Russia to US: You sanction Russia, and we’ll send your diplomats home

…by Jonas E. Alexis

The US still wants to play the cat-and-mouse game when it comes to placing more sanctions on Russia. US officials continue to live in a fantasy world and espouse the proverbial belief that Russia is the worst enemy of the United States. This mantra has been repeated ad nauseam, at least since the beginning of the Syrian war.

Yet no one has seriously fleshed out a reasonable case showing that Russia is an enemy of the United States. The “don’t trust Russia” ideology, which has been repeated in Neoconservative circles like Commentary, is just that—an ideology.[1]

But let us grant this premise for a moment and take it to its next step. Is it just Russia that the United States should not trust? What about Israel? Can those people name just ten good things that Israel has done over the past sixty years or so that really turned out to be good for the United States?

How about the Lavon Affair? The bombing of the USS Liberty? How about killing Iranian scientists in 2012? How about AIPAC spying on the United States for Israel? As former CIA analyst Philip Giraldi has recently pointed out, “shouldn’t AIPAC register as a foreign agent?”[2] How about AIPAC passing classified US documents to Israel? Will the real Neoconservative please stand up and explain those phenomena to us in a logical manner?

You see, one needn’t be an intellectual or political analyst to realize that Israel has been a disaster for the United States. Even David Petraeus, of all people, did say exactly that in 2010. But in order to save his career, he had to recant. This obviously showed that Petraeus was really scared of the power behind the throne. Steven Rosen, who worked for AIPAC, prove that Petraeus was right to be scared.

Rosen once boasted to an interviewer: “You see this napkin? In twenty-four hours, we could have the signatures of seventy senators on this napkin.”[3] What he is saying here is that AIPAC has such an influential power over Congress that senators would do just about anything to support Israel. If you doubt that statement, perhaps you have not read John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt’s The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy.

In any event, we have argued over and over that Russia is not a threat to the United States. Russian officials have been extending their hands and reaching out to the US for years, and response from the US warmongers is that “Russia is an enemy of the United States. Russia is an enemy of the United States. Russia is…” There is no serious argument or evidence. It is just a mantra. It’s like you are talking to an ATM machine, and we all know that ATM machines are just programmed to do certain things.

When you challenge the “Russia is an enemy of the United States” dogma, you are automatically condemned as either a Russian agent or something equally weird. Here we again are not dealing with rational issues at all. We are dealing with wicked people who have been duped by a pernicious ideology which has produced, to use the words of Neocons Michael Ledeen, “creative destruction” virtually all over the Middle East and several parts of the West.

The same people—the Neocons in particular—seem to think that Russia, like any other countries, do not have thinkers who can rigorously understand political ideologies. These people seem to believe that they are the kings of the universe and everyone else must accept whatever they produce. They also think that they can box Russia in a corner without repercussions. But Vladimir Putin has something else in mind for them. He plans to reduce US diplomats in Russia by a huge number. Putin said:

“The personnel of the US diplomatic missions in Russia will be cut by 755 people and will now equal the number of the Russian diplomatic personnel in the United States, 455 people on each side.

“Because over a thousand employees, diplomats and technical personnel have been working and are still working in Russia, and 755 of them will have to seize their work in the Russian Federation. It’s considerable”[4]

Probably one reason the Neocons have an abiding hatred for Russia is because Russia screwed their essentially diabolical plan in Syria. I was quite surprised to read that even the Weekly Standard is now saying that supporting the Syrian rebels has been a total disaster in Syria. The Neocon magazine itself acknowledges that the so-called rebels have taken the life of a teenager by beheading him in cold blood.[5]

The same magazine, however, forgot that they were beating the war drum by saying that Assad used chemical weapons in Syria. According to that “logic,” Assad should have been gone long ago.[6] Assad is still thriving, and the Neocons are still mad and sad because they were not allowed to get their cake and eat it, too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wR12sDxwhbo

[1][1] Noah Rothman, “Don’t Trust Russia,” Commentary, July 11, 2017.

[2] Philip Giraldi, “Should AIPAC Register as a Foreign Agent?,” American Conservative, July 28, 2017.

[3] Ibid.

[4] “Putin Says Russia Will Cut US Diplomatic Presence by 755 People,’ Sputnik News, July 30, 2017; “Putin: 755 US diplomats to depart Russia, time to show we won’t leave anything unanswered,” Russia Today, July 30, 2017; “755 US diplomats must leave Russia: Putin,” Daily Star (Lebanon), July 30, 2017.

[5] “Thomas Joscelyn, “Trump Got This One Right,” Weekly Standard, August 7 Issue, 2017.

[6] Lee Smith, Obama’s Syria Policy a Mess,” Weekly Standard, June 13, 2013.

Jonas E. Alexis, Senior Editor

Jonas E. Alexis has degrees in mathematics and philosophy. He studied education at the graduate level. His main interests include U.S. foreign policy, the history of the Israel/Palestine conflict, and the history of ideas. He is the author of the book, Kevin MacDonald’s Metaphysical Failure: A Philosophical, Historical, and Moral Critique of Evolutionary Psychology, Sociobiology, and Identity Politics. He teaches mathematics in South Korea.

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