Divide et Impera: America Wins Again
David Gamble
A commentator nailed it. It’s stupid to say the yanks are stupid. So clever. We’ve all got played.
Who remembers the history of American imperialism and brutality? The exceptional nation has come out of the Ukrainian theatre unscathed, undeservedly. Heroic leaders of the Supra-NATO-nation. Defenders of…you fill it in.
Their history off shore since the Spanish-American War till now says it all. Stop anywhere, and view the wasteland of, not only scorched earth in the Philippines, but even depleted uranium with the attendant birth defects in the twenty-first century. How many casualties since WW II in American wars and proxy wars? 20,000,000 or so? Or so is honest enough. Regime changes? Furthermore, the number of illegal sanctions on naughty countries who won’t say “yes” defies counting.
However, all is forgotten on high road in Eastern Europe, the moral high road, military high road and economic high road.
There are a few things to remember: the Obama-Nuland coup, support of a regime change government inclusive of neo-Nazis, support of an armed battalion that includes neo-Nazis, support of the atrocities in the Maidan and Odessa of the neo-Nazis, the undemocratic choosing of a leader with “Yatz is the guy,” an 8 year shelling of citizens of Donbass, an ongoing arming of the state by NATO members creating a militarized NATO colony tight to the Russian border of a notably hostile pro-West government, neglect of the Minsk Agreement with no apparent intent to a peaceful settlement for the ethnic Russians, and diplomatic relations with Banderites. Remember? Who bothers? This is war.
However, from the chorus with ritual regularity, the western Catechism Broadcasting Corporations accuse Moscow, and specifically Putin, of “Russian aggression,” isolated from American aggression in Afghanistan since Operation Cyclone, Iraq based on a lie, Syria with jihadist in support, and Libya where a no-fly zone was “elevated” to decimation of a country. Dare I mention no support by the White House of international law in Palestine amidst horrendously apartheid conditions? There is silence. As Churchill once said, “Great is the truth, but still greater is the silence about the truth.”
This brings us to the war. To say that move was unfortunate, not only for Russia, but also for Ukraine is a bald euphemism. Furthermore, bad for children and other living things. It has every sign of becoming a losers’ game as begun by one party out of fear. Furthermore, why would Russia want to do it to a people with whom they say they have a more than neighbourly bond? The have proffered the following objectives: the de-Nazification of that minority of Ukrainians who wear the Waffen-SS badge, the protection of the ethnic Russians in the East and implementation of Minsk, and the halting of NATO’s creating a military threat to close to Moscow. Successful? The jury is still out; the verdict, tenuous. Nevertheless, costly in so many ways.
Russia’s position in the global community of nations is in tatters, even as representatives of many countries have turned their backs on Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov as he speaks at the Human Rights Commission in a notably undiplomatic and petulant move. What is the UN for?
There will be appeals to bring Russia to the International Court as happened with Milosevic.
The Ukrainian people are made refugees, killed, traumatised, displaced, hunted and, in some cases, made defenseless.
In spite of whatever successes the Russians may gain, the whole country, indeed the population, is vilified, sanctioned, made pariah, isolated and economically punished. Mostly, they are morally condemned so that their penance can righteously be meted out in grand degrees by the Western allies of the global economy, the restoration of justice by the noble, untainted West: America and its adjuncts.
However, global citizens of the West on the edge of their seats shake their collective head and tut-tut, aware that the old normal will not be back to the region. No one knows how successful Russia will be in its attempts to assuage its fears of the increasingly militarized Western Ukraine, to resolve their Nazi issue considering they defeated the Nazis once before, and to be midwife to a new country, Kosovo-like, in the east of Ukraine. It has been a long gamble, which sheds real blood, burying a festering but active memory deeply in the psyche of two peoples of historical kinship and continuous proximity.
No one wins? I can’t see any clear-cut victory, not for the combatants. Neither. And yet, the noble West as it cripples a major rival bringing itself closer to that “full spectrum dominance” it once announced has achieved in the global economic sphere perhaps even greater ascendancy. The moral allegory has played: western complicit media have worked their magic as city halls light up all over the world in blue and yellow, as a non-Ukrainian Canadian leaves his wife and family to go fight the good fight, as Russian media is restricted from general consciousness, as Russian commuters are denied access to subways with their transit cards, as Hate Week transforms into Righteous Indignation Week, as the national tear duct swells, as the past by so many is forgotten and understanding becomes superfluous to emotion.
But so well remembered is Hilary Clinton’s admonition: Putin’s a dictator. That refreshes. She was right all along.
The winner is obvious. The combatants lose.
We’ve been played.