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JANUARY 30, 2006
- We warned for years. Somebody, anybody, please pay attention
to what is happening in Russia.
A year ago November - November 2004 - we
reported that it was now too late, that
WE
BEGGED ANYONE TO PAY ATTENTION TO RUSSIA. NO ONE DID. NOW IT IS
OFFICIAL, RUSSIA WILL SHORTLY BE MORE POWERFUL THAN THE US.
America fought a 50 year Cold War
against Russia. And now, we have betrayed generations of
Americans who secured our Cold War victory by allowing Russia to
return to its old ways, restore itself to power, and reassert itself
without so much as a peep of notice from anyone in either political
party.
Here is just the article of the week on
the subject from
Newsweek - a week in which, yet again, Russia was not mentioned
at all in the President's State of the Union Address - nor in the
Democrat's response to his address.. The Newsweek article
gives some nice summary of the general picture. Everything is
back to the old ways. And neither party is going to do
anything about it anytime soon.
We reported years ago that Russia was
planning on deploying a new generation of nuclear missile superior
to all others on the planet - even ours - in that it is designed to
penetrate any missile shield we might come up with.
Last week, Russian President Vladimir
Putin was bragging openly to French President Jaques Chirac
about his new missiles, which the nation now says are ready.
When Putin told then Secretary of State Colin Powell that he would
be deploying the new missiles years back - nothing.
When Putin eliminated the free media and
replaced it with state run propaganda - nothing.
When Putin started using the new FSB
like the old KGB, when he took over oil assets for the state -
building Russia into the world's number two oil exporter, only
behind Saudi Arabia - when he eliminated elections of governors,
when he, when he... nothing.
A few weeks back, Putin became President
of the G8, one of the most powerful economic forces on the planet.
And the day he did, he launched an attack against one of his former
satellite nations, Ukraine, by immediately shutting of the natural
gas flow to the nation in the middle of winter. Doing also cut
back gas flow to other former Soviet satellites like Poland and
Hungary. Days later gas was cut off to former Russian state
Georgia by mysterious blasts that the Georgian President called
intentional sabotage by Putin.
When people talk about the damage of the
Iraq War, about "victory" or no victory, they are, of course,
missing the much larger picture. What would be the victory of
gaining democracy in Iraq - a nation that never was a threat to the
US - if fighting that war cost us democracy in Russia - a massive
prize that feed millions of Europeans and a nation who has nuclear
weapons pointed directly at us, as they have for half a century?
Of course Putin endorsed George W. Bush
in the last US presidential election. Bush has been a dream
come true for the former head of the KGB who now is Russia's most
powerful man. Russia was brought down by a futile, decade-long
campaign in Afghanistan against Osama Bin Laden and his mujahadeen.
Now, Putin saw that George W. Bush was not just going to go in
there, but also into Iraq. It was more idiocy than Putin could
have ever hoped for.
Putin sat on the sidelines quietly as
the US lost its position as favored leader of the world, falling the
despised despot, and while the US spent and spent itself into an
inescapable hole.
He then marveled at how the nation that
once fought for generations against one-party supporting propaganda
media, against spying on one's own citizens, against arresting people
merely because a government calls them a threat and sending them off
to a far place without trials for years and years without even a
hearing, against torture tactics and human rights abuses - Putin
marveled as not only Russia restored itself, but as an America that
once represented freedom slowly morphed itself into a Soviet-like
nation.
And best of all, it was all under the
exact same auspices he used, carried out by the same exact type
people who were of the exact same mindset: the leaders of the
covert American intelligence community.
Putin was head of the KGB, and now the
situation is simply that the KGB is running the country based all
the tactics and philosophies it used in the Soviet Union.
In America, George H. W. Bush was the
head of the CIA, and now the nation is being run by this CIA family
using all the tactics and philosophies the CIA covertly used around
the world for generations.
In both nations, free media has been
replaced by one party promoting propaganda; election results have
ceased to be accountably verifiable; the governments have assumed
the right to spy on their own citizens and to round up any citizen
they decide to and hold them indefinitely without due process of
law.
It would seem like both nations have
ridden parallel paths, which would be bad enough, as it, in essence,
describes a toppling and full reversal of the US Cold War victory.
In reality, the truth is even darker
than that.
Because while both nations have followed
a parallel path in abandoning freedom and democracy, Russia has
restored itself economically - being even further bolstered by
soaring oil prices - as the US has depleted itself and run its
coffers dry.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is now
free to do what he wants in his nation without the slightest threat
of sanction or reprisal from the world community. Even more,
he knows he is free to do what he wants in the world. He can
give nukes to Iran. He can roll back into the Ukraine or
Poland. He can do anything he pleases. Because the only
power strong enough to stand up to him has lost both the will and
the means to do so, as his nation has established a course of
muscle-building, alliance-making superiority.
General Wesley Clark seems to be the
only American that notices and cares about what is going on in
Russia. In a speech given last week, he noted the horrible
changes there as a real threat to US security and a direct result of
the GOP Iraq-focused foreign policy disaster.
And yet even he only mentioned it in
passing as a small subpoint.
With the 2006 midterm elections
arriving, the Democrats want to gain some of their power back.
They might want to start by pointing out that had America followed
their policy suggestions rather than the GOP's, none of this would
have happened.
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