Featured Image: Cologne after the bombing by Britain – 30/31 May 1942

By

the Gentle Spearman of the Tattooed Warriors at the Ford of the River Craw

The history of the human race is a bloody one indeed. Has there ever been a day when some people, tribe, tongue or nation was not killing some other people, tribe, tongue or nation for whatever reason? Probably not would be the honest answer. Consult any history book and you will quickly find that the dominant theme throughout the ages was war. Great battles were eulogised, wars produced great heroes, yet one side’s heroes were the other side’s villains and most were bloodthirsty killers, their consciences seared by the art of killing.

The advent of the Hollywood movie romanticised war even whilst depicting its bloody nature. Think “Saving Private Ryan” and other great epics. It is good and evil in war, the good guys and the enemy on one side of the line and the enemy and the good guys on the other, bolstered by the endless propaganda of each side projecting the vilification of the other. One side’s heroes are the other side’s villains.

There is nothing good about war. It is all blood and guts and destruction and suffering. For those outside the conflict, one would think the defenders of those being attacked would be the heroes in their eyes. Alas, that is not always the case. It depends entirely whose side you are on, to begin with, and here there is always a good deal of hypocrisy.

This brings me to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In the Western World and many other countries not defined as Western, the outrage is palpable, definite and apoplectic at what they perceive as an unjustified attack on a sovereign nation. Ukraine is painted in the saintly colours of an innocent democratic nation that has been thrust into the forefront of defending Western free societies from the demagogic tyranny of the Evil that is Russia and its “Mordor” styled dictator  Vladamir “the Vampire” Putin who is channelling that other Russian madman Rasputin.

Still, one needs to read between the lines, peek behind the curtains and shine a light in the shadows to get a true picture of just what is going on. Whilst it is plain to see that Russia is committing a dastardly deed in its invasion of Ukraine, the western media, as par for the course, have hidden whatever motivation the Russians had had in taking such action behind a veil of propaganda and the usual label of conspiracy theories, misinformation and downright lies.

The USA have for more than a decade been increasingly demonising Russia and particularly Putin. This became all the more apparent in the Trump years. That Putin is a ruthless dictator is beyond doubt. What is less clear is whether the USA is playing its game of regime change against its biggest foe whilst remaining behind the scenes. One has the suspicion that Putin was lured into the trap of war prepared well in advance as a means of his undoing and the completion of the destruction of Russia as a world power.

To be sure such notions will be castigated as fanciful and imaginative fiction worthy of a Tom Clancy novel, but all the suppositions, reasonable ones at that, are laid out like a trail left by the pied piper.

Firstly, it was the USA under Obama with VP Joe Biden and in particular, George Soros who interfered in the internal politics of Ukraine in 2014, overthrowing a pro-Russia president and installing an unelected pro-western puppet government. This led to rebellion against this unelected government in the Russian ethnic regions in eastern Ukraine. Information about this ethnic conflict was largely suppressed by western media and governments. The west labelled the takeover by Russia of the Crimean Peninsula an invasion even though over 90% of the inhabitants voted to become part of Russia. The Minsk agreement between Ukraine and Russia was never implemented. It is par for the course that both sides blame the other for the lack of implementation.

Having said all that, the Ukraine situation was and is all smoke and mirrors in the endless geopolitical struggle for world domination. It is the latest proxy war fought by the two dominant nuclear powers over the last 70 years or so, but with a very distinct difference. Whereas the first two serious conflicts between Soviet and American hegemony, Korea and Vietnam, it was the USA who was directly dragged into the conflict against Soviet influence and support in a proxy country. This time it is the Soviet successor state Russia that has, for the first time, been dragged into a direct conflict with a proxy of the West.

Unlike the previous conflicts, the USA and the Western alliance has almost complete control of the world of finance and the media and as the bombs raining down on civilians are instantly broadcast to billions of TV sets, Russia has been given the title of Most Evil of Nations and Putin, the New Hitler. History would, of course, say otherwise. Not that you will hear it on any mainstream media platform.

There can never be objectivity in war, especially when images of women and children suffering the consequences of war are invoked continually on the news media. Emotions will always trump any rational attempts at explanations and those making any such rational attempt will only get ridiculed by those who are emotionally impacted. Nevertheless, I will try.

The Russian people have an inherited memory. They remember that every existential invasion they have ever had to defend against came from the west. Napoleon invaded Russia with superior force. Hitler likewise invaded Russia and Russia lost an estimated 27 million people by some accounts in World War 2. In both cases, despite heroic resistance, it was only the Russian winter that saved the day for them.

The biggest warmonger nations in the last 77 years since World War 2 have been the USA and its NATO allies. No amount of emotional denial can obliterate that fact.

Firstly, in World War 2 the USA and Britain, punished the German people for the NAZI, once they gained the upper hand, by wiping out numerous cities full of civilians, especially Hamburg and Dresden. Then the USA obliterated two cities full of civilians with nuclear weapons in Japan. Put bluntly, the Western defenders against NAZI German and Japanese aggression undoubtedly killed more civilians in Germany, its allied countries and Japan than these aggressors killed in theirs. Russia, it is stated by some but not all, suffered the heaviest civilian deaths of all involved with China following close behind at the hands of the Japanese.

Then there were the proxy wars mentioned above against the USSR in Korea and then Vietnam where over 2 million, YES TWO MILLION civilians died on both sides of the Vietnamese war. Around 80,000 American soldiers died. The US used weapons of mass destruction, chemical and probably even biological weapons against its Vietnamese enemies.

Then came the liberation and regime change wars of Yugoslavia where NATO bombed the Serbs, and rightly so some would say. Then Afghanistan where around 241,000 civilians were killed since 2001, then Iraq where over 207,000 civilians died and then Libya.

In terms of warmongering, the west takes first prize by a long shot. One remembers the times of hearing about US drones wiping out whole wedding parties somewhere in Afghanistan, the bombing of whole towns of Iraqi holdouts, or the prolific use of Agent Orange in the jungles of Vietnam. For the West to demonise Russia as the height of the heartless bombing of civilians, as horrible as it is, has to be the height of hypocrisy. It would seem that the death of one European in Ukraine is worth thousands of non-Europeans in the backwaters of the world.

Does any of this justify what Russia is doing? of course not? The US and NATO countries have poked the Russian Bear into a corner. Cornered bears become exceedingly dangerous and unpredictable and this bear has the means to devastate the world as we know it.