Russian military “more or less” back in working order doesn’t sound much like an existential threat, nor like one in any shape to “erode the principled international order.”[1] That has not deterred our military leadership from scaremongering rhetoric, as typified by Philip Breedlove, who stepped down as NATO’s commander in May. Breedlove spent much of his three-year tenure issuing volleys of alarmist pronouncements. On various occasions throughout the Ukrainian conflict, he reported that 40,000 Russian troops were on that nation’s border, poised to invade; that regular Russian army units were operating inside Ukraine; that international observers were reporting columns of Russian troops and heavy weapons entering Ukraine. These claims proved to be exaggerated or completely false. Yet Breedlove continued to hit the panic button. “What is clear,” he told Washington reporters in February 2015, “is that right now, it is not getting better. It is getting worse every day.”[2]I am not one ever to minimize the loathsome nature of the Soviet Union but reading this article I find it difficult not to separate the ridiculous demonization of Russia of today from even that practiced against the Soviets in Cold War times. Still, I thought then that the price of any insurance policy to protect against the expansion of the Soviet Union was worth paying and a vigorous military-industrial complex was fine by me.
Now Russia has zero expansionist plans (or dreams) and any "examples" thereof that the hystericals like to cite can reasonably be understood to be responses to NATO or U.S. provocations or actions undertaken at the invitation of the nation supposedly falling victim to Russia machinations. (Hint: Syria.)
Notes
[1] This "principled international order" includes the unconstitutional and aggressive war waged by the U.S. against the soveign state of Syria apparently, though clearly Mr. Cockburn doesn't quote that phrase for anything other than purposes of making an ironic point.
[2] "The New Red Scare. Reviving the art of threat inflation." By Andrew Cockburn, Harper's Magazine, December 2016.
Thank you Colonel for pointing out there is no 'radical islam' there is only islam. Sort like their creed, the is but one islam and its goal is to make you submit or die.
ReplyDeleteMy pleasure.
ReplyDeleteIt's a philosophically confused Western world these days, is it not?
As I say ad nauseum, the existence of huge numbers of foreigners inside your borders was throughout human history considered a disaster, a result of the catastrophic failure of the armies of the nation or the tribe. Today, the Treason Class trumpets this as an unalloyed blessing.
Similarly, the Muslim who daily says
(1) my religion dictates the establishment and preservation of a savage, rotting, moribund culture;
(2) you are filth;
(3) slavery, sexual mutilation, child abuse, and war on the infidel are acceptable and expected;
(4) vigilante murder of apostates is required; and
(5) infidel laws and customs are garbage
is embraced as a precious being, simply an amazing gift to any Western country.
Not only do the Treason Class (the globalists, the George Soroses, the Barbara Spectres, the Merkels, the Loefvens, and the Peter Sutherlands) embrace the unvarnished Muslim knowing full well the putrid reality of the breed but they hunt down and persecute anyone who dares to reveal the truth, who objects to extinguishment and dhimmitude and to the snipe hunt for that most elusive of creatures, the "moderate Muslim."
Swift captured a sliver of this madness in his depiction of the floating island of Laputa though even there he was only focusing on folly not malevolence and treason.