Did Russia Not Look The Other Way When The U.S. Invaded Iraq And Afghanistan? Now, It’s America’s Turn.
The flimsy ruse on which the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld cabal had built the case to attack Iraq and Afghanistan was obvious to the entire world, except for the jingoistic core Republican circle. They hastily fried the spicy wings of the lopsided war in the greasy frying pan of boiling patriotism. These oil-soaked wings of patriotic terrorism were cooked in the CIA kitchen and ordered eaten burning hot without cooling. No time to taste. No time to test. No time to refuse. Just pick them up and shove them in your mouth before the hasty servers remove the platters of insanity from in front of you. Such was the hysteria created to achieve the goals of ideological hegemony in the name of national security.
It’s Russia’s turn now. She was wounded and humiliated in the dissolution of the Soviet empire. Its constituent satellite states not only forsook it, they eagerly joined the enemy camp in N.A.T.O. The buffer these satellite states had formed in the Soviet days simply evaporated, leaving Russia naked to the N.A.T.O missiles next door.
Putin, the wounded colonel of KGB, long tended the wounded pride of the Soviet days to one day bring Russia back to its glory days of a bipolar world. With America weakened in the new world order, both internationally for its protracted meaningless wars, and internally for its deeply divided political landscape, it was high time for Putin to make use of the Russian military might it had built on its oil and technology wealth. And that’s what he did.
Borrowing from the playbook of Bush cronies, he found the easy winnable target in Ukraine to assert the lost Russian pride. He borrowed the ruses for an attack on Ukraine taken verbatim from the Iraq and Afghan war playbook. For example, Ukraine is a rogue nation ruled by neo-Nazi leaders, which threaten their own ethnic minorities. Remember the accusations of mass gassing of Kurd minority in Iraq leveled against Saddam Hussein? Ukraine is trying to gain nuclear weapons. Remember the infamous never-found nuclear weapons of Saddam Hussein? Ukraine is sending saboteurs and terrorists into Russian populations. Remember the accusations of exporting terrorism against Saddam Hussein? It’s very much like Déjà vu all over again.
Given this history of lying, America stands on a soft sinking sand of any moral argument to stop Russia from what it itself has done repeatedly in Iraq, in Afghanistan, and in Yemen.
Ukraine has not been an idle victim either. It had the third largest military contingent in Iraq after the U.S. and U.K. in the so-called ‘Coalition of the Willing.’ What business did it have in Iraq and in Afghanistan, except for currying favors with the aggressors? The history has come full circle and now its own innocent people are the victims of the policies their leaders have been pursuing in the name of aligning with the 'democratic' West. Volodymir Zelensky wants people to forget how he himself came to power and silenced all the opposition voices and independent media. It’s heartbreaking to see their cities and streets being pounded by Russian tanks and missiles. But, at least, the Western media can build public sentiment against Russia by showing what happens when the bombs drop in the streets and when the missiles hit homes with people. In Iraq and in Afghanistan, the media was only embedded inside American tanks, showing only their viewpoint from miles away from where the carnage and mayhem was raining on innocent civilians. Till today, no Western media has shown any desire to show the ruins of Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Yemen. Aside from a random picture here or a picture there of malnourished children, they have not shown the millions of starving masses, feeding on grass and stray dogs in the poor war-torn countries of the Middle East. This very media (CNN, BBC, NBC) has been complicit in the carnage and starvation of millions in those countries.
Now that the war has already begun in Ukraine, and like anywhere else, it will only be the innocent unarmed civilians who will pay the price for Putin’s hubris, the way Iraqis and Afghans paid for Bush’s hubris. This is time to find a solution to this conflict in the earnest. What Putin had offered Ukraine was a Finland solution. Finland exercised extreme neutrality during the second world war and the ensuing cold war between NATO and Warsaw Pact countries. Despite sitting right next to Russia, like Ukraine, it has maintained its neutrality and its sovereignty. Volodymir Zelensky would have to forgo his fascination with European Union and NATO. To ease genuine Russian national security concerns in seeing NATO missiles on its Western borders, Ukraine should accept the demand of full neutrality in exchange for verifiable security guarantees from Russia. With more time passing in this war, the leverage to extract any such guarantees will only become weaker. This might result in the Crimeazation of the whole of Ukraine. That may not be even in Russia’s interest. Russia wouldn’t want to deal with a protracted Ukrainian insurgency along its borders. Yet, for now, Russia holds the upper hand in this game. It’s time for Ukraine to put up.
