(27 minutes)
Puzzled by U.S. Policy on Ukraine and Russia? Think neocons. (Also, to add context, you are invited to skim through “Background: From Syria to Ukraine” below, before viewing.)
In this final installment, Ray talks with Regis Tremblay about what has been called “the most blatant coup in history” – the West-orchestrated Putsch in Kiev on February 22, 2014. The neocons were determined to put Putin in his place after he helped spoil their plans for war on Syria six months before. So it was partly payback.
Ray discusses the strategic importance of Crimea, and how it should have been a no-brainer how the Kremlin would react to its possible loss to NATO. The tension created by the coup d’état in Kiev, just six months after a brief Obama-Putin partnership helped prevent war on Syria, torpedoed further progress toward a good working relationship between Washington and Russia. There is good reason, in fact, to believe that this was the main aim of the coup; in any case, the hapless Obama let it happen.
While holding out some hope that Moscow’s help on Syria might encourage a more cooperative spirit in Washington, Putin suggested that in order to cultivate healthy bilateral relations based on mutual interest, Washington might consider abandoning the notion that the U.S. is more equal, so to speak, than other nations. Ray quotes part of a highly unusual Putin op-ed published by the New York Times on Sept. 11, 2013 – before the neocons launched their payback. Putin reportedly drafted the final paragraph himself. It is worth citing in full:
“My working and personal relationship with President Obama is marked by growing trust. I appreciate this. I carefully studied his address to the nation on Tuesday. And I would rather disagree with a case he made on American exceptionalism, stating that the United States’ policy is “what makes America different. It’s what makes us exceptional.” It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation. There are big countries and small countries, rich and poor, those with long democratic traditions and those still finding their way to democracy. Their policies differ, too. We are all different, but when we ask for the Lord’s blessings, we must not forget that God created us equal.”
Background: From Syria to Ukraine
Our last installment (video interview #2 posted yesterday) addressed the fact that pro-Israeli neocons are running U.S. policy on Syria. Ray noted – in part from his own personal experience – how distraught the neocons were when Obama stepped back from attacking Syria in Sept. 2013. (Normally clay in then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s hands, Obama was given some backbone by JCS Chair Gen. Martin Dempsey and – amazingly – by the British Parliament which voted against war on Syria.)
If it had not dawned on him before, surely Obama and the sophomores he has working for him in the White House could then see how close the neocons and Israel had come to mousetrapping the President into another war of aggression. The first step was the artful setting of a “red line” against Syria using, or even merely moving, its chemical weapons
At the end of a press conference on Aug. 20, 2012, Chuck Todd, apparently responding to a request originating with Hillary, fed the mousetrap some cheese by asking leading questions that Obama showed himself primed to answer, setting the scene for the “red line.” (See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?
You owe it to yourself to have a look at Obama’s well-rehearsed discourse on the new “red line” he establishes. Note: there is some sort of glitch in the YouTube video that obscures Toad’s follow-up question: “So you’re confident it’s somehow under — it’s safe?” ( See:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/
It is a safe assumption that this pas de deux was set up by State Department neocons. The Washington Post account of the press conference suggests that White House staffers had been blindsided and were trying to put the best face on it. ( See:
The sarin gas attack outside Damascus came a year later – on August 21, 2013 – the attack that Hillary’s successor, John Kerry, did all he could to make into a casus belli by blaming on the Assad government. Since then, accumulating evidence has pointed to rebels in Syria as the culprit, who were getting sarin precursors shipped from Europe through Turkey into Syria. It was, as the British told Gen. Dempsey, homemade sarin.
Chuck Toad, though, knows which side his bread is buttered on. Pimping the “red-line” question could, after all, get you placed at the top of Meet the Press. And recently leaked emails show he was highly sensitive to complaints by former Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz that some pundits were being too hard on Hillary. (Subject line of one Schultz-to-Todd email: “Chuck, this must stop.”)
No, “Toad” was not a typo.
The point of including this in introducing the Tremblay/Ray interview on Ukraine is not so much to show how toady the likes of Todd can be, but how the best made plans of mousetraps and neocons can go awry. Did they take it out on Obama? We saw that in installment #2. But it was Russian President Vladimir Putin, by getting Assad to agree to have his chemical weapons destroyed, who made it possible for Obama to emerge with some considerable grace from his having “chickened out” on doing shock and awe to Syria.
And the two are continuing to “plot” sensible solutions to stop the carnage in Syria, with the neocons, the Pentagon, et al. doing their best to put the kibosh on anything short of driving Assad out of Damascus. And why? (Please see installment #2.)
So, if you are still wondering why the neocons have made Putin into the devil incarnate, think about his sin of pulling Obama’s chestnuts out of the fire in Sept. 2013. They would make Putin pay for that grievous sin by moving into high gear plans for a coup d’etat in Ukraine six months later (February 22, 2014), as most attention in Russia was focused on the winding down of the Winter Olympics in Sochi.
UKRAINE: In other words, the U.S. provocation on Moscow’s doorstep was, in some degree, neocon payback. And – better still in the neocon view – Putin’s altogether predicable reaction in annexing Crimea became icing on the cake. Putin = bête noire par excellence. (And now cavorting with Trump! That’s a two-for.)
If one listens only to Western politicians and the corporate media, recent history in Ukraine begins on Feb. 23, 2014 – not by accident. A particularly blatant example of this came on June 30, when U.S. Ambassador to NATO Douglas Lute spoke at a pre-Warsaw summit press briefing: (See: https://nato.usmission.gov/
“… beginning in 2014 and still to this day, we’re moving into a new period in NATO’s long history. Why do I say that? Here’s the evidence I cite. So the first thing that happened in 2014 that marks this change is a newly aggressive, newly assertive Russia under Vladimir Putin. So in late February, early March of 2014, the seizing, the occupying of Crimea followed quickly by the illegal political annexation of Crimea. … Well, any notion of strategic partnership came to an abrupt halt in the first months of 2014.” (Emphasis added)
