COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY SAMUEL OSBORNE IN THE
INDEPENDENT
“Turkey's Erdogan
warns Europeans 'will not walk safely on the streets' if diplomatic row
continues.
“It comes after German
Chancellor Angela Merkel warns war of rhetoric must stop”
Erdogan is a pretty dangerous character.
I don't think there is the least doubt that he is mentally
unbalanced.
However, this mentally unbalanced and cunning man enjoys the
support of a great deal of Turkey's population.
And he is a hard-nosed card player who happens to hold a
number of aces.
In effect, he was handed these aces by America's stupidly
aggressive policies and by Europe's leaders cringingly supporting those
policies.
If Europe over the last decade had even one or two real
leaders - it did not - to stand up against American excesses, there very well
might not be the huge refugee problem.
The refugees are a direct result of American bombing and
support of proxy armies throughout the Middle East in its dirty wars on behalf
of Israel.
And Europe’s marriage to a place like Turkey is a direct
result of America's long and tiresome and dangerous treatment of Russia as a
threat rather than a cooperative state. It views Turkey as a needed buffer
state against Russia.
America just never stops thinking like Rome looking at
Carthage when it comes to Russia. It's imbecilic.
That American view also impoverishes large parts of Europe
today, as, for example, French farmers who can't export to Russia or German car
makers. Demands for substantial increases in military spending don’t help
either.
The success of Brexit was also a result of the policies
which created all those refugees which no European state could readily handle,
and we may see more of the same in other EU countries.
The EU itself has structural weaknesses encouraged by past
American policies too. Americans encouraged the building of the EU, but only as
a one-stop-shopping window for their own interests and not as another potential
competitor, which is what a more cohesive and unified and not-so-unevenly
structured EU would have become.
Had relatively weak southern states not been admitted
(imagine even considering Turkey or Ukraine too!) and had the Euro been soundly
founded with real central banking powers, EU would be on a trajectory for a
strong long-term future.
America's view of Russia is an on-going threat for European
interests, as, for example, with industries that depend on long-term reliable
supplies of natural gas.
And, in addition, the stupid, American-engineered coup in
Ukraine, intended to hurt Russia (why? intelligent people might ask) has only
added more instability for Europe. The incompetent government put in place
there cannot possibly in any meaningful way become a real member of Europe,
being also an economic basket case, and it will almost certainly fall as a
result of its own devices.
____________________
An additional note on Germany's Merkel and her warnings.
Just consider how foolishly this leader has behaved for
years.
Facing her own election challenge this year, she's been
directly aping the brainless stuff in Washington about Trump and Russia. It
makes no sense, but it keeps being repeated much like an advertising slogan
being imprinted into people’s brains.
And it was she who engineered the ethically-corrupt deal
with Erdogan over refugees in the first place. We’ll pay you serious money, you
keep them in tent camps.
While I am very sympathetic to the plight of refugees,
believing all advanced countries have a duty towards them, it was almost
imbecilic of Merkel to just throw open the doors, as she did at one point, and
try pressuring others to do the same.
Any state can only successfully absorb so many refugees at
any one time. Pushing the acceptance of huge numbers at once, she is
responsible for a lot of the anti-refugee attitudes we now see, including in
the US.
And did she, or any other EU leader, pressure the American
government of Obama to take a generous share of the refugees it created?
