My friend, Andrei Martyanov, published a short piece on Antony Blinken’s latest public demonstration of schizophrenia and I want to elaborate on Andrei’s astonishment at Blinken’s total detachment from reality. There may be a medical explanation. According to the Mayo Clinic, schizophrenia is:
A serious mental disorder in which people interpret reality abnormally. Schizophrenia may result in some combination of hallucinations, delusions, and extremely disordered thinking and behavior that impairs daily functioning, and can be disabling.
Keep that definition in mind as you watch Fareed Zakaria interview Blinken. It is truly jaw-dropping:
Blinken’s calm, earnest demeanor masks the deranged substance of his remarks. Let me highlight some of the crazy train moments from this sit-down with Fareed.
Well, first read put this in perspective in terms of what Russia sought to achieve, what Putin sought to achieve. They’ve already failed. They’ve already lost.
But I’m convinced that with the equipment and support they’ve received now from more than 50 countries with the training that their forces have gotten, and many of the forces who’ve gotten that training have not yet been fully into this fight.
And we made sure going back to Labor Day before the war, Christmas before the war, that they started to get in their hands, the equipment they would need if the Russians went forward, javelin, stingers, they had that on hand. They were able to repel the attack against Kiev.
Blinken is either suffering from a debilitating case of schizophrenia or he is a liar. There is no middle ground. He claims that Russia has “already lost.” Yet Putin and his Generals have not received that memo and continue to bombard Ukrainian military targets throughout Ukraine with hypersonic missiles and glide bombs at will. Ukraine has no answer and Western-supplied air defense systems have failed to put even a dent in the Russian effort.
Russian military ground forces continue to decimate attacking Ukrainian forces and have launched their own counter-offensive operations, which are pushing Ukrainian troops back.
Ignore for the moment Ukraine’s failure to punch through the first of Russia’s three defensive bands in the south and just focus on the fact that the United States cannot produce and deliver in a timely manner the weapons Ukraine supposedly needs to prevail over Russia. A prime example is the Stinger missile.
To replenish its own stocks, the U.S. Army placed an order for 1700 new Stinger launcher units back in May 2022. However, the Pentagon reported that it would take as long as 30 months (or two and a half years) for the completed MANPADS to start rolling off the assembly line.
The reason behind this lengthy timeframe is quite straightforward—several components for these MANPADS are no longer in production, necessitating the exploration of new methods and possibly novel technological improvements to resume production and increase its rates in the nearest time.
As an example, American engineers have encountered difficulties in manufacturing the homing heads for these MANPADS, so this component will potentially require conducting research and developing replacement modules.
Similar shortcomings in being able to supply Javelins, M77 artillery and 155 mm artillery shells. Is Blinken not talking to President Sleepy Joe Biden? Two weeks ago Biden let slip that the U.S. did not have enough 155 mm conventional shells for Ukraine, which is why he opted to approve sending cluster munitions:
“This is a war relating to munitions. And they’re running out of that ammunition, and we’re low on it,” Biden told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria. “And so, what I finally did, I took the recommendation of the Defense Department to – not permanently – but to allow for this transition period while we get more 155 weapons, these shells, for the Ukrainians.”
It is alarming that America’s top diplomat is so divorced from reality. His denial of what is happening on the ground in Ukraine makes it highly unlikely that he could even contemplate a feasible negotiation with Russia to put a stop to the slaughter of Ukrainian troops. Blinken and his ilk have deluded themselves into believing that repeating nonsense about the illusionary “success” of Ukraine in its fight with Russia validates the anti-Russia policy of Joe Biden. Reality destroys schizophrenic fantasies. The day is coming when Blinken will no longer be able to make such silly pronouncements because the reality of Russia’s victory will not be hidden.
By Larry Johnson