Anti-War Does Not Mean Pro-Putin

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Oh yeah, same playbook. If you’re anti-war, well, you must be pro-Putin. I mean, we see this again and again and again with people in the media, the whole military industrial complex. I was reminded, remember when Bill O’Reilly was, we couldn’t call him French fries anymore. We had to call him freedom fries because the French were right. Said, no, I don’t like this whole Iraq invasion thing.

Oh, they’re evil. They’re terrible. Oh, if you’re not with us, you’re against us. That type of rhetoric that exists right now with the Ukraine and Russia situation. Jeffrey Sachs just put out a piece. And again, this guy that times I agree with the guy this times I don’t various different pieces, but he is echoing many of the things that we discussed here on this program over a year ago.

I mean, well, a year and a half ago, having to do with Ukraine and Russia and the history that’s there that is not being presented to the American people. And he talks about Vietnam. And he said that the US government treated the public like a mushroom farm, keeping it in the dark and feeding it manure. And then you had the Pentagon.

papers, which documented the US government lying about the war in order to protect politicians that would be embarrassed by the truth. And Sachs is saying that the manure that’s piling up in regards Ukraine is it’s stacking up. It’s stacking up at this point in time, it’s being piled even higher. And he mentions something that we talked about here on the podcast not too long ago, it was a week or two ago.

when you had the head of NATO, I had him know this Jan Stolenberg, and he said to the European Parliament, it was like a Freudian slip, that the real cause of the war, okay, was the push to enlarge NATO. And his exact words.

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The background was that President Putin declared in the autumn of 2021 and actually sent a draft treaty that they wanted NATO to sign to promise no more NATO enlargement. That was what he sent us and was a precondition to not invade Ukraine. Of course, we didn’t sign that. The opposite happened. He wanted us to sign that promise, never to enlarge NATO. He wanted us to remove our military infrastructure and all allies that have joined NATO since 1997, meaning half of NATO.

all the central and eastern Europe, we should remove NATO from that part of our alliance, introducing some kind of B or second class membership, and we rejected that. So he went to war to prevent NATO, more NATO close to his borders. Okay, again, not really explained to the American people. And when you present this, as I’ve presented it, Sachs has presented, others have presented this, you get…

the types out there that paint you as some sort of Putin apologist. We’re not. These are just the facts. There was a memo. There’s a memo. William Burns, he is the CIA director. He was a US ambassador to Russia in 2008. He put out a memo entitled, Nyet Means Nyet.

This is back in 2008. In that memo, Burns explained to Condoleezza Rice that the entire Russian political class, not just Putin, was dead set against NATO enlargement. We know about the memo only because it was leaked, otherwise we’d be in the dark about it. And then you can go back to 1990, where George H. W. Bush, okay.

put out said, hey, listen, you know that, you know, we promise you can go look at this is all available online. We are not going to enlarge NATO a single inch outside of Germany toward your borders. And we kept that promise for nine years. Then we added three central Europeans, 1999 and another seven in 2004, including the Baltics. Okay.

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Let’s, again, I think it’s important when you’re trying to figure things out in relationships, you want to understand your adversary’s motivation, right? Why does Russia oppose, why would they oppose NATO enlargement? Again, they don’t want to have a military on its border. They don’t want to have it in the Black Sea region. It doesn’t like the fact that we have placed…

Aegis missiles in Poland and Romania. Again, Russia also recognizes and I’m giving you their view of us. Okay. I’m giving you their view of us. They were involved in the Cold War. We were involved during the Cold War. What was it? They estimated 70 regime change operations between 1947 and 1989. And then let’s, you know, since then.

Let’s look, Serbia, Afghanistan, Georgia, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Venezuela, and Ukraine. Okay. Again, the rhetoric coming out of certain politicians here in the United States talking about decolonizing Russia. Sacks writes that even Zelensky’s team knew that the quest for NATO enlargement meant imminent war with Russia.

the former advisor to the office of the president of Ukraine under Zelensky declared that with a 99.9% probability, our price for joining NATO is a big war with Russia. And he also claimed that Russia would eventually try to take Ukraine anyway. That remains to be seen, okay? What happened? In 2014, we got involved in the Ukraine and…

helped to overthrow, it was Victoria Nuland, remember her famous line, F the EU that she said was there, we’re overthrowing an elected government in the Ukraine. Then Russia, that’s when Russia stepped in and took Crimea. Why would they take Crimea? Well, that’s where their Black Sea naval base has been located since 1783. Can?

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That’s their Black Sea naval base. They were concerned, oh geez, guess what? NATO might take it. Now, you know, we might not take it. Again, they’ve got a different view than we have, okay? They called for some autonomy for the ethnic Russian Donbass region, not a Russian claim on the territory. Again, what did we do at that point in time? Well, we started arming the Ukraine and building up.

their military. Again, that agreement that Russia penned in 2021, tried to stop it, didn’t work out. I understand we could have maybe had some as a negotiation starting point saying, hey, listen, Ukraine’s not going to become a part of NATO, but, you know, we’re keeping the missiles there. But you have to understand, you would have to agree, you know, if you were Russia, okay, and again, you take a look at their history.

as well and a lot of it not very good. Okay, they’re not angels by any stretch of the imagination, but they have security concerns as well. Again, you think about it, you think about what, how would we start feeling, I mean, we talk about this now, so China’s gonna be looking to put a naval base in somewhere maybe in the Middle East.

and you know there’s thoughts of Russia’s thinking about putting up a base in Libya and let’s be honest that’s hell and high water away from us but again it concerns us it makes it into the news what if you know Russia and China started they started putting military bases in the western hemisphere and go all the way back to the Monroe Doctrine it was 1823 and again you

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I think that we should pay attention to other nations’ security concerns. Again, what does this mean right now? SAC seems to think that the Ukraine War will end when the United States acknowledges a truth that NATO enlargement to Ukraine means perpetual war and Ukraine’s destruction. Ukraine’s neutrality could have avoided the war and remains the key to peace.

We said, you know, a year and a half ago. The deeper truth is that European security depends on collective security as called for by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, not one-sided demands. Again, he’s got a point here, people. And I don’t know, maybe they’re starting to, maybe certain people are starting to see it. I think many of our politicians are, you know, it’s woefully inept and ignorant when it comes

to these things, I really do. I think they play to the cameras to some degree. And again, at this point in time, I mean, who trusts anything, anything that our government says when it comes to war and foreign policy? I mean, they’ve been lying to us for a very, very long time, again and again and again. And at some point in time, we’ve got to wisen up. We really do. We’ve got to wisen up.

You’ve got to get control of this military industrial complex. Okay, again, I’m completely against this ridiculous war. I think that the thing could have been avoided. Does that make me pro-Putin? No. No, it just makes me thoughtful. Watchdog on wallstreet.com.