By Will Hart
We are so conditioned to bloodshed, mass murder, terrorism, and wars that we hardly see the word peace in the mass media anymore. Everywhere we look whether Syria, the Ukraine, Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, there is conflict and destruction, the list goes on growing year- after- year.
Fifty years ago it was Vietnam but before that Korea and WWII for the United States. Russia was deeply scarred by the Great War and thereafter she deployed troops in Hungary, Czechoslovakia and had an extended war in Afghanistan.
Peace is always the ideal that forever remains just beyond our reach and instead we get the bitter fruits of war time and again. It is a terrible irony and a condition that breeds cynicism and disillusionment.
In America we have been put on a perpetual war footing due to fighting terrorism, the invisible hydra-headed beast that grows ten new heads for every one chopped off.
It is the perfect storm for the military-industrial-complex that profits from wars and therefore must always have a new enemy. That is what the late president Dwight Eisenhower was of course warning us about. There is nothing good about war it always causes death, sorrow and waste. To base an economy on a war- footing is to accept corruption and moral decay as inevitable facts of life.
Indeed, that is what the American political and corporate leadership has done. In spite of the anti-war movement of the 1960s the very generation that waged it has committed the US to the perpetual war program launched in 2003.
Where is the peace movement? Where is the moral outrage? Apparently our collective conscience has slipped into a catatonic state.
History witnessed this progression in Germany during the build-up and progression of WWII. But when it was over the Trials at Nuremberg determined that the argument, 'I was only following orders' was no justification for committing evil, inhumane deeds.
We are all responsible for the acts that our leaders carry out on the world stage in our name.
The American War on Terror, launched against Iraq on false pretenses has caused nothing but chaos for that country.
"The situation in Iraq has become very dangerous," said Wathiq al-Hashimi, a Baghdad-based political analyst said cited by Bloomberg. "No one will be able to control thousands of angry protesters while the rest of residents in Baghdad are in panic and living in real fear."
Was the war really just a pretext for destabilizing the Middle East?
Moreover, it is anything but comforting that NATO countries began the largest war game in Eastern Europe since cold war this month. The 10-day military exercise, Anaconda-2016, involved 31,000 troops and thousands of vehicles from 24 countries.
"It represents the biggest movement of foreign allied troops in Poland in peace time. For the first time since the Nazi invasion of Soviet-occupied Poland began on 22 June 1941, German tanks will cross the country from west to east." (The Guardian, June 6, 2016)
Only a fool would believe this is nothing more than a drill. It is obvious by its very name the provocative timing, and the involvement of Poland, that it is meant to send a strong message to Russia. After all an anaconda is a large snake that surrounds its prey and coils around it until it squeezes it to death. The symbolism here is obvious to anyone but a fool.
Not surprisingly Putin views this as a security and Russia has reacted by building a military base in the region.
In prior an article titled, 'US-NATO OVERKILL' I outlined the vast overkill military capability, finances and numbers that NATO has versus Russia. It is very clear that the anaconda is made up of the latter's former allies, now NATO members, plus the US, Britain, etc, that make up the full NATO alliance.
The War Masters see this as an elaborate chess game, but it is no game for the rest of us.
In prior articles I have argued that Putin has little choice but to launch nuclear strikes should a war between Russia and NATO occur. That is so precisely because Russia cannot win a protracted, conventional war of attrition. The anaconda would simply keep squeezing and squeezing with all its combined military and economic muscle in the event of a WWII-style war.
The march toward a showdown - between NATO and Russia - due to conflicts in Syria and the Ukraine is therefore a march toward nuclear holocaust. Atomic scientists have the Doomsday Clock set at 3 minutes until midnight. Where is the international peace movement?
We are on the verge of extinction yet seem incapable of responding as an intelligent, organized collective to stop this insanity. Are we thinking that our leaders, and I mean all of them, are going to have an epiphany and suddenly put on the brakes and reverse course?
That is a fantasy. The end of the Cold War was supposed to produce a peace dividend and end any chance of future hostilities between the combatants. That never materialized. In fact, we are in a far more dangerous situation now than at any time in the past.
But the mass media is not reporting the truth of it now and the population, east and west, is half asleep in blissful ignorance. We are running out of time and the clock may strike midnight, and then we shall all wake up to witness our own demise. Yet too late then to demand peace...
Will Hart