Let’s face it. The United States is the world’s classic bully – a synonym for “coward.” It’s like the playground tough who fearful of a bloody nose has others do the dirty work for him. “Let’s you and him fight,” is the bully’s refrain.
When you think about it, that’s exactly what the United States and the gang of thugs called NATO are doing in Ukraine. They admit it’s a proxy war. But our cowardly “leaders” know that a direct battlefield confrontation with Russia would be monumentally unpopular at home. (Imagine having to explain to American wives, children, parents, and grandparents why it’s worth their loved one’s death or maiming to bring “freedom” to a country more than 7000 miles away and which most would have difficulty locating on a map! It would be worse than Vietnam.)
Instead, it’s better to have Ukrainian husbands, fathers, sons, and brothers die rather than Americans. Yes: Let’s you and him fight. Few of us would have it any other way.
What I’m saying is that in the final analysis, it’s our permission, apathetic disinterest, and empty virtue signaling that has transformed the “land of the free and the home of the brave” into the land of cowardly and powerless bullies. I’m talking about you and me.
In other words, if we really believe that we’re the ones at war in Ukraine and (as Joe Biden said) “Putin must go,” then we should be willing to send our brothers, husbands, fathers, and uncles to die there, not Ukrainians. If we’re young enough, we should be willing to enlist and put our own heads into the Russian meat grinder.
But would any of us do that? Why should we dirty our hands? Why should Americans die in the war planned for decades?
No: Let’s you and him fight.
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In the prolonged conflict in Ukraine, I’ve found that virtually the only completely informed, honest and balanced analysis derives from interviews involving Scott Ritter – the former Marine intelligence officer, Russia expert, and U.N. weapons inspector. Most others (i.e., all the mainstream media) are nothing but U.S., NATO, and Ukraine cheerleaders. Even the few who dare to speak out against “our” country’s belligerent policies miss the big picture that Ritter sees.
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Here’s what he’s saying now:
- Despite its undeniable battlefield successes, Russia is not winning in Ukraine.
- Russia had three clear objectives in initiating its special operation: (1) Free Ukraine’s Russian-speaking populations in the country’s southeastern region from attacks by the Ukrainian army which over the last six years have cost the Donbass more than 14,000 lives. (2) De-Nazify Ukraine which has incorporated card carrying, swastika-tattooed Nazis into its government and military forces. (3) Force the Kyiv government to drop its ambitions to join NATO – instead adopting a position of neutrality like Sweden once did
- Russia will surely achieve the first objective. Its forces have surrounded Ukrainian troops in the Donbass in ever-tightening pincers. There, Ukrainians will be compelled to surrender or be annihilated. They have no other options.
- Russia success in Mariupol (a major Neo-Nazi center) has also removed from action many extreme right-wing cadres. It has achieved the same result in the Donbass where the Ukrainian army had been spearheaded by openly white supremacist, fascist troops. As already indicated, the latter are surrounded and trapped in what Russian military theory describes as an inescapable “cauldron.” In other words, Ukraine has been or will be significantly (though by no means completely) de-nazified.
- However, the massive and unforeseen influx of U.S. funding and ordnance into Ukraine has rendered virtually impossible the achievement of Russia’s goal of demilitarizing the country and forcing it into political neutrality. (The $40 billion just authorized by Washington means that in just two months, Ukraine will have received dollar amounts exceeding Russian defense budgeting for an entire year!)
- This unexpected development means that even if Russia declares “mission accomplished,” withdraws, and ends up controlling Donbass, Odessa, Crimea, and a few other cities and regions, it will always have to deal with a massively armed and NATO trained adversary threatening those gains.
- Russia’s President Putin can counter such moves only by securing his Duma’s permission to move from special military operation to all-out war against Ukraine. That’s because his countermove would necessarily entail national mobilization including a military draft to increase Russian forces in Ukraine far beyond the 200,000 now deployed there.
- In Ritter’s eyes, there’s no way anything short of the latter change in strategy might be called “victory.”
- In other words, Russia will have won its battles but lost the war.
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As he himself admits, Ritter makes the above analysis while wearing only his military glasses that allow him to perceive nothing but highly predictable battlefield realities. Such limited vision, he concedes, blinkers out crucial political factors whose effects are less foreseeable. For instance, how long will it take Ukraine’s mothers and wives to demand that Kyiv stop sending their sons, husbands, brothers, and uncles to certain death in that Russian meat grinder? How long will it take electorates in Europe and the States to rebel against food, petrol, home heating and cooling prices inflated by sanctions interdicting Russia’s supply of oil and natural gas? In other words, rebellion at the ballot box and/or in the streets could pressure NATO representatives to the negotiating table despite their desire to prolong the conflict. Ritter chooses not to highlight such factors.
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Of course, the same holds true for Moscow. Though Russian casualties are fewer and though (contrary to the intentions of the sanctions) the ruble is now stronger than ever and even though Russia’s producers are successfully locating markets (in China, India, Iran, and by import substitution) and even though Putin’s approval ratings are over 80%, Russian wives and mothers find body bags just as repellant as their Ukrainian counterparts.
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I do too. So let’s change the subject.
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They say that about a thousand Ukrainian Neo-Nazi soldiers have finally surrendered after months of de facto imprisonment in the bowels of Mariupol’s Azovstal steel plant. But our deceitful MSM has called the capitulation an “evacuation” (Where? To Siberia?). They’ve called it a “leaving,” a “withdrawal,” a recognition of “mission accomplished.”
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Can you imagine the MSM reaction if the situation were reversed – if the Russians were the ones virtually imprisoned for weeks in that steel plant? That, after all, is the way they would have been described – helplessly imprisoned rather than heroically resisting. And their “evacuation” from their underground holes waving their underwear as white flags would have been described as a humiliating surrender.
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Where’s the peace movement in all of this? Why are the most prominent voices for peace in Ukraine coming from the right — from Trumpists for God’s sake? Can’t figure that one out.
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And where are the followers of the one who said “Put away your sword. Those who live by the sword will die by the sword” (MT 26:2) and “Love your enemies; do good to them that hate you” (MT 5:44) and “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (LK 23:34)? Catholic Joe Biden’s not saying that — even though Pope Francis lays much of the blame for Ukraine’s war at his feet.
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Are you saying any of those things?
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Can anyone say “Bully for you?”
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