Last week, I received an email from a conservative-oriented libertarian who suggested to me that it is disloyal to “side with Russia” because Ukraine was “just sitting there” when it was invaded by Russia.
Are you kidding me? “Just sitting there”? As in just innocently minding its own business?
I don’t think so.
Sure, most everyone would concede that Russia had no legal authority to invade Ukraine, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that Ukraine was “just sitting there” innocently minding its own business.
The fact that that conservative-oriented libertarian honestly thinks that Ukraine was “just sitting there” innocently minding its own business goes to show how much the U.S. national-security state has succeeded in imbuing people with such an extreme anti-Russia animus that it blinds them from being able to critically analyze the actions of either the U.S. regime or the U.S.-aligned Ukrainian regime.
As we learn more about what was going on before the invasion, it is becoming clear that Ukraine was doing the exact opposite of “just sitting there” innocently minding its own business when it was invaded by Russia.
Instead, it is clear that for many years Ukraine has been partnering with one of the most aggressive regimes in history — the U.S. government, with the aim of permitting the Pentagon to install its nuclear missiles on Russia’s border in Ukraine, pointed directly at Moscow and other Russian cities.
That is not exactly “just sitting there” and innocently minding its own business.
How many nations would like to have nuclear missiles stationed on their international borders pointed at their cities? Certainly not the United States. If North Korea, Russia, or China threatened to install their nuclear missiles in Cuba, for example, pointed at American cities, you can be assured with 100 percent certainty that the Pentagon and the CIA would initiate an invasion of Cuba to prevent that from happening, even though they would have no legal authority to do so.
As a matter of fact, when the Soviet Union installed its nuclear missiles in Cuba in 1962, the Pentagon and the CIA did everything they could to pressure President Kennedy into initiating a full-scale attack and invasion of Cuba, just as Russia has done with Ukraine. As I point out in my new book An Encounter with Evil: The Abraham Zapruder Story, when Kennedy struck a deal with the Soviets that guaranteed that the Pentagon and the CIA would not invade Cuba again, either directly or through a proxy, the military establishment and the CIA considered it to be the biggest defeat in U.S. history. Imagine that: the biggest defeat! They even compared JFK’s handling of the crisis to Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement of Hitler at Munich.
One can argue, of course, that Russia is just being paranoid. But as some people have pointed out, even paranoid people are followed sometimes. Let’s face it: The U.S. government, led by the Pentagon and the CIA, is arguably the most aggressive regime on the planet. Just ask the people of Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Syria, China, Libya, Grenada, Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Vietnam, Korea, Chile, Guatemala, Brazil, and many, many others that have been on the receiving end of the deadly and destructive military might of the Pentagon and the CIA. How many people would like to have nuclear missiles pointed at them by the most aggressive regime on the planet?
Let’s not forget something else that could easily weigh on the minds of Russian officials: The U.S. government has shown a willingness to target large cities with their nuclear bombs. In fact, even while criticizing Russia for allegedly targeting civilians in Ukraine, U.S. officials still express deep pride and satisfaction for the atomic bombs they dropped on the civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, because the bombs supposedly saved the lives of American soldiers.
Let’s not forget something else from the Russian perspective. A principal member of NATO is Germany. That’s the nation that invaded Russia in World War II and came within an inch of conquering Russia and placing it under permanent Nazi rule. In the process, Germany killed untold millions of Russian people and left the entire country in devastation.
It is now clear that the Pentagon and the CIA have been training and arming Ukraine for years in preparation for a war with Russia, just as if Ukraine was already a member of NATO. At the same time, the Pentagon and the CIA have been aiming to formally absorb Ukraine into NATO knowing full-well what the Russian reaction would be. They have been doing this with full knowledge that Russia has been promising for some 25 years that it would never permit U.S. nuclear missiles to be installed in Ukraine, even if that meant that Russia would have to invade Ukraine to prevent it from happening.
It shouldn’t surprise anyone that that the Pentagon and the CIA have been engaged in these machinations. It is now clear that for them, the Cold War never ended. Just ask the Cuban people, who continue to suffer from the old Cold War-era U.S. brutal economic embargo. But it also never ended with respect to Russia, which was the principal member of the Soviet Union. After the ostensible end of the Cold War, the Pentagon and the CIA began using NATO to move eastward, absorbing former members of the Warsaw Pact, obviously with one aim in mind: to destroy Russia completely and install a subservient pro-U.S. regime that would do the bidding of the Pentagon and the CIA.
What is befuddling in all this is why the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, would permit himself and his nation to be used as a proxy by the Pentagon and the CIA in their forever war against Russia. Zelensky knew that Russian president Putin wasn’t bluffing. He knew that if Ukraine persisted in joining NATO, it was a certainty that Russia would invade his country. He knew that tens of thousands of Ukrainians would die in such an invasion. He knew the whole country would be severely damaged, if not completely destroyed. It’s one thing to sacrifice one’s people and one’s country for freedom. It’s quite another thing to sacrifice them for an old Cold War dinosaur like NATO. Why would the president of any country do that to his citizens and his country?
Is it “disloyal” to point out and criticize the machinations and shenanigans employed by the Pentagon, the CIA, and Zelensky prior to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine? For that matter, is it “disloyal” to condemn President Biden’s, the Pentagon’s, and the CIA’s dictatorial imposition of brutal sanctions against the people of Russia, especially given that they have done so with no authorization from Congress? American conservatives and even some conservative-oriented libertarians would likely say yes. They would likely say that that is “siding” with Russia. They would likely say that the genuine American patriot remains loyal to the Pentagon and the CIA, including in any international crisis in which they have embroiled the nation. They would likely say that the real patriot remains silent about the wrongdoing of his own government, especially in the midst of an international crisis or war.
Not me. As I point out in my new book, An Encounter with Evil: The Abraham Zapruder Story, it is always easy to identify and confront evil in foreign regimes. Anyone can do that. It is much more difficult to identify, confront, and oppose evil within one’s own regime. But if we are to put our nation back on the right track — toward liberty, peace, prosperity, and harmony with the people of the world — that is precisely what we need to do.