Even the wars that historians judge to have been noble and beneficial rely on popular support marketed and sustained by lies. Contrary to what the English government told its people during World War I, German soldiers didn't bayonet Belgian babies in their cribs. The "cocaine" U.S. troops claimed to have found in Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega's home was nothing of the sort. The Taliban offered to turn over Osama bin Laden -- it was George W. Bush who refused to take him because to accept would have denied him his excuse to invade Afghanistan.
As Gen. and Director of British Military Intelligence John Charteris observed after World War I, "to make armies go on killing one another it is necessary to invent lies about the enemy."America's incipient proxy war against Russia over Ukraine is no exception to the rule. BS has been flying fast and furious as media outlets dutifully align behind the U.S. government war machine and the array of defense contractors that influence it. As usual, their purpose is clear: spook the American people into supporting a war in a country they hardly know anything about, take the side of a highly problematic regime and create a world of death and destruction for the benefit of greedy warmongers before the rubes/voters figure out they've been conned.
Let's take a look at some of the biggest lies being used to garner and prop up support for the Ukrainian government of President Volodymyr Zelensky:
Lie No. 1: Ukraine is a democracy.
Zelensky won the presidency in a fair election in 2019. But context is critical. The 2019 election was held in the immediate aftermath of a brutal coup d'etat. In 2014, a violent mob comprising neo-Nazi extremist groups like the Azov Battalion and Right Sector, and covertly supported by the Obama administration, forced President Viktor Yanukovych, democratically elected and pro-Russian, to flee for his life.
The new revolutionary government held an election in 2014, which Petro Poroshenko won. Zelensky is Ukraine's second post-coup ruler.
Here's an analogy for Americans: Instead of failing, Donald Trump's Jan. 6 coup succeeds. Biden flees to Canada and, even though he lost, Trump serves a second term. Trump endorses Mike Pence in 2024. Pence wins that election. Is Pence a legitimate president? Is America a democracy?
Democrats would answer no -- as do the 49% of Ukrainians, including many ethnic Russians who voted for Yanukovych. They feel the same way about Zelensky, that he's not legitimate -- which is why ethnic-Russian areas in the eastern Donbas region, Donetsk and Luhansk, declared independence and broke away from Ukraine after the 2014 coup, and ethnic-Russian Crimeans greeted Russian forces when they annexed the peninsula.
To half its people, Ukraine doesn't feel like a democracy.
Lie No. 2: Ukraine is a free society.
Ukraine is an authoritarian state with a veneer of democracy. Zelensky recently signed a decree ordering that all TV broadcasters in the country show the same exact government-controlled programming on every channel. "It's important that the country has a unified information policy" under martial law, read the edict. This followed his banning of 11 rival political parties, threatening "a tough response" to politicians who disagree with him.
Lest these repressive measures be excused as regrettable wartime excesses, Zelensky also banned three "pro-Russian" TV channels a year before Russia's invasion "in order to protect national security," his spokesperson said. An opposition politician and ally of the stations' owner was locked under house arrest and accused of treason. Anti-government protesters in Zelensky's Ukraine are brutally beaten and jailed. In May 2021, the mayor of Kiev said that Zelensky sent thugs from the Ukraine state security agency SBU to his apartment, where they demanded that he toe the line of Zelensky's policies or else.
"U.S. officials have long been fond of portraying Ukraine as a plucky democracy fending off the menace of aggression from an authoritarian Russia," Ted Galen Carpenter of the libertarian Cato Institute wrote in 2021, before the war. "Washington's idealized image has never truly corresponded with the murkier reality, but the gap has now become a chasm."
Lie No. 3: Ukraine is an ally that we have an obligation to defend.
If Ukraine were a member of NATO, the United States would have a duty to defend it against Russia. But important members of the alliance like France and Germany oppose Ukrainian membership because it is riddled with corruption and not a full-fledged democracy. "In a 2020 analysis, Transparency International, an anticorruption watchdog, ranked Ukraine 117th out of 180 countries on its corruption index, lower than any NATO nation," according to The New York Times.
Ukraine is not a U.S. ally. It is in Russia's sphere of influence every bit as much as Canada and Mexico are in ours. We have no historic or cultural ties to Ukraine.
We have no legal or moral obligation whatsoever toward Ukraine.
Lie No. 4: Russia's attack was unprovoked.
I'm not going to endorse Russia's invasion. But arguing that the move was unprovoked is ridiculous. Ukraine wants to join the EU and NATO, a Cold War-era relic formed as a U.S.-led military counterbalance to Russian influence in Europe. Ukraine has been shelling the Donetsk and Luhansk breakaway regions for years, killing an estimated 14,000 people, mostly ethnic Russians. Not only is Ukraine on Russia's border but it's the same exact route Nazi Germany took to invade the Soviet Union during World War II. Ukraine is Russia's most vulnerable border -- and it wants to join a heavily armed, nuclear-capable alliance of states determined to destroy Russia.
Imagine, if you can, Mexico trying to join a Russian-led military alliance. How would we respond?
Lie No. 5: The neo-Nazi thing is overblown Russian propaganda.
Zelensky is Jewish; he lost family members in the Holocaust. How, goes the argument that concerns about right extremism are mere disinformation, could Ukraine and its government be heavily influenced by neo-Nazism? Well, Barack Obama was Black. Why is the American police still full of racists? Because the president of a country can only do so much. He governs the country he inherits, not the one he wants.
Ukraine has a long and infamous history of far-right politics in which Nazism and antisemitism play a starring role. While it's true that Europe and the United States also have such nasty groups, no other country in the world has as many as a percent of the population. None legitimizes Nazism and fascist collaboration during World War II the way that Ukraine does. "Ukraine is erecting new plaques and monuments to Nazi collaborators on a nearly weekly basis," The Forward reported last year. Stefan Bandera, a notorious Nazi collaborator, is a national hero with numerous statues in his honor. France had Philippe Petain and Norway had Vidkun Quisling, but both are officially condemned.
And certainly no other country in the world has police and soldiers openly serving as Nazis, drawing government paychecks while wearing swastikas and other fascist insignia on duty.
Most Ukrainians, arguably an overwhelming majority, are not pro-Nazi. However, an overwhelming majority of Ukrainians, including Zelensky and his government, are highly tolerant -- to an obnoxious, intolerable degree -- of Nazis serving openly in parliament, controlling a substantial portion of the police and national guard as well as the military. They allow neo-Nazis to control the historical narrative of their country, even elevating traitorous antisemites to founding heroes who deserve statues in the streets of major cities.
Lie No. 6: We have to do something.
It's a big world. Misery abounds. At any given time, there are invasions, proxy wars, regional conflict, civil strife and illegal occupations on almost every continent. Yemen is on fire. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict grinds on. Afghanistan is starving. Those are three cases where the United States is involved, as usual on the wrong side. There are dozens of other conflicts in which the United States has little to no interest. The only reason we are involved in Ukraine is because the media tells us to be.
It is entirely reasonable to look at the conflict between Russia and Ukraine and decide that it's simply not our business, that neither side is worthy of support.
Ted Rall (Twitter: @tedrall), the political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, is the author of a new graphic novel about a journalist gone bad, "The Stringer." Order one today. You can support Ted's hard-hitting political cartoons and columns and see his work first by sponsoring his work on Patreon.
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33 comments:
“What you have just [written] is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever [read]. At no point in your rambling, incoherent [article] were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone [on this page] is now dumber for having [read] it.”
Governments consistently lie to its citizens. Ours is one of the worst.
@9:50 AM
The author of the article isn’t on this blog. It was a copy and paste job.
Lots of conspiracy theories in his dogma, but if it's on the web it must be true, right?
Wasn't the Lincoln assassination a CIA coup d'etat, right?
The Confederacy was funded by the John Birch Society, right?
Look at Kingfish, acting like he’s “woke.” Smh.
Apparently you didn’t get too drunk last night.
It's called a syndicated column. Newspapers publish them all the time. Rall and Shapiro columns are posted every week. Y'all would bitch no matter who the liberal columnist was.
Even if all of the above about the U.S. and Ukraine is true, it still doesn't make Russia right.
When dealing with a megalomaniac, eventually everyone has to take a side. You're either with him or against him.
KF gets paid to post this traitor's BS every week
Um, Russia doesn’t need your approval. 😂😂😂
You damn anonymous commenters on a blog, tickle me.
“You're either with him or against him.”
I’m with him and against him.
I make my own decisions.
Don’t you ever in your life either/or me.
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/washington-helped-trigger-the-ukraine-war/
The truth must be sought, worked for and thoughtfully discerned - rarely outright or simplistic.
Rall is exactly right on this.
I was sucked into the Establishment lies after 9/11. Not any more. When the Establishment is behind a war you can bet the narrative is based on a pack of lies. Nothing going on over there is our business. Turn off the damn TV and do some reading about it.
@1:32 PM
Shhh.
So why would Ukraine be so Interested in joining NATO? I’m sure it has nothing to do with the history of Russian and Soviet domination, suppression and oppression, for the same reasons Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia joined NATO. No one in Eastern Europe but the dictator of Belarus and Serbs trusts Russia under Putin. Why should they? To compare Mexico to Ukraine is specious, at best, in terms of military alliances. Since the close of the Mexican American war, their has been no threat to invade and conquer Mexico. The Russians have, on more than one occasion, the 1920s and 1940s being the most recent examples, have suppressed Ukraine’s independence rather harshly. Whether NATO should admit Ukraine is certainly a matter of legitimate debate, but Ukraine, Estonia, et al, are no threat to Russia. This is less about some threat by NATO and more about Putin’s imperial fantasies,
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/03/the_eighth_and_deadliest_sin.html
History Lessons - Deception
This site has gone full q-anon, huh.
Government, Media, and Celebrities sure can create a lot of war hawks on both sides. Show some pictures of dead babies, crying children, old people, and explosions and the bleeding hearts come pouring out ready for war. We’ve got billions of dollars and equipment to send to support other countries but you can’t fix a pothole in Jacktown or help people in your own country. Lockheed-Martin needs some bonuses along with your politicians, they out here starvin.
Well said @ 3:06pm... Based, stamped, and period!
This is the unadulterated truth. Eisenhower warned us about the military industrial complex in the ‘50s and he was spot on.
I quit believing anything the national media says a long time ago and you would be wise to also. It boils down to this; when you
spend two billion dollars a day on “national defense” you’ve got to keep an enemy in sight.
"Russia doesn’t need your approval" Is that why Putin is whining about "the "West" gaining up on Russia's economy?
I've never seen a country more historically obsessed with its image and what others think about it than Russia. It's like dealing with a fucked-up, alcoholic family member.
4:21 PM
Agreed. Even worse when the drunk family member is a suspect, charcoal-black midget with a mouth full of crooked teeth. 😂😂😂🤣🤣🤣🤣
@4:21 PM
YOUR approval.
YOUR approval.
YOUR approval.
YOUR.
YOU.
What? You think you’re the political head of some country?
When you have a total screwup for a president, stir up a war to cover it. Such a cartoon. God help us! https://youtu.be/LQUXuQ6Zd9w
It looks to me like Ted Rall is striving to be Putin's version of Walter Duranty. He's so caught up in the party-line version of history that he ignored the Soviet famine of 1932-33, which I'm sure the people of Ukraine have not forgotten.
Also, I'd like correct a couple of misconceptions I've gleaned from some of the comments:
1. The "bleeding hearts" aren't usually the ones calling for war.
2. Joe Biden did not invade Ukraine.
This is these people’s civil war, just like Vietnam was a civil war. We had absolutely no damn business getting involved in that but we did and got 58000 young men killed. I know because I came damn close to being one of them. In the end we just pulled out and left it to them to work it out. I didn’t like the outcome but it was what it was. The only people who will benefit from this are the politicians and those companies who sell war materials.i will certainly agree that the Russian administration are a bunch of assholes, but ours are no damn better. I have the right to my opinion and I paid my dues back in the ‘60s. If this offends you that is just too bad and you can kiss my ass!
Ontario eats burgers, wears jeans and speaks American English because they want to be a colony of USA? So we can bomb the rest of Canada until those hosers surrender sovereignty of what we want, aye. Plus we take offense at "Trudy".
I win the contest for having read less of this article than any of the posters. Three and a half paragraphs are all I could muster.
Russian apologist drivel.
I'm black, and have been hearing about Ukrainian racism and especially their racist troops, since they stopped black people from evacuating. Screw Ukraine, I could not care less.
And now Biden is bringing 100,000 refugees over? I guess they'll fit right into Amerikkka.
Pitt, If the U.S. is so fundamentally racist, how did we elect a black president (twice)? You do know that black people only make up about 13% of the population, don't you?
I guess all it takes is a little unverified gossip for you to believe an entire country on the other side of the world is against you, based on the color of your skin.
12:59pm, I'm not naive enough to believe that just because Obama won an election, that the USA instantly became post racial. If anything his wins appeared to ramp up anger on the right.
Just take a few moments to Google "Ukraine Nazi" and see the many reports about their problem.
Unverified? I don't think so.
Pitt, I never said racism doesn't exist in the U.S., just as I did not deny that Ukraine has a neo-Nazi problem.
You're reference to the Unites States as "Amerikkka" implies that the entire country is fundamentally racist against black people. If that were true, we could not have elected a black president (twice), because there aren't enough black people in the United States to win that election alone.
That was my first point. My second point was intended to rebut your presumption that all Ukrainians are Nazis.
-12:59
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