All This and World War, Too?

Guest Post by Jim Kunstler

The situation in Ukraine hotted up this weekend and threatens to blow this morning with the Kiev government affecting to send “anti-terrorist” troops into the eastern cities where ethnic Russians seized buildings. (In the olden times of Europe, they had witches and devils. Now, thanks to our example, they have “terrorists.”) While this impending civil war would be rather dire for Ukraine, it presents the obvious questions: 1) does it matter to anyone outside the region? And in particular, 2) is it any business of the USA?

War hawk kibitzers on the sidelines (e.g. The New York Times) are making a big deal of the 40,000 Russian troops marshaled around the border of eastern Ukraine. So what? That’s just a few thousand more than the 33,000 US troops deployed to Afghanistan, America’s current “nation-building” project. But the troop numbers swing to our side of the balance beam if you throw in the nearly 3,000 American boots-on-the-ground stationed in Kyrgyzstan, a former Soviet republic, and the roughly 15,000 in Kuwait and Bahrain. I don’t remember the Russians complaining very much about all this US military hyper-activity in their part of the world over the past decade.

At least somebody has stuffed a cheese Danish (or something) in John Kerry’s pie-hole the past week. The walking haircut-in-search-of-a-brain has stopped making ridiculous commitments to the US-and-EU-installed Kiev government. And President Obama has stopped drawing laugh-out-loud lines in the sand. I suspect if they resume beating that drum, they could provoke some unrest in our own country. Not everyone is glued to the Kardashian Channel with his fist in the Cheez Doodle bag. And not all of the army vets returned from operations in Muslim lands (the ones that haven’t committed suicide, that is) have such a high opinion of the overall outcome there.

Barack Obama, who I voted for twice, is on his way to becoming the worst US president in my lifetime, at least — and maybe in the whole cavalcade going back to the very start of the republic. I don’t want to get too sidetracked in this brief blog space today, but isn’t it stupendously asinine that Mr. Obama’s Justice Department and his SEC appointees only just last week became interested in the pervasive swindle of high frequency trading on Wall Street after author Michael Lewis went on 60 Minutes. Like, they hadn’t heard about this years-long orgy of front-running until now? Strange to relate, I actually might feel more comfortable if Vladimir Putin was massing troops on the Mexican side of the US border to keep Americans safe from our own bungling and destructive government.

Aren’t a number of things obvious about the Ukraine situation? Such as: the Russians have a greater interest in preventing chaos there than the US has in any provisional disposition of the Ukrainian border and the composition of its government. Such as: for most of the 20th century Ukraine was essentially a Russian province, and at various times before that the ward of several other eastern European kingdoms. Such as: Russia has a huge investment in gas pipeline infrastructure in Ukraine upon which depends a substantial portion of its national income, not to mention the winter-time comfort of most of the countries in western Europe.

Hence my plea: will parties in the USA (including Obama camp “progressives”) stop cheerleading for a showdown over this hapless doormat of a faraway nation whose destiny is not entwined with the people of Ohio, Nebraska, Rhode Island, or any of the other fifty states? We have enough to do in our own country to adjust to the new realities of the unraveling turbo-industrial global economy — and, by the way, we are not doing a damn thing to address any of it. Our domestic political conversation at all levels is juvenile and idiotic. I’d rather see US troops shut down WalMart, which has been way more destructive to the US economy (and the livelihoods of our people) than the bandits in any central Asian rat-hole. I’d rather see the US spend its dwindling capital restoring our passenger railroads than paying off the debts of strangers half a world away.

This is turning into a Vietnam moment for the US political scene. Where are the Fullbrights and Bobby Kennedys of today who have the guts to rally US citizens against insane government behavior? What elected officials among all the bought-off Koch Brother catamites and Wall Street errand boys will stand up for reality-based principle? When will the young people of this country pull their eyeballs away from their iPhones and their heads out of their cloacal vents? When will the United States begin the long-overdue task of getting its own act together?

15
Leave a Reply

avatar
  Subscribe  
Notify of
Welshman
Welshman

My my, JK naming our present POTUS the worst president of his lifetime or maybe the replublic. JK likes AU, has a great greenthumb to boot, maybe we can make him a honorable TBPer.

bb

He voted twice for a Marxist ,lying piece of shit but then wants to tell us what’s wrong with the world.The Jewish community is full of Jews like him.

Zarathustra

It’s looking more like 1939 every day. The Ukraine “government” has now become the Polish Junta in Warsaw, who thumb their nose at Hitler’s demand to return territory lost in the Versailles Treaty because they have a security agreement with Britain.

Would Oleksandr Turchynov provoke war with Russia if he didn’t believe NATO had his back? I doubt it.

card802
card802

The media is trying hard to paint a rosy picture, trying hard to portray our leader as strong, his sanctions are working admirably.
People from that side of the fence are starting to wake up and at the very least, question.

What happens when a certifiable narcissistic sociopath begins to lose more and more of his adoring drones?

When he is the ruler of the largest military in the world with a militarized law enforcement agency ready to go into action, nothing good.

AWD

Russian Fighter Jet Flies Repeatedly Within 1000 Yards Of US Warship In The Black Sea

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 04/14/2014

As we reported last Friday, a second US warship, the destroyer Donald Cook, crossed the Bosphorus last week and entered the Black Sea at precisely the time when NATO was arguing that its encroaching presence around Russia should not spook anyone. Apparently it spooked someone, Russian, which earlier today decided to give the Americans a warm welcome. As AP reports, “A U.S. military official says a Russian fighter jet made multiple, close-range passes near an American warship in the Black Sea for more than 90 minutes Saturday amid escalating tensions in the region.”

Tommy
Tommy

Okay, twice…..wtf? I couldn’t read it after that. Twice?…that’s a serious character flaw.

Persnickety
Persnickety

For years the far-right types have been claiming that Obama is some kind of communist infiltrator working to destroy the USA. At first, that sounded at least as crazy as ancient aliens, and heading towards E-meter status. But in the last couple of years, it is starting to sound like the most coherent explanation for the Obama administration policies, internally and externally.

flash
flash

A bedwetter who votes twice for a progressive turdsandwich…so what? If the booger eaters on the other side of the aisle had managed to get their globalist prog-tardish puppet elected POTUS, we would already be at world war.So the dim-wit Oreo is a litte slower in the turns than the Repugs..give him time.He’ll get US into hell soon enough…pack light…it’s a one way trip, I’m sure

flash
flash

How many con-swallowers voted for the globalist prick G Dubya Bush twice? Didn’t even rinse your mouth aterwards did you?

AWD

“Strange to relate, I actually might feel more comfortable if Vladimir Putin was massing troops on the Mexican side of the US border to keep Americans safe from our own bungling and destructive government.”

That’s how I feel. Maybe leaders of our militias can meet with Putin and Russia can begin providing arms to our Patriots, in defense of this country against Obama and the liberal progressive fascists. One can only hope.

AWD

“When will the young people of this country pull their eyeballs away from their iPhones and their heads out of their cloacal vents?”

Dumbfuck Kunstler voted for Obama, twice, knowing full well what he was like after four years, as did the millennials. Everyone knew, especially after four years, what a corrupt, dangerous lying sack of shit socialist he was, and how his main intention is/was to destroy this country, and voted for him again anyway. I don’t see Kunst taking any responsibility for his actions or their consequences, in typical boomer cowardice, and instead pawns off doing something about it on young people? Why doesn’t he pull his head out of his ass, and try and get Obama impeached, as reparations for voting the criminal into office? No, the lazy boomer fuck will leave the heavy lifting to the militias and other groups of patriots while he spins his yarns and continues collecting his Medicare. What a traitorous fuck.

flash
flash

Neocons and their double standards…sheesh.

Reagan-Bush Ties to Iran-Hostage Crisis

Reagan-Bush Ties to Iran-Hostage Crisis
April 9, 2014

Exclusive: The Senate wants to block Iran’s new UN ambassador because he was linked to the Iran hostage crisis 35 years ago, but that standard would strip honors from Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, implicated in extending the hostage crisis to win the 1980 election, reports Robert Parry.

By Robert Parry

U.S. government officials are in high dudgeon again – this time over Iran’s audacity in naming an ambassador to the United Nations who allegedly played a minor role in the 1979-81 crisis in which 52 Americans were held hostage for 444 days in Iran. But the same U.S. officials ignore the now overwhelming evidence that Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush helped extend the hostages’ suffering to gain an edge in the 1980 election.

The double standard – getting worked up over the allegations about Iranian Ambassador Hamid Aboutalebi and going silent over the evidence implicating Reagan and Bush – is just the latest in a long series of examples of the U.S. government’s hypocrisy.

But the key to understanding the October Surprise case was that it appeared to be a prequel to the Iran-Contra scandal, part of the same storyline beginning with the 1980 crisis over 52 American hostages held in Iran, continuing through their release immediately after Ronald Reagan’s inauguration on Jan. 20, 1981, then followed by mysterious U.S. government approval of secret arms shipments to Iran via Israel in 1981, and ultimately morphing into the Iran-Contra Affair of more arms-for-hostage deals with Iran until that scandal exploded in 1986. [For more on the scandal and cover-up, see Robert Parry’s America’s Stolen Narrative.]

Getting Some Help

Though Beach’s memo in November 1991 revealed the Bush-41 administration’s knowledge of the Casey trip to Madrid in 1980, the Republican cover-up was aided immensely that month by Newsweek and The New Republic, which published matching stories on their covers claiming to have debunked the October Surprise allegations by proving that Casey could not have made the trip to Madrid.

Despite knowing the falsity of those magazine articles, Bush’s White House made no effort to correct the record or to inform congressional investigators. Yet, even without Beach’s memo, there was solid evidence at the time disproving the Newsweek/New Republic debunking articles. Both magazines had sloppily misread attendance records at a London historical conference that Casey had attended on July 28, 1980, the time frame when Iranian businessman (and CIA agent) Jamshid Hashemi had placed Casey in Madrid for a secret meeting with Iranian emissary Mehdi Karrubi.

TeresaE
TeresaE

And yet the majority of “conservative” voters are calling Ob ama “cowardly,” and “making us look like pussies,” on both the Ukraine and Syria.

I love my friend, deeply. I hate that he gets his news – and his beliefs – from what now is bandied about as “journalism” in this country.

I tried to explain that WE were the ones that have helped arm the rebels to create the war in Syria, that WE provided a BILLION and a half to the EU supporters in Ukraine.

That WE were marching these nations into war, in much the same way we marched Japan into it.

WE are the fucking evil empire. WE were brainwashed as children and now our media continues the deluge.

I doubt we have ever been closer to the end times via our government. Many will blame god, but I know in my heart this is nothing but the evil, pride and greed of men.

Sad shit to contemplate. JK needs to do some soul-searching and pay some cosmic reparations for every part he paid in getting O elected, and re-elected.

overthecliff

I am amazed at Liberal logic. Really?, the Koch brothers have enough influence with Obama to dictate foreign policy???

Discover more from The Burning Platform

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading