a supplier of arms to the Ukrainian military; images of Pakistan-produced shells and ammunition regularly turn up on battlefield footage. In an interview earlier this year, a European Union official confirmed Pakistani military backing to Ukraine. Meanwhile, Ukraine’s foreign minister traveled to Pakistan this July in a visit widely presumed to be about military cooperation, but publicly described as focusing on trade, education, and environmental issues.

This realignment toward the U.S. has appeared to provide dividends to the Pakistani military. On August 3, a Pakistani newspaper reported that Parliament had approved the signing of a defense pact with the U.S. covering “joint exercises, operations, training, basing and equipment.” The agreement was intended to replace a previous 15-year deal between the two countries that expired in 2020.

According to several lawmakers and senior congressional staffers, McCarthy and other GOP House leaders are already discussing how to alter the Ukraine aid package in the next Congress to respond to a wide array of concerns within their caucus. Some far-right lawmakers are calling for a complete cutoff of aid to Ukraine. But many Republicans are looking to cut much of the economic assistance while keeping or even increasing the military component — something of a compromise.

But cutting the economic aid now, most of which is direct support to the Ukrainian government, would be ill-timed and dangerous, Ukrainian officials told me.

The costs of supporting Kyiv financially are small compared to the costs for the United States and the world if Ukraine falls. If Ukraine collapses economically, that would exacerbate the energy crisis, the food crisis, the refugee crisis and the global economic slowdown.

Initially, I thought we had only shot ourselves in the foot, but now it is clear that the European economy has shot itself in the lungs, and it is gasping for air.

The Heritage Foundation has been an influential brain trust for GOP administrations since the Reagan years — and still claims to stand for Ronald Reagan’s doctrine of 'peace through strength.' But beginning in the Trump era, and even more so now under its new president, Kevin Roberts, Heritage is moving away from that tradition, according to several foreign policy staffers who recently left the foundation.

In the battle for the soul of GOP foreign policy between establishment Republicans and Trump-style national conservatives, the former still hold the levers of official power but the latter are gaining ground. The Heritage Foundation’s turn toward the 'new right' is the clearest symbol yet that the MAGA movement’s foreign policy is becoming institutionalized but moving further away from the Republican leadership.

You may know the names of these antiwar conservatives. Some are famous: Patrick Buchanan and Robert Novak. Others are not: Llewellyn Rockwell, Samuel Francis, Thomas Fleming, Scott McConnell, Justin Raimondo, Joe Sobran, Charley Reese, Jude Wanniski, Eric Margolis, and Taki Theodoracopulos.

As of the past weekend, in 24 days of conflict, Russia has flown some 1,400 strike sorties and delivered almost 1,000 missiles (by contrast, the United States flew more sorties and delivered more weapons in the first day of the 2003 Iraq war).

(L)obbyists for the military-industrial-complex are already 'explaining' to a very receptive Capitol Hill audience why the Ukraine crisis justifies increasing the military budget to 'counter the threats' from Russia, China, and whoever else can serve as a convenient boogeyman.

[W]hen these weapons are wielded by Western governments, the precise opposite framework is imposed: describing them as despotic is no longer obligatory but virtually prohibited. That tyranny exists only in Western adversaries but never in the West itself is treated as a permanent axiom of international affairs, as if Western democracies are divinely shielded from the temptations of genuine repression. Indeed, to suggest that a Western democracy has descended to the same level of authoritarian repression as the West's official enemies is to assert a proposition deemed intrinsically absurd or even vaguely treasonous.1

'Our forces are not and will not be engaged in the conflict,' he said. 'Our forces are not going to Europe to fight in Ukraine but defend [sic] our NATO allies and reassure those allies in the east.'

...plenty of reasons to investigate, from Trump’s just-kidding-or-maybe-not public invitation to Russia to hack into his rival Hillary Clinton’s emails to the fact that his campaign was swarming with people who had ties to Russia or to pro-Russia forces in Ukraine. And let’s not forget that later on, Trump acted in ways that stoked suspicion — such as firing FBI director James Comey, openly admitting that he did it to stop the Russia investigation, and bragging about it in a private meeting with top-level Russians.

...there is little question that the Kremlin meddled in the election with the goal of hurting Hillary Clinton’s chances. Mainly, this was accomplished by stealing Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign emails and releasing them via Wikileaks.

While distancing herself from the 'more extreme' anti-Russian narratives, which she admits are conspiracy theories with little evidence to support them, Young weaves a 'moderate' conspiracy theory of her own – with just as little evidence to support it. She claims that the Russians are supporting the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party of Greece, and Hungary’s 'quasi-fascist' Jobbik movement, although no evidence of this is presented. She says in several instances that the National Front party of France’s Marine Le Pen is a Russian front: her 'evidence' is that a Russian bank with 'links to the Kremlin' provided the party with a loan. One wonders if, say, a British bank (with undefined 'links' to Westminster) loaned money to an America political party, would that make them a tool of Perfidious Albion? 

Who needs actual evidence, anyway, when writing about Russia? After all, as computer security expert Jeffrey Carr points out, there is exactly zero public proof that the Russians 'hacked' the 2016 elections – and yet the media 'reports' this as undisputed fact.

“We have neither the right nor the ability to transform other countries, but we should do what we can to protect and expand the political space in these countries for local people to do that work. We can also provide funding or resources for American civil society actors to work in solidarity with their international counterparts.” [emphasis ours]

US Iran envoy Brian Hook is leaving his post and US Venezuela envoy Elliott Abrams will add Iran to his role “following a transition period” with Hook, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Thursday.

Hook’s departure comes as the United Nations Security Council prepares to vote next week on a US bid to extend an international arms embargo on Iran. Some diplomats have said the measure lacks support.

Pompeo did not give a reason for Hook’s decision to leave. It was not immediately clear when Hook would finish, but the announcement comes at a crucial time for US diplomacy on Iran.

If the United States is unsuccessful in extending the arms embargo on Iran, it has threatened to trigger a return of all U.N. sanctions under a process - known as snapback - agreed in the 2015 nuclear deal between Tehran and world powers.

The high-profile US envoy for #Iran issues, Brian Hook, is leaving his post, according to media reports.

— Steve Herman (@W7VOA) August 6, 2020

"There is never a good time to leave,” Mr. Hook said in an interview, because the confrontation with Iran had become a perpetual series of provocations, responses and efforts to change Tehran’s behavior.

[…]

"Sometimes it’s the journey and sometimes it’s the destination,’’ Mr. Hook said in the interview on Wednesday. "In the case of our Iran strategy, it’s both. We would like a new deal with the regime. But in the meantime, our pressure has collapsed their finances."

"By almost every metric, the regime and its terrorist proxies are weaker than three and a half years ago," he added. "Deal or no deal, we have been very successful."

All hail my editor!

— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 5, 2019

This will be my last week at New York Magazine.

— Andrew Sullivan (@sullydish) July 14, 2020

The underlying reasons for the split are pretty self-evident, and I’ll be discussing the broader questions involved in my last column this Friday.

— Andrew Sullivan (@sullydish) July 14, 2020

of its own cruel military occupation so routinely that their army calls it “mowing the lawn,” it’s so rich that Bari Weiss was on the forefront of the practice of shutting down campus speech she disagreed with and collecting scalps because of some intellectual heresy. 10/

— Mas (@finds_you_well) March 8, 2018

This hilarious video exemplifies how stupid and infantile discourse on Syria is:

If you oppose regime change and arming of fascist contra "rebels," a braindead neocon with a sinecure in the corporate media smears you as an Assad apologist using insults they can't spell or define pic.twitter.com/m0MLaHFPiX

— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) January 22, 2019

Hitlerian anti-Semitism announces its intentions unequivocally. But leftist anti-Semitism, like communism itself, pretends to be the opposition of what it actually is.

Because of the easy way it can be smuggled into the mainstream and manipulate us – who doesn’t seek justice and progress? who doesn’t want a universal brotherhood of man? – anti-Semitism that originates on the political left is more insidious and perhaps existentially dangerous [than on the right].

If you want to see the stakes, just look across the pond, where Jeremy Corbyn, an anti-Semite, has successfully transformed one of the country’s great parties into a hub of Jew hatred.

Corbynism is not confined to the U.K. Right now in America, leftists who share Corbyn’s worldview are building grassroots movements and establishing factions with the Democratic Party that are suspiciously unskeptical of genocidal terrorist groups like Hamas and actively hostile to Jewish power and the state of Israel.

Dick Cheney.... welcome to the resistance. pic.twitter.com/gez5481WpF

— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) June 26, 2020

Let’s. Go. Joe. pic.twitter.com/338AECInep

— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) June 26, 2020

Our many policy differences with national Democrats remain. However, the priority for all patriotic Americans must be a shared fidelity to the Constitution and a commitment to defeat those candidates who have abandoned their constitutional oaths, regardless of party. Electing Democrats who support the Constitution over Republicans who do not is a worthy effort.