“Mandrake, do you recall what Clemenceau once said about war?” Gen. Jack D. Ripper asks in Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove.
“He said war was too important to be left to the generals. When he said that, 50 years ago, he might have been right. But today, war is too important to be left to politicians. They have neither the time, the training nor the inclination for strategic thought. I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.”
I can imagine Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti, the supreme allied commander of NATO, or even Presidential Nominee Hillary Clinton, saying Ripper’s word’s to a similar effect. But today, NATO has troops stationed deep into what once made up the Soviet Union’s Iron Curtain — all the way up to Russia’s border with Latvia and Estonia.
Clinton now speaks of Russian “infiltration” and “subversion” of her now-likely coronation as president of the United States.
On Saturday, the Obama administration announced it would be directing the CIA to carry out a cyber-attack against Russia as retribution for unsubstantiated claims that Russia has hacked Democratic Party officials and provided the documents to WikiLeaks.
Even if the “covert” attack is nothing more than fear mongering to boost Clinton’s candidacy, President Obama is barreling toward a confrontation with Russia that Clinton is eager to inherit.
In the fallout from Donald Trump’s sexual assault fiascoes, I genuinely considered breaking my abstaining mentality and voting for Clinton.
Then, I witnessed her comments about Russia at the second presidential debate. She again advocated for a no-fly zone, which would require a large amount of U.S. troops to enforce and allow for Russian planes to be shot out of the sky.
Furthermore, in Clinton’s own leaked high-profile speeches to the wealthy, she admitted that a no-fly zone would “kill a lot of Syrians.” Those that call for a “war crimes” investigation into Russia for its bombing of East Aleppo are either purposefully encouraging war or too much of a brainwashed patriot to believe that the U.S. should be held accountable for its crimes.
The mainstream press is in full support of the impending bombing of the ISIS-held city of Mosul, Iraq, which the Guardian admits is inhabited by “hundreds of thousands of civilians” that are “digging makeshift bomb shelters” and “stockpiling food.”
If you’re under attack from American bombs, it’s just another day at the office, but if they’re Russian bombs, it’s a “Holocaust.” I worry about Clinton’s commitment to antagonizing an economically weak nuclear power that has been geographically backed into a corner.
I also see a mainstream press intent on selling the war just as they always have.
In the western echo chamber, any criticism of U.S. policy toward Russia is subversion directed by the Kremlin. That is why the attempts to delegitimize WikiLeaks’ release of Clinton documents is so dangerous. Consider Clinton’s blasé comments about regime change in Syria in a leaked transcript of one of her Goldman Sachs speeches: “My view was you intervene as covertly as is possible for Americans to intervene.
“We used to be much better at this than we are now.
“Now, you know, everybody can’t help themselves. They have to go out and tell their friendly reporters.”
As a journalist, I await the mayhem that will be released by Clinton’s presidency with chagrin but will still keep my spine unlike other writers in this country who fail to recognize that Clinton’s love of imperialism is a threat to us all.
luwrobin@umail.iu.edu
