COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY THE SAKER IN RUSSIA INSIDER
“Newly Revealed
Russian Weapons Systems: Political Implications
“Putin's speech was
the first step in bringing a sense of reality to a deeply delusional Empire”
Some essential facts dominate the Russian-American
relationship.
One, Americans, as a whole, have never really experienced
war. They think they have, just as they think they are the very bravest and
best, but the facts say otherwise.
In WWII, America lost about 300,000 people, a number which
was just a bit more than one-half of a percent of total losses in the war.
Russia, in the form of the USSR, lost 27,000,000 people.
Now, every other aspect of the war was commensurate with
those numbers. The US has never had anyone occupying any small portion of its
territory. Russia had the entire Western part of the country occupied with all
the devastation to a society you would expect – buildings destroyed, people
starved, natural resources damaged, theft on a grand scale, and oppression.
Indeed, Russia, of course, experienced that occupation
twice, once under Hitler and earlier under Napoleon. Even a far more modest
third time if you count the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk which ended WWI for Russia.
War on your home territory is indeed a terribly harsh thing.
The only time America experienced it was with its Civil War of the first half
of the 1860s. And America still goes on sometimes about that experience in its
books, movies, and politics. Yet it completely lacks the will or imagination to
try understanding what war has meant to Russia.
Of course, total American losses in that war, rated as
America’s greatest by far, were only about 600,000 people. I say “only” because
when it comes to desperate war, most would regard such losses as slight. More
people than that, nearly twice the number, died just in the terrible Siege of
Leningrad.
All of America’s many wars – and when you have many wars, it
automatically tells you something about the mindset of a people and their
government – since WWII have been inflicted on others. They were indeed all
essentially colonial wars serving to impose America’s will upon others, from
Korea and Vietnam to Iraq and Afghanistan.
None of them represented a response to any real threat to
the United States and none of them represented any real principle other than
the principle of the world’s most powerful state telling others what to do and
how to govern themselves, despite all the propaganda and slogans accompanying
each one of them.
And none of them contributed much of anything to the
understanding of Americans about war. America’s losses in Vietnam, for example
– despite all the wailing and gnashing of teeth at the time - amounted to a
pinprick in real war terms. And when the gnashing got bad, the Pentagon simply
changed the way conscripts were taken and did a much more thorough job of
controlling “the narrative” of the war, gaining practice in the kind of
propaganda that now accompanies all of its unjust wars.
America lost nearly 60,000 while it was busy killing an
estimated 3,000,000 Vietnamese and turning large parts of their country into an
unbelievable hellhole of landmines, bomb craters, and residue of Agent Orange
and other horrors. It also contributed decisively to the loss of more than
1,000,000 Cambodians.
So, when I see the images of Americans anguished at the
Vietnam Memorial, while never doubting the personal anguish of the people
photographed, I know that experience does not sink down into the fabric of
American society and its political institutions. Otherwise, clearly, such wars
would have stopped happening, but they have not stopped happening.
The horror of Syria – reflecting practices and experiences
in Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, and other places – is built on an entirely new
approach to destroying others. There is minimal exposure of American troops –
even though today they are highly-paid “professionals” and not citizen-soldier
conscripts – other than in flying supersonic planes to bomb cities and places
with virtually no modern defenses. The fighting on the ground in such imperial
wars is done by mercenaries (in Syria) and by local groups whose grievances
have been exploited (as in Afghanistan). All of it is smothered in
disinformation and rivers of propaganda.
So, there is an unavoidable and vast gulf in understanding
between these two countries concerning war. And America’s Deep State, the
people who really make the war-and-peace decisions, are not much influenced by
public views. The American public is pretty well kept poorly informed about the
nature of many of these events.
It is also kept in a hyper-Patriotic state with all kinds of
nonsense and manipulation. Just look at all the noise and attention about a few
football players modestly exercising their supposed rights of free speech. You
would think they were guilty of burning the flag and starting an insurrection
on national television. America’s press works overtime to keep all such
meaningless hype going, and they are greatly aided by a President today who is
a genuine ignoramus.
There is a tremendous amount of news and public affairs
programing in the United States. But all of it just represents variations on a
theme, not genuine differences in point of view or interpretation. Thus, many
Americans like to think they are well-informed. For example, the flagship paper
of the American establishment – what has accurately been described as its
official house organ, the New York Times - is a big publication, bristling with
some entertaining and informed articles on a variety of matters. Those give it
reputation and authority.
But on matters of state, all the intelligence and critical
thinking disappears and a well-defined and quite predictable line is applied.
So, we have what seems to be an expert and critical publication, in fact,
serving as attractive packaging for narrow official views and disinformation
when it comes to matters of state and world affairs.
Just the single example of the fact that the New York Times
passes all of its articles concerning Israel over the official Israeli censor
before publishing, a fact it long hid, tells you everything you need to know
about the paper’s journalistic integrity. All of the major American media –
press and broadcasting – function that same way when it comes to the things
that really matter for public understanding of crucial issues.
All the recent resentments in Washington over Russian media
reflect precisely the reaction of the Deep State – or the establishment,
whatever term you wish to use for the people who really run America – over even
the possibility of an alternative story being offered to the long force-fed
American public. That doesn’t automatically make Russian media either more or
less “true,” it just means there is fury over anyone’s even daring to try
telling a story from another point of view.
And the American press’s approach to important affairs is
exactly matched by the two political parties. They could be described as two
branches of a single American imperial party. There are differences on domestic
social matters that keep people thinking they have choice and keep plenty of
noise going.
But on the life-and-death matters of wars and terror and
coups and even the American political process, they are identical. Imagine
calling a choice between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump a real political
choice if you care one bit about America’s obscene series of wars in the Middle
East or its behavior towards Russia and China? Or its careless disregard for
countless millions with its induced coups and interference in the affairs of
others? Or its sinking to the lowest morality possible with its giant
systematic extrajudicial-killing operation? Or its virtual complete destruction
of individual privacy and rights inside America, areas where the domestic has a
bearing on the international?
No, that’s why the American establishment is insulated from
its own people to a great extent and enjoys great freedom of action in terrible
matters. And that’s precisely why Putin had to make the dramatic speech that he
did concerning Russia’s defenses.
His words were partly predicated on the real threat the
American establishment is at least studying the possibilities of direct
intervention in Russia (as it has on a number of occasions in the past), a
threat which is given great additional force by all the aggressive wars and
coups we’ve seen from America n the last two decades. He had to cut through all the thick cotton
wadding in which America society is wrapped and reach the people making
decisions, its establishment. And he succeeded.
