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Russia is a
Threat. A Threat to American World Dominance
By William Blum
“Why,
sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things
before breakfast.” – Alice in Wonderland
Since
Yalta, we have a long list of times we’ve tried to
engage positively with Russia. We have a relatively
short list of successes in that regard. –
General James Mattis, the new Secretary of Defense
If anyone knows
where to find this long list please send me a copy.
February 06,
2017 "Information
Clearing House"
- This delusion is repeated periodically by American
military officials. A year ago, following the release of
Russia’s new national security document, naming as
threats both the United States and the expansion of the
NATO alliance, a Pentagon spokesman declared: “They have
no reason to consider us a threat. We are not looking
for conflict with Russia.”
Meanwhile, in
early January, the United States embarked upon its
biggest military buildup in Europe since the end of the
Cold War – 3,500 American soldiers landed, unloading
three shiploads, with 2,500 tanks, trucks and other
combat vehicles. The troops were to be deployed in
Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Germany, Hungary and across
the Baltics. Lt. Gen. Frederick Hodges, commander of US
forces in Europe, said, “Three years after the last
American tanks left the continent, we need to get them
back.”
The measures,
General Hodges declared, were a “response to Russia’s
invasion of Ukraine and the illegal annexation of
Crimea. This does not mean that there necessarily has to
be a war, none of this is inevitable, but Moscow is
preparing for the possibility.” (See previous
paragraph.)
This January
2017 buildup, we are told, is in response to a Russian
action in Crimea of January 2014. The alert reader will
have noticed that critics of Russia in recent years,
virtually without exception, condemn Moscow’s Crimean
action and typically nothing else. Could that be because
they have nothing else to condemn about Russia’s foreign
policy? At the same time they invariably fail to point
out what preceded the Russian action – the overthrow,
with Washington’s indispensable help, of the
democratically-elected, Moscow-friendly Ukrainian
government, replacing it with an anti-Russian,
neo-fascist (literally) regime, complete with Nazi
salutes and swastika-like symbols.
Ukraine and
Georgia, both of which border Russia, are all that’s
left to complete the US/NATO encirclement. And when the
US overthrew the government of Ukraine, why shouldn’t
Russia have been alarmed as the circle was about to
close yet tighter? Even so, the Russian military
appeared in Ukraine only in Crimea, where the Russians
already had a military base with the approval of the
Ukrainian government. No one could have blocked Moscow
from taking over all of Ukraine if they wanted to.
Yet, the United
States is right. Russia is a threat. A threat to
American world dominance. And Americans can’t shake
their upbringing. Here’s veteran National Public Radio
newscaster Cokie Roberts
(3) bemoaning
Trump’s stated desire to develop friendly relations with
Russia: “This country has had a consistent policy for 70
years towards the Soviet Union and Russia, and Trump is
trying to undo that.” Heavens! Nuclear war would be
better than that!
Fake news, fake issue
The entire
emphasis has been on whether a particular news item is
factually correct or incorrect. However, that is not the
main problem with mainstream media. A news item can be
factually correct and still be very biased and
misleading because of what’s been left out, such as the
relevant information about the Russian “invasion” of
Crimea mentioned above. But when it comes to real
fake news it’s difficult to top the CIA’s record in
Latin America as revealed by Philip Agee, the leading
whistleblower of all time.
Agee spent 12
years (1957-69) as a CIA case officer, most of it in
Latin America. His first book, Inside the Company:
CIA Diary, published in 1974 revealed how it was a
common Agency tactic to write editorials and phoney news
stories to be knowingly published by Latin American
media with no indication of the CIA authorship or CIA
payment to the particular media. The propaganda value of
such a “news” item might be multiplied by being picked
up by other CIA stations in Latin America who would
disseminate it through a CIA-owned news agency or a
CIA-owned radio station. Some of these stories made
their way back to the United States to be read or heard
by unknowing North Americans.
The Great Wall of Mr. T
So much
cheaper. So much easier. So much more humane. So much
more popular. … Just stop overthrowing or destabilizing
governments south of the border.
And the United
States certainly has a moral obligation to do this. So
many of the immigrants are escaping a situation in their
homeland made hopeless by American intervention and
policy. The particularly severe increase in Honduran
migration to the US in recent years is a direct result
of the June 28, 2009 military coup that overthrew the
democratically-elected president, Manuel Zelaya, after
he did things like raising the minimum wage, giving
subsidies to small farmers, and instituting free
education. The coup – like so many others in Latin
America – was led by a graduate of Washington’s infamous
School of the Americas.
As per the
standard Western Hemisphere script, the Honduran coup
was followed by the abusive policies of the new regime,
loyally supported by the United States. The State
Department was virtually alone in the Western Hemisphere
in not unequivocally condemning the Honduran coup.
Indeed, the Obama administration refused to even call it
a coup, which, under American law, would tie
Washington’s hands as to the amount of support it could
give the coup government. This denial of reality
continued to exist even though a US embassy cable
released by Wikileaks in 2010 declared: “There is no
doubt that the military, Supreme Court and National
Congress conspired on June 28 [2009] in what constituted
an illegal and unconstitutional coup against the
Executive Branch”. Washington’s support of the far-right
Honduran government has continued ever since.
In addition to
Honduras, Washington overthrew progressive governments
which were sincerely committed to fighting poverty in
Guatemala and Nicaragua; while in El Salvador the US
played a major role in suppressing a movement striving
to install such a government. And in Mexico, over the
years the US has been providing training, arms, and
surveillance technology to Mexico’s police and armed
forces to better their ability to suppress their own
people’s aspirations, as in Chiapas in 1994, and this
has added to the influx of the oppressed to the United
States, irony notwithstanding.
Moreover,
Washington’s North American Free Trade Agreement
(NAFTA), has brought a flood of cheap, subsidized US
agricultural products into Mexico, ravaging campesino
communities and driving many Mexican farmers off the
land when they couldn’t compete with the giant from the
north. The subsequent Central American Free Trade
Agreement (CAFTA) brought the same joys to the people of
that area.
These “free
trade” agreements – as they do all over the world – also
resulted in government enterprises being privatized, the
regulation of corporations being reduced, and cuts to
the social budget. Add to this the displacement of
communities by foreign mining projects and the drastic
US-led militarization of the War on Drugs with
accompanying violence and you have the perfect storm of
suffering followed by the attempt to escape from
suffering.
It’s not that
all these people prefer to live in the United States.
They’d much rather remain with their families and
friends, be able to speak their native language at all
times, and avoid the hardships imposed on them by
American police and other right-wingers.
Mr. T., if one
can read him correctly – not always an easy task –
insists that he’s opposed to the hallmark of American
foreign policy: regime change. If he would keep his
Yankee hands off political and social change in Mexico
and Central America and donate as compensation a good
part of the billions to be spent on his Great Wall to
those societies, there could be a remarkable reduction
in the never-ending line of desperate people clawing
their way northward.
Murders: Putin and Clintons
Amongst the
many repeated denunciations of Russian president
Vladimir Putin is that he can’t be trusted because he
spent many years in the Soviet secret intelligence
service, the KGB.
Well, consider
that before he became the US president George HW Bush
was the head of the CIA.
Putin, we are
also told, has his enemies murdered.
But consider
the case of Seth Rich, the 27-year-old Democratic
National Committee staffer who was shot dead on a
Washington, DC street last July.
On August 9, in
an interview on the Dutch television program Nieuwsuur,
Julian Assange seemed to suggest rather clearly that
Seth Rich was the source for the Wikileaks-exposed DNC
emails and was murdered for it.
Julian Assange:
“Our whistleblowers go to significant efforts to get us
material and often face very significant risks. A
27-year-old that works for the DNC, was shot in the
back, murdered just a few weeks ago for unknown reasons,
as he was walking down the street in Washington, D.C.”
Reporter: “That
was just a robbery, I believe. Wasn’t it?”
Julian Assange:
“No. There’s no finding. So … I’m suggesting that our
sources take risks.” (See also Washington Post,
January 19, 2017)
But … but …
that was Russian hacking, wasn’t it? Not a leak, right?
If you’ve been
paying attention over the years, you know that many
other murders have been attributed to the Clintons,
beginning in Arkansas. But Bill and Hillary I’m sure are
not guilty of all of them. (Google “murders connected
clintons.”)
America’s frightening shortage of
weapons
President Trump
signed an executive order Friday to launch what he
called “a ‘great rebuilding of the Armed Forces’ that is
expected to include new ships, planes, weapons and the
modernization of the U.S. nuclear arsenal.”
This is
something regularly advocated by American military and
civilian leaders.
I ask them all
the same question: Can you name a foreign war that the
United States has ever lost due to an insufficient
number of ships, planes, tanks, bombs, guns, or
ammunition, or nuclear arsenal? Or because what they had
was outdated, against an enemy with more modern weapons?
That tired old subject
Senator Jeff
Sessions, Donald Trump’s pick for Attorney General,
declared two years ago: “Ultimately, freedom of speech
is about ascertaining the truth. And if you don’t
believe there’s a truth, you don’t believe in truth, if
you’re an utter secularist, then how do we operate this
government? How can we form a democracy of the kind I
think you and I believe in … I do believe that we are a
nation that, without God, there is no truth, and it’s
all about power, ideology, advancement, agenda, not
doing the public service.”
So … if one is
an atheist or agnostic one is not inclined toward public
service. This of course is easily disproved by all the
atheists and agnostics who work for different levels of
government and numerous non-profit organizations
involved in all manner of social, poverty, peace and
environmental projects.
Who is the more
virtuous – the believer who goes to church and does good
deeds because he hopes to be rewarded by God or at least
not be punished by God, or the non-believer who lives a
very moral life because it disturbs him to act cruelly
and it is in keeping with the kind of world he wants to
help create and live in? Remember, the God-awful (no pun
intended) war in Iraq was started by a man who goes
through all the motions of a very religious person.
Christopher
Hitchens, in 2007, in response to conservative columnist
Michael Gerson’s article, “What Atheists Can’t Answer”,
wrote: “How insulting is the latent suggestion of his
position: the appalling insinuation that I would not
know right from wrong if I was not supernaturally guided
by a celestial dictatorship … simply assumes, whether or
not religion is metaphysically ‘true’, that at least it
stands for morality. … Here is my challenge. Let Gerson
name one ethical statement made or one ethical action
performed by a believer that could not have been uttered
or done by a nonbeliever.”
Gerson, it
should be noted, was the chief speechwriter for the
aforementioned very religious person, George W. Bush,
for five years, including when Bush invaded Iraq.
Phil Ochs
I was turning
the pages of the Washington Post’s Sunday
(January 29) feature section, Outlook, not finding much
of particular interest, when to my great surprise I was
suddenly hit with a long story about Phil Ochs. Who’s
Phil Ochs? many of you may ask, for the folksinger died
in 1976 at the age of 35.
The Post’s
motivation in devoting so much space to a symbol of the
American anti-war left appears to be one more example of
the paper’s serious displeasure with Donald Trump. The
article is entitled “Phil Ochs is the obscure ’60s folk
singer we need today”.
My favorite
song of his, among many others, is “I ain’t marching
anymore”:
Oh I marched to
the battle of New Orleans
At the end of the early British war
The young land started growing
The young blood started flowing
But I ain’t marchin’ anymore
For I’ve killed
my share of Indians
In a thousand different fights
I was there at the Little Big Horn
I heard many men lying, I saw many more dying
But I ain’t marchin’ anymore
(chorus)
It’s always the old to lead us to the war
It’s always the young to fall
Now look at all we’ve won with the saber and the gun
Tell me is it worth it all?
For I stole
California from the Mexican land
Fought in the bloody Civil War
Yes I even killed my brothers
And so many others
But I ain’t marchin’ anymore
For I marched
to the battles of the German trench
In a war that was bound to end all wars
Oh I must have killed a million men
And now they want me back again
But I ain’t marchin’ anymore
(chorus)
For I flew the final mission in the Japanese sky
Set off the mighty mushroom roar
When I saw the cities burning I knew that I was learning
That I ain’t marchin’ anymore
Now the labor
leader’s screamin’
when they close the missile plants,
United Fruit screams at the Cuban shore,
Call it “Peace” or call it “Treason,”
Call it “Love” or call it “Reason,”
But I ain’t marchin’ any more,
No, I ain’t marchin’ any more
Ironically,
very ironically, Donald Trump may well be less of a war
monger than Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton.
Notes
William Blum
is an author, historian, and U.S. foreign policy critic.
He is the author of
Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since
World War II and
Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower,
among others.
https://williamblum.org
The views
expressed in this article are solely those of the author
and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of
Information Clearing House. |
