By Terry Crawford-Browne, Business Day, October 18, 2022
President Joe Biden would be wise to consider what happened to Napoleon and Hitler.
Dawie Jacobs’ assumption that Russia will lose the war in Ukraine is misplaced given that the US has actually lost every war it has waged over the past 75 years (“If Russia fails in this war, the world could become a safer place”, October 12).
President Joe Biden might think that he can overcome 2021’s humiliation in Afghanistan, but he would be wise to consider what happened to Napoleon and Hitler.
Russia’s gloves are coming off now that its limited “special military operation” in February has turned into the third world war against Nato and the EU. As the warmongering Nato secretary-general and US secretary for “defence” have revealed, the objective of the war in Ukraine is to “weaken Russia” … before taking on China.
With President Vladimir Putin’s repeated pleas for commitments of Ukrainian neutrality having been rejected, “General Winter” is now taking charge. EU financial sanctions and Nato’s destruction of the Nordstream gas pipes have backfired. The European winter has barely begun, yet EU economies and governments are already collapsing.
Jacobs is also deluded if he believes the war is about freedom and democracy. Not only is the US a military dictatorship that masquerades as a democracy, it is also fast degenerating into a neo-fascist state. Sadly, president Dwight Eisenhower’s warnings in 1961 about the consequences of a “military-industrial-congressional complex” were ignored.
Just consider what Nato has already inflicted on the former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen over the past 20 years. There are now 100-million refugees and displaced people, and Ukraine likewise faces similar prospects of devastation and impoverishment.
The world will be far safer when the 800 US military bases in Europe, Asia and Africa are closed down and Nato is disbanded before it deliberately provokes more wars, next against Iran and then against China.
2 Responses
Terry is absolutely spot on with his observations and warnings! The huge problem is how do we overcome the warmongering media tsunami?
Famed investigative reporter John Pilger says he never seen anything like the current flood of propaganda about the Ukraine crisis/war. When ex-CIA agent Ralph McGehee visited Aotearoa/New Zealand in 1986 on a speaking-tour, hosted by the NZ Nuclear Free Zone Committee, of which I was an active member, he told us that the CIA boasted it could play the world’s media like a giant wurlitzer.
Well, the CIA & co. can certainly still play the West’s media like this. The sudden torrent of belligerent propaganda on the rights of women in Iran – a meme so cynically used by the US – is another current example, following the purchase of drones and other help for Russia from Iran.
Anyway, keep leading the way forward for us, WBW – great work!
At this point, I have the most difficulty talking with propagandized Dems who want to be on the righteous side against the demon, Vladimir Putin that the unhinged West is calling “unhinged,” while our leaders are saying they don’t think Putin will use nukes (while estimating one chance in four of a nuclear conflict.) Why in hell do we want to move missiles so close to Russia as to put them on hair trigger alert? Not enough Americans get it–that the war is a machination of U.S. policymakers who are getting no push-back from Biden (that’s his job). The U.S. is committing a criminal war that Biden has been informed that Ukraine cannot win, ecocide, pushing world de-dollarization, killing a chance to stabilize climate, endangering the future of humanity. I fear the only thing that can change our endless warmaking is if the rest of the world puts us in line and lines up as non-aligned or sees the light in other ways. Latin America is a bright spot. Let’s just hope for no coups.