Once Again, We Play a Dangerous Game – Part I
by The Bunker
“Once more, we play our dangerous game, a game of chess against our old adversary – The American Navy. For forty years, your fathers before you and your older brothers played this game and played it well. But today the game is different. We have the advantage.”
~ Captain Ramius ~ The Hunt for Red October, 1990
How soon we forget. But the Russian’s don’t forget, they will never forget. They enjoy the game, they live to play the game.
Talk radio and Fox news are struggling to stuff the current situation in the Ukraine and Crimea into the worn out republican vs. democrat cage match. Political mouthpieces are proclaiming that the Russians see weakness in our president and his administration. The old war horse, Dick Cheney said, “There’s no question Putin believes [Obama] is weak,” Cheney said. “We have created an image around the world, not just to the Russians, of weakness and indecisiveness. The Syrian situation is a classic. We got all ready to do something, a lot of the allies signed on, at the last minute Obama backed off.”
There is no doubt America’s foreign policy is a jumbled up mess. The current administration and this president are not up to the task of dealing with the Russian’s. Pictures do paint a thousand words.
We are in trouble, big trouble. The risk of a third world war is very real. Two world wars started because of tensions in this part of the globe. There is no reason to believe it won’t happen again.
But, let’s put this into some historical perspective. For those of us in our 60’s we only have to take a walk through our lifetime. The following bullet points are just a brief and incomplete rundown of the fearless push back from our Russian/Soviet adversaries, without consideration of who is in charge in the west.
- The end of WWII. The largest fighting force ever assembled is in Europe. America has the, “Bomb.” Stalin says, “Nyet” and grabs East Germany, a large part of Berlin along with other countries that will become the Warsaw Pact.
- 1947, The Truman Doctrine is installed to protect Greece and other nations from communist aggression. Remember this for what happens in the 1950’s and 60’s.
- 1949, Russia explodes its own bomb. The world is shocked. How did they do it so fast? Soviet agents and communist sympathizers had infected the Manhattan Project and the U S State Department.
- America gets involved in the Korean conflict. We send our top of the line fighter jets. The world is shocked by the superiority of the Russian Mig fighters flown by Chinese and Russian pilots.
- 1953, East German workers revolt. Thousands are in the streets as allied forces watch from the West German side. The Soviets send in the tanks; no more revolt.
- 1956, Poland and Hungary revolt. The Hungarian leader pleads for western help. Radio America encourages the revolutionaries, “Help is just weeks away.” It’s a lie. The Soviets send in the tanks; no more revolts.
- 1957, Russia launches its R-7 rocket. It flies 3,700 miles becoming the worlds first ICBM. The world is shocked.
- 1957, Russia launches the first orbiting satellite; Sputnik. The world is shocked.
- 1961, Yuri Gagarin becomes the first astronaut. The world is shocked.
- 1962, the globe is on the brink of nuclear annihilation because Russia puts ICBM’s in Cuba. The world is shocked.
- 1968, Soviet tanks roll into Czechoslovakia. The world is shocked.
I could go on, but what’s the point? Time and time again the media, and the politicians, are amazed and dismayed at the level of Russian brazenness. Just for a little fun and some education into Russian thinking, watch this exchange between Nikita Khrushchev and then Vice President, Richard Nixon.
Do you want to know who Vladimir Putin is? He is a fusion of Stalin and Khrushchev. Just like Nikita did in that video, Putin laughs and waves at our level of incompetence. One quote by Khrushchev, from that video, sums up the Russian philosophy, “We’re not afraid of anything.”
In my closet there is a cardboard box. Some of the lettering is in Cyrillic. It comes from the Udmurt Republic of Russia. The IZHMASH factory was founded in 1807 by Czar Alexander. Inside that box is a tool I both admire and despise. But, if you want to understand the Russians, this tool explains it all; rude, crude and extremely dangerous.
Stop believing all the propaganda coming from our media. It doesn’t matter how we view the world, the only thing that matters is how the current Russian leadership views the world. They don’t just exploit political weakness they watch for cultural, societal, economic, educational and religious weakness. In America, the communists have encouraged and developed our current malaise.
There is something else you have to understand. The Russian people love the Motherland. Even with all its faults, economic problems and hardships the people are proud of who they are.
Last year the man who designed the tool pictured above died. Mikhail Kalashnikov would have become an extremely wealthy man if he had lived in the west. He didn’t care. He was extremely proud of the recognition he acquired. His wealth came from his personal contribution to the Motherland.
Once Again, We Play a Dangerous Game – Part II
by The Bunker
This nation is in no position to dictate to the Russians. The current batch of leaders on both sides of the aisle need to keep their mouths shut. If Putin wants to expand the empire to the English Channel and wave happily to Great Britain there is not a whole lot (outside of nuclear war) we can do about it.
China will back Russia, they already have. Think long and hard about that reality. If our leadership continues pushing, there will be a global shift in power. It won’t be in our favor.
The current leadership is not the whole problem. This started a long time ago. The situation we find ourselves in is our own fault. We let our political and elite class sell us down the river. Now we are about to pay for it.
Mao said, “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.” It’s a nasty quote but it’s true. A nation needs to be able to build that gun and all the other tools of war to wield political power.
Think hard about this next sentence. We are a nation that cannot even clothe itself without imports. In the 1980’s and 90’s our steel manufacturing capacity was decimated. Here is the reality of where the world’s steel is now produced.
Less than half of the aluminum consumption for manufacturing is produced domestically. The last lead producing facility in this country just shut down because of EPA regulations. Mining, oil and natural gas exploration, coal, lumber, etc. We have allowed ourselves to be gutted.
An excellent article from 2009, The Plight of American Manufacturing, breaks our real problems down step by step.
A quote:
“For American manufacturers, the bad years didn’t begin with the banking crisis of 2008. Indeed, the U.S. manufacturing sector never emerged from the 2001 recession, which coincided with China’s entry into the World Trade Organization. Since 2001, the country has lost 42,400 factories, including 36 percent of factories that employ more than 1,000 workers (which declined from 1,479 to 947), and 38 percent of factories that employ between 500 and 999 employees (from 3,198 to 1,972). An additional 90,000 manufacturing companies are now at risk of going out of business.”
Right now our national debt stands at $17.5 trillion dollars.
America is no longer the war manufacturing power house that won WWII. In the 21st century, a convoy of container vessels could not travel 300 miles without being spotted and sent to the bottom.
If our leaders decide to go toe to toe with the Russians, China will back the Russians. That’s a war machine that the western nations cannot match.
The talking heads tell us that both China and Russia have their own economic problems. They tell us that these nations need our business in order to grow and maintain a standard of living. Again, look to a history of the 20th century. Communist’s don’t care about their people. The Russian and Chinese people have endured incredible hardships. The people suffered repeatedly while their leaders spent money on weapons of war. Our society would collapse into chaos if we had to endure one tenth of what the people of Russia and China have experienced.
The American media propaganda machine tells us we have military superiority. Our toys are better than their toys. In 2007 a Chinese diesel electric submarine surfaced inside the USS Kitty Hawk battle group. The Chinese boat commander popped the hatch and waved. This boat evaded all the high tech detection devices of the support ships surrounding our carrier. In 2010 an unknown submarine launched a ballistic missile off the coast of California.
Robert Ellsworth’s explanation rings a little ridiculous. The whole world knows we can launch ballistic missiles from submarines. No, this was a very dramatic show of force, a typical communist finger in the chest of their adversaries. If the Chinese or Russians can get this close, it’s a doomsday scenario. They have the advantage.
Samantha Power, the U S Ambassador to the United Nations is a ridiculous choice to hold such an important position, especially now. The Toronto Sun provided a photograph and story of her personal outrage at the Russian Ambassador over the Ukraine vote. The Russian and all his colleagues laughed in her face.
Russia invades, U.S. tweets back
There is one more question we all need to ask ourselves; why? Why is our leadership willing to collide with the Russians? Look at a map from 1955, the Ukraine didn’t even exist, it was Russia. Even the independence it gained in 1991 didn’t work out that well. Why now?
It is pretty clear that the democrats are going to lose big time in the upcoming election. They might even lose the Senate. The Obama administration’s plan to transform the United States has suddenly been squeezed into a very short time frame. Obama and his cabal are communists. They are also revolutionaries. These two facts can be gleaned from their personal histories in their own words. Putin and Obama are ideological twins.
What if they aren’t really adversaries? What if they are colleagues?
You might want to learn the Russian National Anthem. It’s a catchy little tune. The melody is easy but the words are tough. Just like the Russians.
Sleep tight, Comrades.
h/t An Ol’ Broad’s Ramblings
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