Sixty Years And They Haven’t Changed

Littlechild@emperorsnuclothes.com/ March 7, 2022/ Uncategorized

They haven’t changed. Not at all. While contemporary commentators have lauded the perfectibility of man, writers and poets have waxed eloquent on the spiritual growth of people, societies and countries, and political commentators speak of “a new era,” they haven’t changed. Though the world’s people gave a collective sigh of relief upon the collapse of the Soviet Union (and the “end” of Cold War), the reality is far different.

It’s been 65 years since Nikita Khrushchev, on November 18, 1956, told the world’s western nations, “We will bury you!,” a statement that was, in the early years of nuclear brinksmanship, broadly interpreted as a nuclear threat. It’s been 61 years since Khrushchev, on October 12, 1960, at the General Assembly of the UNITED NATIONS, took his shoe off in order to POUND HIS DESK. And it’s been it’s been 59 years since the Cuban missile crisis, (which some consider to be the peak of the Cold War), in which Russia DID explicitly threaten the United States with nuclear annihilation. Never-the-less, after all of this, and, after all of this time… they’re still the same. The leaders of Russia, today, are unchanged from half a century ago: they are today, as they were in the 50s and 60s: THUGS. Pure and simple. Thugs. Brutish dictators who could care less for true democracy, propriety, decency, modernity, diplomacy, international sovereignty, and, most importantly, for human life. Thugs. But the geniuses in the American media don’t “get it.”

And, even top leaders in the Democrat Party don’t get it either. Recall, in October of 2012, during a televised debate between presidential candidates Mitt Romney and Barack Obama, Romney stated that the biggest threat to the United States was Russia. Remember Obama’s reaction?… He LAUGHED… He LAUGHED and said to Romney, derisively: “The Cold War is OVER, Mitt!” Well, Mr. Obama, you were wrong. Russia appears to be not only the biggest threat to the United States, but, to all of Europe, and perhaps even the world.

The Russian invasion of the Sovereign State of Ukraine, was an unprovoked, unjustified, illegal and immoral breach of international law, by a revanchist dictator with, apparently, delusions of grandeur fueled by megalomania. The late Senator John McCain once said that he had “looked into Putin’s eyes” and saw… KGB.

And while we’re on the topic of looking into eyes, it would appear that Putin did some looking too. On June 16, 2021 in Geneva, Putin and Biden met for the first time. At that meeting, Putin looked into Biden’s eyes and saw… apparently… a weakling. As commentator Dinesh D’Souza has indicated, it’s not an accident that Putin waited until President Trump was out of office to attack Ukraine. Drawing on his experience with another weak American President, Barack Obama, and remembering the ease with which Russia took Crimea in March of 2014, Putin concluded that he would get no significant American resistance (and as a consequence no real NATO resistance either) to taking the whole country. One Ukrainian commentator remarked that Putin “can smell weakness a mile away.” It took him a mere 6 months to go from sizing Biden up in June to beginning the massive assembly of Russian troops on Ukraine’s border. And, of course, setting the stage for all this was Biden’s approval of the completion of the Nord Stream 2 Pipeline (which President Trump had successfully BLOCKED) which, Putin expects, will make the EU dependent on Russian natural gas, thereby resulting in little or no true “push back” on Russian aggression, from the EU.

Now, it’s not just the fact that Putin invaded Ukraine that is gravely troubling, It’s also HOW he has invaded the country. There has been targeting of civilians, civilian appartment houses, schools and civilian infrastructure. And, yesterday, in the most egregious of all Putin’s moves, they have begun shooting rockets at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. That facility is the largest nuclear plant in all of Europe. If radiation begins to escape from reactor damage there, it has been estimated that the danger to public health is TEN TIMES that of the Chernobyl disaster. Millions could die.

And while we are on the topic of nukes, it boggles the mind that, harking back to the 1960’s, Russia has, once again, been making nuclear threats. Putin even indicated that economic sanctions alone by the EU on Russia, could be grounds for “nuclear retaliation.” Doubling down on this frightening rhetoric, Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, stated, casually I might add, that a third world war WILL be “nuclear and destructive.” After that, Russian media figure Dmitry Kiselyov, was quick to point out that his country could shoot hundreds of nuclear warheads that would “guarantee the destruction” of all the NATO countries and the U.S.”

Well, there you have it: here we are back in the 1950s and 60s. The nuclear bullies are at it again. And, if the US and NATO acquiesce and appease them, the Baltic states will be next. And, after that, who knows? Poland? East Germany? Western Europe?

We need decisive action. So far, Biden’s response amounts to nothing more than a slap on the wrist. His green light to transfering fighter jets from Poland to Ukraine is a good start, but we must do much more. At the very least, we must STOP FUNDING THE RUSSIANS. Every single day, the US buys over SEVEN HUNDRED AND FIFTY million dollars of Russian crude. Three quarters of a billion dollars! Every single day! This must stop IMMEDIATELY. We must reopen the Keystone pipeline, NOW, to ameliorate the adverse effects this will have on our economy (Russian imports constitute 8% of our energy). We must demand that the UN authorize a no fly zone (since so many civilians have been murdered by Russia bombs, the no fly zone request would be justified on humanitarian, not military, grounds). Once authorized, I would then favor slow but steady implementation, to allow Russia to ease out of this impasse, This would be akin to the way JFK handled the Cuban missile crisis. As a concession NATO and the US would sign a pact saying we would not bring nuclear ICBM’s BACK into Poland and that we would keep Ukraine non nuclear. Russia would have to agree to let the Ukraine join NATO, and, of course, cease hostilities.

Perhaps,with such a strategy, this crisis can be resolved like the Cuban missile crisis almost 60 years ago.