Thursday, December 28, 2017

Promoting weapons proliferation in Ukraine despicable

Three paragraphs into the Trib editorial 'Trump defies Putin with Arms to Ukraine' you charge 'Putin is the scheming villain responsible for splintering Ukraine as part of his ambition to reassert Russian power.' You could have made the same charge against President Bush when he splintered Iraq in 2003, getting hundreds of thousands killed, including 4,500 Americans. You could have made the same charge against President Obama when he splintered Libya in 2011, getting thousands killed. You could be saying that today about President Trump getting innocents killed in distant lands around the world, not to make America safe; indeed those ventures make us less safe, but, as you say about Putin, 'to reassert American power'.
But you don't because you fully buy into this utterly false notion of unlimited use of unbridled American power. You always have...and apparently always will. Now, you demonize Putin without a word about the prelude to his Ukraine intervention, the anti Russian, neo-fascist forces, encouraged by the US foreign policy establishment, that instigated a coup in 2013 against the Russian leaning elected president. Putin's pushback against endless NATO expansion up to the Russian border, jeopardizing their vital Crimean naval base at Sevastopol, is not 'scheming villainy'. It's a critical element of Russian national security.
Back in 2013, the world was approaching an end to the catastrophic Syrian civil war. The US and its allies sabotaged the likely Syrian government victory, lusting to depose Assad, setting up another US client state in the Middle East. We flooded Syrian with weaponry, much of which ended up with anti US jihadists with their own agenda for Syria. Much of the 400,000 dead and millions of refuges can be attributed to this unconscionable decision. We can't afford to repeat the Syrian mistake by flooding Ukraine with American WCD (Weapons of Civilian Destruction).

Sunday, December 24, 2017

Yemen in the time of cholera, Part 4

The Red Cross calls it "a hideous milestone in the 21st century" and rightly so, the one millionth case of cholera in Yemen. Not a natural disaster, the epidemic is man made, courtesy of Saudi Arabia, its Gulf State allies and its principle weapons supplier, Uncle Sam. In addition to all that WCD (Weapons of Civilian Destruction), we're giving logistic support in the form of intelligence and mid air refueling of Saudi bombers aiding their destruction of Yemen infrastructure which no longer supplies potable water. The US supports the inhuman Saudi blockade of food and medicine causing millions of Yemenis to face starvation as well as their version of the Big C. The US war party, whether presided over by Obama or Trump, justifies this grotesque use of American might to counter imagined enemy Iran, who the Saudis whine are trying to become chief hegemon in the Middle East, in part through interference in the Yemen civil war. No US support and the Saudi scorched earth war of Yemen annihilation would collapse. State sponsor of terrorism? Look in the mirror Uncle Sam.