States aggress when their
leaders feel like it, or “judge” such aggression to be in their “interests”.
They aggress against their own citizens. They aggress against foreigners. Not
everywhere, not always, not all the time, but when it suits them.
The U.S. aggressed in
Iraq, massively. It’s aggressing right now in many places worldwide and
domestically. This is what states do.
Is Russia aggressing
against Ukraine? I do not know. Russia has leased a naval base in Sevastopol
until 2042. My comments above are not prompted by Russia’s actions. They are
prompted by this statement made by John Kerry : “You just don’t invade another country on phony pretexts in order to
assert your interests.” The context is Russia and Ukraine, but what
specifically is most noteworthy to me is that Kerry is condemning his own
state, the U.S. It has top priority for me because the Bush adminstration, acting for the U.S., invaded Iraq on phony
pretexts to assert its interests, and it did the same in Afghanistan. Then
Obama repeated this in Libya and several other countries. Kerry, speaking for
Obama and the U.S., has no moral or legal credibility in condemning Russia
for what many states do routinely, domestically and in foreign affairs, and
for what the U.S. has done and is doing. It doesn’t matter how many other
governments he can rally against Russia or how many U.N. resolutions he can
get on false premises or how many statements he can elicit from world
“leaders” or organizations like NATO as he threatens trade sanctions, travel
freezes and asset seizures. He is threatening further aggressions. Does
anyone believe that these threats are for the moral reason that Kerry has
presented, that “you just don’t invade another country”? That’s impossible,
given that this is the usual behavior of states and the U.S. It’s impossible
since the U.S. lets pass all sorts of other aggressions, such as that of
Israel against Palestinians and Saudi Arabia against Syria. It has to be the
case that Kerry’s and Obama’s agenda is something entirely different. The
dangerous game they are playing is called “beat up on Russia”. Keep Russia
down. Push against Russia. Confine Russia. Contain Russia. Prevent Russia
from reconstructing an empire along the lines of the U.S. empire, that is,
one based on invisible strings, pacts, alliances, aid packages, arms
shipments, and so on. Keep Russian ships bottled up if at all possible. And
by all means undermine Russia’s source of revenues via its oil and gas sales.
The rhetoric of Kerry and
Obama is the furthest thing from believable in this foreign affair, and if it
is not believable in this matter, why should we also not strongly suspect
that their rhetoric for their domestic aggressions is likewise false and far
from conveying the real purposes of their laws and activities? Statesmen lie
routinely because they aggress routinely and they then attempt to cover up
the actual nature of their aggressions.
