Russia is fast becoming our latest bogyman with neocons, war hawks, and a complicit corporate media, all beating the preliminary war drums, rapidly convincing a duped public that the Russian threat is real. The record shows the Russian threat is nonsense, but the record also shows there is a threat, not from Russia, but from the US.
A couple of years ago the US was foaming at the mouth anticipating being able to bomb Syria into oblivion, claiming as pretext Assad was using chemical weapons. Once again the US was using the tired argument that it was necessary to save the people by bombing them. Ask the “people” of Libya, and Iraq, and Yemen, if they felt saved by being bombed? We laid waste to Libya with 77 days of bombing and devastated that country, along with the complete destruction of Iraq, and now, with our invaluable assistance and weapons, we are doing likewise to “save” the people of Yemen.
Our thirst to bomb Syria a few years ago was foiled by those evil Russians, who stepped in diplomatically and got Assad to get rid of all Syria’s chemical weapons. Those nasty Russians would not let us have our bombing and prevented it by using diplomacy. Is that why they now are our enemy?
Naturally we would not be stopped, and found the pretext to bomb Syria anyway. Using ISIS as an excuse, we are currently bombing Syria trying to usher in the same kind of anarchy we brought to Iraq and Libya. Corporate media, shill mouthpiece of the US government, would have you believe that the US is part of a world coalition that is bombing Syria, when the fact is 99% of the bombing is done by the US alone. In any case the end game is to reduce Syria to chaos, death, destruction, and violence, which is well under way. Those nasty Russians are again interfering by sending weapons to support the Assad regime. It appears that our thirst to bomb, has forced the nasty Russians to draw a line in the sand. They will support Assad and not tolerate his overthrow by the US.
We now know, thanks to the Guardian and other UK news outlets, but relatively unreported in the US, that apparently the Russians had negotiated a deal in 2012, in which Assad would either share power or would step down, but the deal was ignored and brushed aside by the US. Why? Because we wanted to rain down anarchy on Syria by bombing it to oblivion. We did not want a diplomatic solution, we wanted to bomb and cause pure anarchy, which is what we are currently doing. Those nasty Russians were diplomatically trying to prevent this from happening for the second time. They could not stop our desire to bomb.
The US orchestrated a coup of a democratically elected leader of the Ukraine and installed a US puppet, but blamed the next door neighbor Russia for the troubles in the Ukraine. We also inflamed the US public by accusing Russia of expanding by taking the Crimea by force, even though 99% of Crimeans wanted to belong to Russia, and this was achieved not by invasion, and not one single death in the Crimea. Corporate media convinced the US public that Russia had invaded militarily, and taken over the Crimea. Not so; there was no invasion and not one person died in a popular turn to Russia by the people of Crimea.
There are now various news reports that have the US planning to place nuclear weapons to Germany. That’s right, nuclear weapons on Russia’s front doorstep! First, how would you like it as a German citizen, and then how you like it as a Russian living next door? This is a provocative, foolish, dangerous, militarily aggressive act by the US, but the media shills will depict the Russians as the bad guys.
So who is the aggressor nation? How many nations has Russia bombed in the past 25 years? How many nations has the US bombed in the past 25 years? Russia has 2 military bases outside its borders, while the US has over 700. So which nation is the most aggressive? The US has killed approximately 4-5 million people since 1963. How many innocents has Russia killed during that time? The annual US military budget is 10 times higher than Russia’s, so who is the aggressor nation? There are US Special Forces operating in 81 foreign nations. Special Forces budget has increased fivefold since 2001 and their numbers have doubled. So who is the aggressor nation? The US is planning to deploy nuclear weapons to Germany, and since 1776 the US has been at war for 93% of its history. The US with its bombings of 14 nations in the Middle East, has unleashed one of the biggest refugee crises in human history as people flee from US bombs and destruction. So who is the aggressor; the US or Russia? Pay no attention to corporate media, get your own facts.
Joe Clifford lives in Rhode Island and writes for two online sites and regularly submits articles to Rhode Island newspapers. He writes mostly about US foreign policy but occasionally will venture into other venues.
