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“White Ribbon” Armed Men Explain Russia’s Crimea Reaction?
Secretary of State Kerry on Face the Nation:
Russia chose this brazen act aggression and moved in with its forces on a completely trumped set of pre-texts claiming that people were threatened …
Kerry should watch the following videos.
This one is of interest. The (auto-translated from Russian) subtitle:
Compilation with video surveillance cameras installed in the building of the Council of Ministers of Crimea on 27.02.2014, during the capture.
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The video shows a group of 20 to 30 armed people, soldier like, well armed but not full professionals, storming and then searching a building with the help of flash-bang grenades. The time marks in the the CCTV are between 0400 and 0700 on the 27th of February. The last pictures to be seen are when the intruders smash the CCTV cams one by one. To mark themselves the men wear white ribbons on their left arms. This is a longer CCTV video from only one camera uploaded by the same account, Редактор Новостей (newsmaker), on February 28. It shows the group storming and securing one of the entrances to the building.
This is a video uploaded on March 1 by a French TV station. The (auto-translated from French) subtitle:
Latest news on http://www.bfmtv.com/ A group of twenty armed as professional men shot Saturday on the government building in Simferopol in Crimea. "It was weapons of professionals," says special envoy BFMTV Patrick Sauce. Russian soldiers who protect the site did not respond. The attackers withdrew in a bus a few minutes later.
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The video shows a group of some 30+ armed men – again soldier like, well armed but not full professionals – in daylight trying to storm some building. They retreat to a civilian bus and seem to depart. The men are again marked with white ribbons on their left arms. What was this about?
Here is another snippet (at 1:20) of the situation from a different perspective by a Russian TV station.
Someone has done a photo analysis of hand weapons Russian troops in the Crimea carry. But the second photo is not of Russian soldiers but is from the same scene than the video above. It shows armed men with white ribbons and in partly civilian cloth. One of their weapons is identified as a Russian grenade launcher but with a U.S. made holographic sight.
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Unfortunately no "western" media have yet asked who these white-ribbon guys are and what they are doing. To me it seems possible that they are some kind of half trained gang send from Kiev to takeover government buildings in the Crimea. The presences of these groups, starting early on February 27, could be the reason why Russia decided it needed to take control of the Crimea. Fear that these groups would receive reinforcement through other groups arriving by plane led to the temporary guarding of the Crimean airports by (unmarked) Russian troops.
Please let me know of other media occurrences of such white-ribbon marked persons and of their background.
Washington Post: Ukraine crisis tests Obama’s foreign policy focus on diplomacy over military force
Another dangerous article from the Washington Post. “Ukraine crisis tests Obama’s foreign policy focus on diplomacy over military force.” Hmm. I’m not sure what part of “diplomacy” is (or what part of “military force” is not) encompassed by sending a bunch of armed revolutionaries to seize power in a foreign capitol. Maybe this article will illuminate us. Or maybe the insanity begins in the title, and it only goes downhill from there…
For much of his time in office, President Obama has been accused by a mix of conservative hawks and liberal interventionists of overseeing a dangerous retreat from the world at a time when American influence is needed most.
By definition, the weaker the United States is, the more its “influence” will be needed. This is the zero sum strategy of American “thinkers” and is precisely why the US seems to be, month by month, pushing the world towards a third world war. So of course, anything that cannot be seen by absolutely everyone – including the Bush-era Neocons – is a “dangerous retreat”. And, though it seems as though in Syria the US backed down when things got a little too hot, we can always be assured that “all options are on the table” because anything less, of course, is unacceptable when you’re dealing with extremists. And these people are extremists.
There are rarely good — or obvious — options in such a crisis. But the position Obama is in, confronting a brazenly defiant Russia and with few ways to meaningfully enforce his threat, has been years in the making.
The language is interesting. A “brazenly defiant Russia”. The inference is that the United States is the boss of the world, and Russia, of course, the employee. And of course, this cannot stand. One does not “brazenly defy” the boss – or perhaps stated more correctly – the Don. The problem is – the United States does not yet own the world. Somehow, our leaders always seems to forget this. No matter who “defies” us, they are shocked. They are left in utter disbelief. This is a pathology.
At a North American summit meeting in Mexico last month, Obama said, “Our approach as the United States is not to see these as some Cold War chessboard in which we’re in competition with Russia.”
This statement can only be seen one of two ways: Obama is either an outright liar making such statements, or he has no actual control over US foreign policy. Because if one doesn’t see the world as some Cold War chessboard, then why exactly does one go around launching coups and civil wars inside every single one of Russia’s allies? Is it the case that Obama is simply not in control of Nuland as she meddles in the Ukraine? And those State Dept. officials at work in Venezuela – no sabé, Senor? Because this would be hard – very hard – to believe. The fact is that the United States never dropped the Cold War mentality and has been steadily following up with its plans to dismember Russia just as it had done so to the Soviet Union. Not for a moment has this goal been strayed from, and though it supposedly has never been said aloud, the words “Siberia is too large and rich to belong to one country” echo in every move of the US.
It was Obama’s threat of a military strike, after the Syrian government’s second chemical attack crossed what Obama had called a “red line,” that prompted Putin to pressure Assad into concessions.
Here we see a very clear symptom of a pathology. The pitiable stand down in Syria, where we watched the United States demand and bluster only to eventually be deserted by her closest allies in the face of Russian and Chinese naval power, has been transformed into a victory for the United States instead of the simple lesson about cause-and-effect that it was. Now it is clear proof that, if the United States acts tough and threatens to rain missiles down on a small, defenseless, war-torn state (or now, seemingly, a big, giant like Russia) – it wins. This is entirely akin to the alcoholic who, having sobered up in the jail house from his last bender, begins to rationalize to himself “well, it wasn’t the alcohol causing the trouble really. Its those cops. I ought to have a drink and go teach them a lesson…” This is pure insanity.
And those pushing this line to Obama (assuming he is not pushing it himself) are extraordinarily dangerous figures. Because they won’t be saying “that was a close one, what were we thinking” they’ll be saying “see, it all went according to plan, we’re on the right track…”
And to this kind of self-destructive behavior there is no real end – except to, as every sad addict finally does, hit bottom. The problem here, of course, is that “bottom” in this case means a nuclear confrontation, or the destruction of the dollar – and its means all of our asses.
The time has never been more right than for an eruption of dissent in the United States of America. Who can doubt that what goes on in the offices of Goldman Sachs make Yanukovich look like a piker? Or that we aren’t all being dragged to our doom by this group of moral mice?
What is it going to take to stop these people?
Posted by: guest77 | Mar 3 2014 1:31 utc | 62
Before this thread, too, turns into a greenwald thread I’ll quickly jot down some thoughts.
Once more a lot of misunderstandings seem to be centered around “sniper rifles” and, more generally, the use and worth of diverse add ons.
Kindly get it, no matter how often it’s written, Dragunov is NOT a sniper rifle. It’s designed, meant, and used as what the west calls “designated marksmans rifle” – that’s an important difference.
For one, a DMR typically – and wisely – uses more widely spread caliber; typical ones are in the 7,62 class, while sniper rifles are typically in Lapua (~ 9mm) or even 12.5 calibers. Unless you want a lengthy elaboration on caliber, which *do* warrant a lot of attention because a gazillion factors are related to them (like: how much ammo can troups reasonably carry with them), just trust me when I tell you there’s good reason for those caliber choices.
And just btw., there *do* exist (and are made) real sniper rifles in Russia, industrial production rifles (and actually good ones) and even excellent hand-made ones.
One reason why I have my doubts about the analysis (based on weapons and add ons) linked to by b is because to me it sounds like the guy has lots of theoretical computer game weapons know how but is lacking on the professional military side.
Most importantly: It’s soldiers making good shots, not equipment! Second “holy law”: It’s the barrel, the mechanism, and the quality of ammo that make a gun a good gun.
There are quite diverse philosophies around guns. The Russian philosophy is simplicity and reliability centric. That’s what the whole AK series still is about. That’s not at all to mean that precision doesn’t count but frankly, in 99% of cases in actual fighting limited precision is damn good enough. Because there is way more to precision than the gun (and in western perspective some high-tech sight), such as heart rate, moving profiles, practice, a.s.o.
To put it simply, soldiers in a fighting situation are rarely in a situation and condition where even 2 MOA (no pun. “moa” tells about precision. 1 MOA ~ 1″ or 25 mm at ~ 100m) can be achieved; more realistic values are in the 5 MOA range – for a well trained soldier that is. And guess what? That damn good enough because unlike, say, the police sniper who just has to hit that famous 1″ – 2″ area at a hostage takers head to prevent him from killing the hostage, soldiers are going for the torso which translates to around 7-10 MOA (quite low “precision”) at typical shooting distances like 250m.
Next, as you have certainly noticed, basically all rifles used in basically all armies are assault rifles, that is *automatic* rifles. This directly translates to “rifles of limited precision” (to word it friendly). To put a high quality sight on an ar-15 is, frankly, a) senseless and b) a sign of bad shooting capabilities. If your soldiers aren’t capable to shoot typical infantry distances of 50 – 300 m with 5 MOA precision with simple standard sights, you have a problem of soldier/training and not of gun sights.
And, No, switching your gun to single shot doesn’t change those “laws” because your gun is still limited to mediocre precision.
To bring this to a point: Forget those battlefield 2000 (or whatever) analysis. Russian troups, in particular special forces *are* properly equipped nowadays, and if a RF DMR wants an add on sight for certain situations, he can attach a Kobra or a well proven and adequate scope. But to “enhance” an AK rifle with EOtech holosights clearly suggests “western” and “guerilla” (or bought nazi) to me.
And btw, No, one can not judge that someone is special forces based on his weapon, just because it’s “known”, for instance, that spec forces often use a certain rifle. The weapon Russian spec forces carry is very dependent on the mission. And rest assured that for CQB they wouldn’t walk around with fat long Dragunovs.
But ask a western, in particular a zamerican “spy master how to false flag disguise those payed nazis in your service to make them look Russian, he’ll sure enough come up with “Dragunov!”.
Another issue: As I’ve thought (and written) the ukrainian troups won’t fight against Russia. Partly because they are not amongst the bravest, partly because Russia is their Angst-Opponent, partly because ukraines military is still largely influenced by the common heritage and history (and quite a few of the higher officers were trained in Russian facilities/academies, and partly because it’s against the nature of any military with character to subdue themselves to criminal rats, particularly if the are cia payed.
This leads to the funny situation that ukraine (kyiv variant) de facto doesn’t have military forces, even less forces they can trust and count on), doesn’t have special police forces and even doesn’t have police forces, simply because they were betrayed by all sides and wouldn’t fights anyway when it gets hard. One Exception, Berkut, which however is on Russias side.
Also, What is Russias probable strategy?
Well, from what I’ve seen so far it seems they are following a very smart “oyster” scheme, i.e build up in steps combined with a “we don’t fight. We only protect our bases” strategy.
So, Krim now basically her own military incl. navy, police, and Berkut – and all of them convinced and rather loyal. This has two major strategic advantages. a) Krim is pretty much secured by now. Sure, there will from time to time be small operations and attempts by kiev, but Krim will be easily capable to handle those. b) Once Krim has fully established and properly implemented power, they will be a bridge head from which the counter revolution can spread into neighbouring pro-Russia provinces.
Doing it this way carried a small risk of kiev filling the “void” (which wasn’t really a void but rather a not too active counter revolution). But that risk was quite limited anyway as there was always the option to fight down an kiev attempts.
But it has the major advantage that Russia could restrain themselves to protective observers rather than actively involve party. And indeed, pretty everything was done and handled by *ukrainians*; sure those were “Krim ukrainians” and, yes, they were clearly very close to Russia but anyway they were ukrainians.
They will, so I assume strongly, continue that very successful strategy and even more so when looking at the kiev regime being in gross disarray and increasingly desperate.
So there isn’t too much suspense while looking at things unfolding. One point, however, remains very interesting for me: Will they a) simply ignore Odessa, b) spread out to Odessa last (after the eastern regions) or c) first?
All those options have their positive and neg. sides. In my minds eye their way of dealing with Odessa will be an interesting hint to their attitude, e.g. is their goal simply to somehow establish security and some autonomy in the regions that desire that? Or, the other extreme, are they about to pro-actively establish some kind and version of “eastern ukraine”, be it formalized as a proper country to create or be it as a largely autonomous large “eastern ukraine” block that stays part of ukraine in name?
Also linked to Odessa: What are their plans concerning zusa? Will they just ignore the anyway rather insignificant zusa presence at Odessas doors? Or will they pro-actively engage them in one way or another, for instance by *first* spreading to Odessa and creating a pro-Russian autonomous fait accompli there (and then asking the zusa ship to get lost or else …).
For the moment, I feel, they haven’t yet taken a clear decision. Quite probably this also depends largely on a) kiev staying out and b) zusa staying *obviously and very passive*. My guess is that, as soon as zusa so much as coughs in an unpleasant way the “crimean navy and army” will clean Odessa and very strongly demand (with gun covers taken off and guns trained) the zusa ships to leave.
Finally, the G7/G8 thingy
Honestly, I was very pleased by that western approach. For two reasons:
– With the western perspective of Russia militarily enganging the zusa partner an zato member in all but name ukraine … threatening Russia to be excluded from G8 is their reaction? Wait a second, I need an extensive laughing and carpet biting time out.
In other words: This comes down to basically capitulating and declaring that zato is afraid of the slightest military engagement of Russia. Period.
– How lovely! What will Russia being zusa sanctioned and G8 excluded do? Well, for one, they will demand Rubels or Yuans for their oil and gas. Furthermore they will take that as an invitation to, uhm, make zamerican enterprises in Russia (who earn a very major amount of money there) feel considerably less well and a largely increased level of bureaucracy (read: they’ll kick their asses day and night). And, of course, it will make Russia to look for alternatives. Like China and, more generally, BRICS.
All in all, that stupid G8 move will turn out to be more or less insignificant for Russia but quite damaging for zusa and particularly their us$.
As I said: Lovely!
There will, of course, also be unpleasant implications for zeu but frankly, my interest in zeu is limited to zeu and particularly zeuro breaking. So I won’t waste any further thoughts on that zusa metastase.
Ceterum censeo israel americanamque vehementer delenda esse!
Posted by: Mr. Pragma | Mar 3 2014 6:53 utc | 75
What Neocons Want from Ukraine Crisis
President Barack Obama has been trying, mostly in secret, to craft a new foreign policy that relies heavily on cooperation with Russian President Vladimir Putin to tamp down confrontations in hotspots such as Iran and Syria. But Obama’s timidity about publicly explaining this strategy has left it open to attack from powerful elements of Official Washington, including well-placed neocons and people in his own administration.
The gravest threat to this Obama-Putin collaboration has now emerged in Ukraine, where a coalition of U.S. neocon operatives and neocon holdovers within the State Department fanned the flames of unrest in Ukraine, contributing to the violent overthrow of democratically elected President Viktor Yanukovych and now to a military intervention by Russian troops in the Crimea, a region in southern Ukraine that historically was part of Russia.
Though I’m told the Ukraine crisis caught both Obama and Putin by surprise, the neocon determination to drive a wedge between the two leaders has been apparent for months, especially after Putin brokered a deal to head off U.S. military strikes against Syria last summer and helped get Iran to negotiate concessions on its nuclear program.
Putin also is reported to have verbally dressed down Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then-Saudi intelligence chief Prince Bandar bin Sultan over what Putin considered their provocative actions regarding the Syrian civil war.
American neocons – along with Israel and Saudi Arabia – had hoped that Obama would launch military strikes on Syria and Iran that could open the door to more “regime change” across the Middle East, a dream at the center of neocon geopolitical strategy since the 1990s.
This neocon strategy took shape after the display of U.S. high-tech warfare against Iraq in 1991 and the collapse of the Soviet Union later that year. U.S. neocons began believing in a new paradigm of a uni-polar world where U.S. edicts were law.
The neocons felt this paradigm shift also meant that Israel would no longer need to put up with frustrating negotiations with the Palestinians. Rather than haggling over a two-state solution, U.S. neocons simply pressed for “regime change” in hostile Muslim countries that were assisting the Palestinians or Lebanon’s Hezbollah.
Iraq was first on the neocon hit list, but next came Syria and Iran. The overriding idea was that once the regimes assisting the Palestinians and Hezbollah were removed or neutralized, then Israel could dictate peace terms to the Palestinians who would have no choice but to accept what was on the table.
U.S. neocons working on Netanyahu’s campaign team in 1996, including Richard Perle and Douglas Feith, even formalized their bold new plan, which they outlined in a strategy paper, called “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm.” The paper argued that only “regime change” in hostile Muslim countries could achieve the necessary “clean break” from the diplomatic standoffs that had followed inconclusive Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.
In 1998, the neocon Project for the New American Century called for a U.S. invasion of Iraq, but President Bill Clinton refused to go along. The situation changed, however, when President George W. Bush took office and after the 9/11 attacks. Suddenly, the neocons had a Commander in Chief who agreed with the need to eliminate Iraq’s Saddam Hussein — and a stunned and angry U.S. public could be easily persuaded. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “The Mysterious Why of the Iraq War.”]
So, Bush invaded Iraq, ousting Hussein but failing to subdue the country. The U.S. death toll of nearly 4,500 soldiers and the staggering costs, estimated to exceed $1 trillion, made the American people and even Bush unwilling to fulfill the full-scale neocon vision, which was expressed in one of their favorite jokes of 2003 about where to attack next, Iran or Syria, with the punch line: “Real men go to Tehran!”
Though hawks like Vice President Dick Cheney pushed the neocon/Israeli case for having the U.S. military bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities – with the hope that the attacks also might spark a “regime change” in Tehran – Bush decided that he couldn’t risk the move, especially after the U.S. intelligence community assessed in 2007 that Iran had stopped work on a bomb four years earlier.
The Rise of Obama
The neocons were dealt another setback in 2008 when Barack Obama defeated a neocon favorite, Sen. John McCain. But Obama then made one of the fateful decisions of his presidency, deciding to staff key foreign-policy positions with “a team of rivals,” i.e. keeping Republican operative Robert Gates at the Defense Department and recruiting Hillary Clinton, a neocon-lite, to head the State Department.
Obama also retained Bush’s high command, most significantly the media-darling Gen. David Petraeus. That meant that Obama didn’t take control over his own foreign policy.
Gates and Petraeus were themselves deeply influenced by the neocons, particularly Frederick Kagan, who had been a major advocate for the 2007 “surge” escalation in Iraq, which was hailed by the U.S. mainstream media as a great “success” but never achieved its principal goal of a unified Iraq. At the cost of nearly 1,000 U.S. dead, it only bought time for an orderly withdrawal that spared Bush and the neocons the embarrassment of an obvious defeat.
So, instead of a major personnel shakeup in the wake of the catastrophic Iraq War, Obama presided over what looked more like continuity with the Bush war policies, albeit with a firmer commitment to draw down troops in Iraq and eventually in Afghanistan.
From the start, however, Obama was opposed by key elements of his own administration, especially at State and Defense, and by the still-influential neocons of Official Washington. According to various accounts, including Gates’s new memoir Duty, Obama was maneuvered into supporting a troop “surge” in Afghanistan, as advocated by neocon Frederick Kagan and pushed by Gates, Petraeus and Clinton.
Gates wrote that Kagan persuaded him to recommend the Afghan “surge” and that Obama grudgingly went along although Gates concluded that Obama didn’t believe in the “mission” and wanted to reverse course more quickly than Gates, Petraeus and their side wanted.
Faced with this resistance from his own bureaucracy, Obama began to rely on a small inner circle built around Vice President Joe Biden and a few White House advisers with the analytical support of some CIA officials, including CIA Director Leon Panetta.
Obama also found a surprising ally in Putin after he regained the Russian presidency in 2012. A Putin adviser told me that the Russian president personally liked Obama and genuinely wanted to help him resolve dangerous disputes, especially crises with Iran and Syria.
In other words, what evolved out of Obama’s early “team of rivals” misjudgment was an extraordinary presidential foreign policy style, in which Obama developed and implemented much of his approach to the world outside the view of his secretaries of State and Defense (except when Panetta moved briefly to the Pentagon).
Even after the eventual departures of Gates in 2011, Petraeus as CIA director after a sex scandal in late 2012, and Clinton in early 2013, Obama’s peculiar approach didn’t particularly change. I’m told that he has a distant relationship with Secretary of State John Kerry, who never joined Obama’s inner foreign policy circle.
Though Obama’s taciturn protectiveness of his “real” foreign policy may be understandable given the continued neocon “tough-guy-ism” that dominates Official Washington, Obama’s freelancing approach gave space to hawkish elements of his own administration.
For instance, Secretary of State Kerry came close to announcing a U.S. war against Syria in a bellicose speech on Aug. 30, 2013, only to see Obama pull the rug out from under him as the President worked with Putin to defuse the crisis sparked by a disputed chemical weapons attack outside Damascus. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “How War on Syria Lost Its Way.”]
Similarly, Obama and Putin hammered out the structure for an interim deal with Iran on how to constrain its nuclear program. But when Kerry was sent to seal that agreement in Geneva, he instead inserted new demands from the French (who were carrying water for the Saudis) and nearly screwed it all up. After getting called on the carpet by the White House, Kerry returned to Geneva and finalized the arrangements.[See Consortiumnews.com’s “A Saudi-Israel Defeat on Iran Deal.”]
Unorthodox Foreign Policy
Obama’s unorthodox foreign policy – essentially working in tandem with the Russian president and sometimes at odds with his own foreign policy bureaucracy – has forced Obama into faux outrage when he’s faced with some perceived affront from Russia, such as its agreement to give temporary asylum to National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden.
For the record, Obama had to express strong disapproval of Snowden’s asylum, though in many ways Putin was doing Obama a favor by sparing Obama from having to prosecute Snowden with the attendant complications for U.S. national security and the damaging political repercussions from Obama’s liberal base.
Putin’s unforced errors also complicated the relationship, such as when he defended Russian hostility toward gays and cracked down on dissent before the Sochi Olympics. Putin became an easy target for U.S. commentators and comedians.
But Obama’s hesitancy to explain the degree of his strategic cooperation with Putin has enabled Official Washington’s still influential neocons, including holdovers within the State Department bureaucracy, to drive more substantive wedges between Obama and Putin. The neocons came to recognize that the Obama-Putin tandem had become a major impediment to their strategic vision.
Without doubt, the neocons’ most dramatic – and potentially most dangerous – counter-move has been Ukraine, where they have lent their political and financial support to opposition forces who sought to break Ukraine away from its Russian neighbor.
Though this crisis also stems from the historical division of Ukraine – between its more European-oriented west and the Russian-ethnic east and south – neocon operatives, with financing from the U.S.-funded National Endowment for Democracy and other U.S. sources, played key roles in destabilizing and overthrowing the democratically elected president.
NED, a $100 million-a-year agency created by the Reagan administration in 1983 to promote political action and psychological warfare against targeted states, lists 65 projects that it supports financially inside Ukraine, including training activists, supporting “journalists” and promoting business groups, effectively creating a full-service structure primed and ready to destabilize a government in the name of promoting “democracy.” [See Consortiumnews.com’s “A Shadow US Foreign Policy.”]
State Department neocons also put their shoulders into shoving Ukraine away from Russia. Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, the wife of prominent neocon Robert Kagan and the sister-in-law of the Gates-Petraeus adviser Frederick Kagan, advocated strenuously for Ukraine’s reorientation toward Europe.
Last December, Nuland reminded Ukrainian business leaders that, to help Ukraine achieve “its European aspirations, we have invested more than $5 billion.” She said the U.S. goal was to take “Ukraine into the future that it deserves,” by which she meant into the West’s orbit and away from Russia’s.
But President Yanukovych rejected a European Union plan that would have imposed harsh austerity on the already impoverished Ukraine. He accepted a more generous $15 billion loan from Russia, which also has propped up Ukraine’s economy with discounted natural gas. Yanukovych’s decision sparked anti-Russian street protests in Kiev, located in the country’s western and more pro-European region.
Nuland was soon at work planning for “regime change,” encouraging disruptive street protests by personally passing out cookies to the anti-government demonstrators. She didn’t seem to notice or mind that the protesters in Kiev’s Maidan square had hoisted a large banner honoring Stepan Bandera, a Ukrainian nationalist who collaborated with the German Nazis during World War II and whose militias participated in atrocities against Jews and Poles.
By late January, Nuland was discussing with U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt who should be allowed in the new government.
“Yats is the guy,” Nuland said in a phone call to Pyatt that was intercepted and posted online. “He’s got the economic experience, the governing experience. He’s the guy you know.” By “Yats,” Nuland was referring to Arseniy Yatsenyuk, who had served as head of the central bank, foreign minister and economic minister — and who was committed to harsh austerity.
As Assistant Secretary Nuland and Sen. McCain cheered the demonstrators on, the street protests turned violent. Police clashed with neo-Nazi bands, the ideological descendants of Bandera’s anti-Russian Ukrainians who collaborated with the Nazi SS during World War II.
With the crisis escalating and scores of people killed in the street fighting, Yanukovych agreed to a E.U.-brokered deal that called for moving up scheduled elections and having the police stand down. The neo-Nazi storm troopers then seized the opening to occupy government buildings and force Yanukovych and many of his aides to flee for their lives.
With these neo-Nazis providing “security,” the remaining parliamentarians agreed in a series of unanimous or near unanimous votes to establish a new government and seek Yanukovych’s arrest for mass murder. Nuland’s choice, Yatsenyuk, emerged as interim prime minister.
Yet, the violent ouster of Yanukovych provoked popular resistance to the coup from the Russian-ethnic south and east. After seeking refuge in Russia, Yanukovych appealed to Putin for help. Putin then dispatched Russian troops to secure control of the Crimea. [For more on this history, see Consortiumnews.com’s “Cheering a ‘Democratic’ Coup in Ukraine.”]
Separating Obama from Putin
The Ukraine crisis has given Official Washington’s neocons another wedge to drive between Obama and Putin. For instance, the neocon flagship Washington Post editorialized on Saturday that Obama was responding “with phone calls” when something much more threatening than “condemnation” was needed.
It’s always stunning when the Post, which so energetically lobbied for the U.S. invasion of Iraq under the false pretense of eliminating its (non-existent) weapons of mass destruction, gets its ire up about another country acting in response to a genuine security threat on its own borders, not half a world away.
But the Post’s editors have never been deterred by their own hypocrisy. They wrote, “Mr. Putin’s likely objective was not difficult to figure. He appears to be responding to Ukraine’s overthrow of a pro-Kremlin government last week with an old and ugly Russian tactic: provoking a separatist rebellion in a neighboring state, using its own troops when necessary.”
The reality, however, appears to have been that neocon elements from within the U.S. government encouraged the overthrow of the elected president of Ukraine via a coup spearheaded by neo-Nazi storm troopers who then terrorized lawmakers as the parliament passed draconian laws, including some intended to punish the Russian-oriented regions which favor Yanukovych.
Yet, besides baiting Obama over his tempered words about the crisis, the Post declared that “Mr. Obama and European leaders must act quickly to prevent Ukraine’s dismemberment. Missing from the president’s statement was a necessary first step: a demand that all Russian forces – regular and irregular – be withdrawn … and that Moscow recognize the authority of the new Kiev government. … If Mr. Putin does not comply, Western leaders should make clear that Russia will pay a heavy price.”
The Post editors are fond of calling for ultimatums against various countries, especially Syria and Iran, with the implication that if they don’t comply with some U.S. demand that harsh actions, including military reprisals, will follow.
But now the neocons, in their single-minded pursuit of endless “regime change” in countries that get in their way, have taken their ambitions to a dangerous new level, confronting nuclear-armed Russia with ultimatums.
By Sunday, the Post’s neocon editors were “spelling out the consequences” for Putin and Russia, essentially proposing a new Cold War. The Post mocked Obama for alleged softness toward Russia and suggested that the next “regime change” must come in Moscow.
“Many in the West did not believe Mr. Putin would dare attempt a military intervention in Ukraine because of the steep potential consequences,” the Post wrote. “That the Russian ruler plunged ahead shows that he doubts Western leaders will respond forcefully. If he does not quickly retreat, the United States must prove him wrong.”
The madness of the neocons has long been indicated by their extraordinary arrogance and their contempt for other nations’ interests. They assume that U.S. military might and other coercive means must be brought to bear on any nation that doesn’t bow before U.S. ultimatums or that resists U.S.-orchestrated coups.
Whenever the neocons meet resistance, they don’t rethink their strategy; they simply take it to the next level. Angered by Russia’s role in heading off U.S. military attacks against Syria and Iran, the neocons escalated their geopolitical conflict by taking it to Russia’s own border, by egging on the violent ouster of Ukraine’s elected president.
The idea was to give Putin an embarrassing black eye as punishment for his interference in the neocons’ dream of “regime change” across the Middle East. Now, with Putin’s countermove, his dispatch of Russian troops to secure control of the Crimea, the neocons want Obama to further escalate the crisis by going after Putin.
Some leading neocons even see ousting Putin as a crucial step toward reestablishing the preeminence of their agenda. NED president Carl Gershman wrote in the Washington Post, “Ukraine’s choice to join Europe will accelerate the demise of the ideology of Russian imperialism that Putin represents. … Russians, too, face a choice, and Putin may find himself on the losing end not just in the near abroad but within Russia itself.”
At minimum, the neocons hope that they can neutralize Putin as Obama’s ally in trying to tamp down tensions with Syria and Iran – and thus put American military strikes against those two countries back under active consideration.
As events spin out of control, it appears way past time for President Obama to explain to the American people why he has collaborated with President Putin in trying to resolve some of the world’s thorniest problems.
That, however, would require him to belatedly take control of his own administration, to purge the neocon holdovers who have worked to sabotage his actual foreign policy, and to put an end to neocon-controlled organizations, like the National Endowment for Democracy, that use U.S. taxpayers’ money to stir up trouble abroad. That would require real political courage.
Posted by: ProPeace | Mar 3 2014 10:15 utc | 83
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