September 13, 2024
Republicans in the US Senate have been urging the White House to provide Ukraine with long-range missiles that can strike deep into Russia. Such is the madness of pro-war sentiment.
America’s lackluster Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, has apparently confirmed that Washington plans to shortly deliver such strategic weapons to Ukraine. This week, Britain’s new prime minister arrived in Washington to discuss more strategic arms for Ukraine.
One is vividly reminded of the mobs of idiots who thronged Paris train stations in August 1914, screaming ‘on to Berlin.’ As a British historian aptly noted, `if patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels, then war is the first platform of fools.’
US-supplied long-range missiles are the last step between what was a border conflict and all-out war that will very likely go nuclear.
Russia’s leader Vladimir Putin has repeatedly stated that he reduced conventional forces to divert funds to Russia’s stunted civilian economy. Nuclear weapons, said President Putin, will be used to replace conventional forces if Russia is attacked. We must take him at his word.
The border war with Ukraine, which began in 2014, has shown just how much Russia reduced its former conventional might. The once mighty Red Army has proven a shadow of its former self. Under Putin, armies of tanks have been replaced by new apartments across the sprawling nation.
The idea of sending more long-range missiles to Ukraine is sheer madness. Ukraine is slowly being ground down in this long war of attrition. Ukraine’s current strategy is to provoke a direct clash between Russia and the United States. Interestingly, Israel used the same strategy to provoke direct US military intervention against Syria and various Arab militias.
The United States, dominated by pro-war Republicans and wealthy pro-Israel special interests, appears eager to promote war with Russia. Most important, neoconservatives are urging intensified war against Russia to advance their goal of breaking up the Russian Federation into small, weak pieces dominated by Washington.
Such was the case under former Russian president Boris Yeltsin who allowed US financial interests to dominate Russia while he made merry. Former KGB officer Vladimir Putin put an end to Washington’s attempted to turn Russia into an American satrapy.
I interviewed the leaders of KGB at Moscow’s Lubyanka Prison in 1991. They expressed disgust with Russia’s then communist leadership and told me there would be a housecleaning. The result was, of course, KGB officer Vladimir Putin’s surprising rise to power. Putin quickly became the target of US media hate. He committed terrible brutalities in Chechnya but without him Russia might have ended up today’s supine, groveling Germany.
The US overthrew Ukraine’s last pro-Russian government. Ukraine had been part of the Russian state for hundreds of years and the center of its heavy industries. This coup cost the US $5 billion, according to its author, leading State Department neocon Victoria Nuland. An actor, the amiable Volodymyr Zelensky, was put in charge by Nuland. US funds and arms poured into Ukraine. Efforts by Washington to shatter the old Soviet Union were a brilliant success.
Except that Washington had to foot the bill, so far an astounding $44 billion, and deprive the US military of many important weapons systems. One also wonders why Donald Trump did not raise the issue of Ukraine’s payments to President Biden and his son.
As a veteran war correspondent and old friend of Ukraine, I see the US and Russia heading to a major war. The western powers have been relentlessly provoking Russia. The idea of supplying Ukraine with a new class of long-range missiles will likely ignite a horribly dangerous war that may very likely go nuclear. Now is the time for the great powers to impose peace, not supply arms. Time to end the unnecessary suffering of Ukrainians and Russians. Genuine diplomacy, not more weapons, is the answer.
Copyright Eric S. Margolis 2024
P.S.-
I recommend checking out the Adam Something channel on YouTube to view his recent entry concerning the very weird genre of (state approved) Russian pulp fiction full of bellicose paranoid fantasy fiction, including truly weird Hitler-Soviet bromance stuff and Stalin-Darth Vader stories. Through it all it features the sickening Stalin rehab trop. Yes, forget not, this swill is Kremlin approved.
This article cuts Putin and his regime some strange slack. The notion that today’s Russian army has been diminished because Pooty has diverted so many rubles to the civilian sector does not ring true in the face of statistics that proclaim that 20% of Russian homes still don’t have indoor plumbing. Despite its natural riches Russia remains a shockingly underdeveloped country. How about the good old monstrous parasitic corruption of the Russian elite? That explains much.
The outrage of Putin’s regime over the thought of Ukraine using long range missiles to strike “deep into Russia” is hypocritically rich, since this is exactly what Russia has been doing to the Ukraine this war.
I must say that the whole tone of this piece, poor little persecuted Russia lashing back against the evil West, sounds straight out of the paranoid fever dreams of Putin. Better face facts-the present Russian regime is dangerously oppressive and belligerent, and a real threat to its neighbours.
Does humankind have a collective unconscious death wish? Or is it only the arrogant world leaders, who already have a tsunami of innocent blood on their hands?
America is an evil empire. If US policy follows the script written in 1776, and engineered by every US president these 245 years, Kamala Harris will begin her own war, likely against Iran, or maybe, to be “moderate”, a new war against Yemen or Syria. Can the world survive that new war without going nuclear?
Americans need a peaceful revolution of the people, by the people, for the people.