By Ted Belman
FRONTPAGE published my article Clearly, the US is the aggressor in the Ukraine war under the above title and included Greenfield’s responses and my responses. as follows:
Daniel Greenfield Responds:
‘America First’ or ‘Blame America First’.
Americans spend too much time blaming themselves for what other peoples do.
“Clearly, the US is the Aggressor in the Ukraine War,” Ted Belman writes.
The Ukraine War is the latest episode in a conflict going back centuries that predates the United States, never mind NATO, Putin, Zelensky or any of the bit players in this current drama.
But the one thing Americans can count on in any war, anywhere in the world, no matter who it involves and how long the rival tribes, nations or religions were squabbling back when George Washington was a baby… is that we’ll get blamed for it.
Every day, Americans are told that by Zelensky and Ukraine’s propaganda machine that if we don’t immediately dispatch ICBMs and all our F-22s, we’ll get the blame for the war, and Putin and Russia’s propaganda machine declares that we’re responsible for Russia’s ancient conflict with its varying neighbors: all of whom are united in hating Russia over its various invasions.
Americans shouldn’t listen to the hysterical ‘Blame America’ First propaganda from either side.
Belman claims that NATO’s “expansion can be seen from Moscow only as a strategy to encircle Russia and turn its neighbors into hostile countries.”
Even the briefest trip across Eastern Europe would easily reveal what the locals think of Russia. They tend to hate it and it’s not because America brainwashed them to hate Mother Russia.
Russia’s neighbors were always “hostile countries” and not because of anything America did.
Poland’s populist conservative government announced that it’s sending a dozen of its MIG–29 jets to Ukraine. Poland and Ukraine have their own ugly history that they’re looking past because of their mutual fear of a Russian invasion.
President Andrzej Duda, whom no one would accuse of being woke, had pledged to defend Poland against “LGBT ideology” and claimed that it was worse than Communism, is worried about a Russian invasion. Poland got a preview of that when Putin’s allies in Belarus began shipping over Iraqi migrants and sending them en masse across the border into Poland.
Poland was repeatedly invaded by Russia throughout its history including when Stalin and Hitler teamed up to carve up the country. All of this happened long before NATO existed.
NATO has nothing to do with a history of territorial conflicts between Russia and its neighbors that predate the United States.
Let alone NATO.
Belman’s article is premised on the idea that the only possible reason that Russia would invade Ukraine or any of the other countries it used to rule is because of NATO’s expansion.
That’s strange because Russia has been invading and conquering its neighbors long before NATO, America or this website even existed.
Anyone paying attention to Russian politics would know that its political elites bemoan losing their ill-gotten Communist empire and want it back.
You don’t have to put a Ukraine flag on your profile or worship Zelensky to know that
Putin’s consistent theme from his earliest interviews was complaining that the USSR had turned what should have been Russian dominions into republics and is obsessed with reclaiming them.
That doesn’t mean that we’re obligated to intervene in local territorial conflicts, but neither should we fall for propaganda from either side that tries to blame this historic conflict on us.
Americans, unlike any other people in the world, spend a lot of time blaming themselves for what other peoples do.
And our enemies take advantage of that.
We’re so easy to guilt because we can be convinced that Shiites and Sunnis or Russians and Ukrainians slaughtering each other since time immemorial is somehow America’s fault.
And the more we help, the more they blame us.
After saving Russia’s ass in the 1920s with massive food shipments during a famine and then again in the 1940s when we supplied Russia with everything from trucks to boots to milk enabling it to survive the invasion by its former Nazi allies, America got no gratitude.
And we still don’t.
After WWII, America allowed Russia to conquer, enslave and terrorize all of its neighbors, only drawing the line part of the way through Germany. We did nothing during uprisings in Czechoslovakia and Hungary. But after the fall of the USSR, the Russians decided to blame us for taking away their empire.
Russian propaganda claims that all of its neighbors would be happily living under their rule if somehow we hadn’t turned the Poles, Slovaks, Ukrainians, Lithuanians and many others against Mother Russia.
To believe that, you also have to believe that all of the national groups that spent centuries fighting against Russian rule were manipulated by Americans using time machines.
Russia blaming America because its neighbors hate it is the lamest excuse ever.
America isn’t responsible for 600 years of Russian and Eastern European history.
Had the United States never existed, Russia would still be invading its neighbors, not because of NATO, but because its leaders are convinced that they are entitled to an empire.
What’s going on now is what has been happening for centuries.. And will likely continue happening for centuries whether there are czars, premiers or presidents in Moscow, and whatever the rest of the region looks like.
NATO isn’t some vast conspiracy to invade Russia, as Russian nationalists claim, it’s a mostly useless drain on our resources that serves little purpose except to give some of Russia’s neighbors the false hope that we might help them. (We won’t.) NATO’s existence isn’t a threat to Russia except when it decides to invade its neighbors. And really not even then.
The only reason Russia is obsessed with NATO is because it wants to invade and conquer its neighbors.
That says more about it than it does about us.
Territorial conflicts aren’t necessarily one-sided and there’s a long ugly history of ethnic infighting, colonization, population transfer, and cultural purges that make for few heroes.
Russia isn’t necessarily always the villain and its neighbors aren’t necessarily always the good guys. Ukraine does have a Nazi and an antisemitic past that strongly influences its present. But then again so does Russia and much of the region.
There are sensible arguments for why none of this is our business.
Blaming America is the worst possible way to make those arguments. Ukraine isn’t opposed to Russia because of something that happened a decade ago. The CIA didn’t invent Ukrainian nationalism last week. If we want to understand what’s going on, then the only way to do it is by understanding what the Russians and Ukrainians actually think. Not what they say to manipulate us.
America is awash in Ukrainian and Russian propaganda. Don’t trust the propaganda.
Putting America First means not seeing ourselves through the eyes of either the Ukrainians or the Russians, not believing ‘Blame America’ propaganda, and putting our national interests first.
Russians and Ukrainians fighting each other for centuries isn’t our fault, but we can always count on getting the blame for it anyway.
Americans shouldn’t fall for it.
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.
***
Ted Belman responded:
“Daniel doesn’t in any way attack the case I made for blaming the US. He writes it off as being a product of the “blame America Syndrom”.
“What he does do, is set out facts in an attempt to justify what the US did. Presumably that includes the CIA sponsored coup in 2014 and the Ukrainian killing of 14,000 Russian speaking Ukrainians since then in the Donbass.
“Like I wrote, some people think this is a good thing, others don’t.
“Finally he ignores the UN backed treaty which prioritizes self-determination over sovereignty. But that’s OK, everybody in the West does.”
Daniel Greenfield responded:
Mr. Belman would like to go into the rights and wrongs of the Russia-Ukraine conflict. I’ll leave that to the Russians and Ukrainians who have strong views on the subject and have been settling them by killing each other for a whole lot of centuries. And will go on doing that for as long as they exist.
I’m not a Russian or Ukrainian: I’m an American.
My point is simple and clear. The conflict began centuries ago. It’s not the fault of the United States.
And no American should fall for attempts to blame other people’s wars on us. America is not the world’s policeman, that also means we’re not the world’s scapegoat.
That’s America First.
His response really surprised me because he refused to be critical of the US so I commented:
Ted Belman commented:
The US should have embraced Russia not alienated her. The end result is that Russia and China are now friends and allies. This is what Nixon and Kissinger wanted to avoid.
Does a refusal to blame America mandate a refusal to criticize America? I believe we must be critical of America when we disagree with their actions. Today, we hardly recognize America. It looks and acts like a totalitarian state. There is no question that the US is to be blamed for the war.
The only question is whether we agree with American policies or whether we don’t. Do we want the US to enlarge its hegemony or do we want the US to not interfere in the choices of other counties?
I can’t imagine not blaming the US out of loyalty. We must fight for what is right.
@Ted
That’s why I think it’s important to distinguish between East and West { I don’t mention South because there’s no fighting in Crimea and that would complicate rather than simplify.)
How about, “Seb.” Edgar has used that occasionally.
I am stunned at Greenfields position.
Beyond that I will never understand how the left (conservatives are a different matter) in effect have embraced the policies of the loathed Bush 43 and his equally loathed VP Cheney (Darth Vader) through the latters then key foreign policy adviser Victoria Nuland. During Senate hearings for her appointment as under Secretary of State she prevailed over considerable pushback on account of her well known strident positions and has been leading the anti Russia brigade for some time now. She is from the false “America WON the Cold War”camp and now we can take our prize. She is as much a fundamentalist in her beliefs as any jihadi is in his. Hundreds of thousands of deaths can be traced directly back to her and there’s more to come. She represents the epitome of American hubris, the indispensable nation.
@Sabastien
No need to distinguish between East and West Ukraine. Russia only has designs on the four provinces and Crimea. If the west doesn’t agree, Russia will also take Odessa and maybe a little more. Russia is not interested in West Ukraine.
Hi, Ted & Gang 🙂
Wow! Thank you! I’m part of a CLUB now! and in such good company!
Bear, I second Honeybee’s welcome from hibernation. Three cheers for the Red-White-and-Blue! (which, I suppose, is now interpreted as “Too bad for the Red-Blue-and-White).
I agree with you regarding NATO and its raison d’etr in Russian aggression.
I think Herbert Marcuse is maniacally laughing in hell right now, at having been able to divide this otherwise homogenous group of “mostly white and white-adjacent Zionists and Hangers-on” (You, Ted, Honeybee, etc). At the very real risk of being further divided by blog-roaming, divisive picky-pickies, I actually have my own ideas about NATO. You said,
You are as on-the-mark as anyone can be, in your description, and I agree with you 100% I would add, concerning the present exchange, that NATO is less a military alliance than it is part of a cluster of international institutions giving identity to a historical entity called “Rome”; which itself is an extension of Western Civilization.
Let me expand a bit. First of all, the term “Western Civilization” can be defined in three ways: 1. as related by those who are absolutely certain they already perfectly understand this and all things (i.e. “most people”), those, including me, who realize this is just an opinion that needs to be defined, and those who would agree with anyone who gives them a hamburger.
I see the world, as having several cultural areas, which have some significant differences, such as:
1. The West, 2. China 3. India 4. the Muslim World and 5. those left out.
Russia is currently trying to cobble together some sort of alliance with China, because it has gotten itself into deep doo-doo by invading Ukraine (in 2014 AND 2022); but it is definitely NOT part of the Chinese cultural sphere. Ever since it dug itself out of its Genghis-Khan-created isolation under its furry-pointed-hat tsars by beginning to nourish itself with Ukrainian flesh and culture (under Peter the Great), Russia has been a, howbeit peripheral, part of the West. It adopted Western technology and Western dress, and its Rurikian leaders married into the Western aristocracy that was born in the feudal system of the Holy Roman Empire.
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Russian-In-Empire-C1935-Russia-The-Print-Showing-To-1914-Expansion-Territorial-Europe-Nmap-English-Granger-Of-Poster-Collection-Up-Map/346656429?wmlspartner=wlpa&selectedSellerId=17374
As I said, Russia is now in deep doo-doo. It’s trying to resurrect the “glorious” days of the Great Khan, but I fear it will fail (sniff!)
@Honeybee
I only blame the US. By that I mean the executive who are driving the war. I never mentioned the people. So far the people are in the dark and are not protesting the killing. Remember during the Iraq War, the people protested saying, “Bush lied, people died.” I have” yet to see a protest of the Ukrainian War. Love to have them chant Biden lied, people died.”
The reason they are ignorant of the facts is because the MSM under the orders of the executive, hide the truth..
And you and Michael and Bear and Greenfield do likewise.
As you should know, I totally support Trump and the MAGA people.
Both you and Michael should stop accusing me of hating Americans.
@Sebastien
So glad you reminded me of that rant.
Bridgette Gabriel is a personal friend of mine.
So is Clare Lopez who is sitting beside her.
@Peloni Brigitte Gabriel.
https://youtu.be/Ry3NzkAOo3s
@Peloni
Not necessarily a majority but a base, nonetheless. Look at the U.S.-funded color revolution underway in Israel, right now. Same deal. Would have been a very different story if Biden hadn’t stolen the election. They don’t have to have a majority as Brigitte Gabriel pointed out. The Nazi party only got a pluraluty of 37 percent in 1932.
@Sebastien
I don’t agree with this assessment. Yes, there was a base, but popular base suggests that there existed a majority which supported it. The protests which took place all over Ukraine, til the Odessa Massacre put an end to such protests, would argue against this conclusion.
Perhaps you are suggesting a popular base among the western portion of Ukraine? This would likely be true, but even there we should recognize the fact that in the two presidential elections between the 2014 coup and now, both winning candidates ran on a policy of re-establishing a peaceful Ukraine, quite contrary to sentiment which the US installed govt enacted. In fact, Poroshenko was not president of Ukraine prior to the May 2014 election, and so was able to more or less run apart from the govt as he called for a return to peaceful rapprochement with the Dombassers. After winning on an peace platform, however, he, like Zelensky after him, pursued a policy of war. Consequently, he could not, in fact, make such a claim of seeking peace in 2019 during his reelection campaign, as that was reserved for the outsider (Zelensky) running, again, against the established govt.
The election in both 2014 and 2019 overwhelmingly denied a fair representation to the Ukrainians in the ethnic Russian east, as about 14% of all Ukrainians were disenfranchised in 2014 alone, so the election results were easily dominated by the western elements of the nation when the caste their votes for the peace platforms advocated by both Poroshenko and Zelensky, respectively winning in 2014 and 2019.. Hence, I don’t believe it is fair to suggest that the US installed coup govt was in fact supported by a majority, even in the west. I don’t believe that this is likely even true today. Just an observation.
@ Peloni
Ditto to that.
@Ted Belman
But the US DOES give a s**t about it.
This whole thing is calculated to get as many young (mostly) men slaughtered on both sides and as much infrastructure destroyed as possible to clear the living space for the “higher breeds” and their elites.
@Michael
This is an unfair characterization of anything I have written. I do NOT hate America. Rather, I am quite enamored by her. My adoration, however, is not so limited as being merely the consequence of ancestry, geography or any other association. Instead, I see America as having had a powerful impact upon the world, standing as a shining light to other nations as to how men might find the means of casting off their oak of tyranny and exercising the rights which are in fact their own by the very nature of their existence. The free and open exercise of the dignity of men is what the US experiment was designed around, and it has made a vital change in nations all across the world, and this would certainly include Russia as well. The very principles which were enshrined in the US Constitution, however, are fairly far afield from the positions which the US has adopted in recent years, both domestically and more so internationally.
Additionally, instead of the notion which you raise that it is Europe that steers NATO policy, I would suggest that it is and always has been the US which has made the policy choices, and that this is even more true now that the US alone is overwhelmingly funding this institution. This was certainly true with regard to the US sponsored coup in Ukraine where it was actually the Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland who was recorded having decribed in detail the plot to overthrow a duly elected Ukrainian president and thereby violated the principles of the UN, the Budapest Memorandum, the Helsinki Final Act, and the Founding Act, just with this single violent episode which took place after the Nuland plot was exposed. She didn’t act alone either, as during her unrehearsed confession, she referenced that VP Biden would later come to Ukraine to solidify the treachery which she was designing. These were not Europeans making these choices, these were decisions taking form at the highest level of the American govt. Furthermore, the barbarity waged by the US installed govt in Ukraine has no parallel in modern Europe, and for the US to have actively supported this policy is something which does seem to be invisible to the insightful intellects of both yourself and Greenfield.
Consequently, to explain my position more clearly, unlike yourself and Greenfield, I will not allow my adoration of America and what she represents to blind me to the calumny which she has brought about with this anti-Russian policy. My motivations lie with calling for reform within the US foreign policy, drawing it back to the principles which better represent the American experiment than we have witnessed in recent years. Indeed, I see this as being more necessary than ever before. Recall the words of Carl Schurz
America has lost her way from the principles which has made her the great nation that I love, and I have every expectation that she is capable of overcoming the well bred corruption which has made her the illiberal behemoth she represents today. Mind you, that behemoth has tentacles extending to abuse and corrupt both the people of her own nation, as well as those upon foreign shores, and this would certainly include Ukraine.
So do not discredit my affection for America as being hatred, I only hate the corruption for which others seem to curiously find some level of acceptance. Unlike them, I can not accept such barbarity as has destroyed Ukraine to be acceptable. It would go against my very nature to do so.
Bear so glad you have emerged from hibernation.
Ted who in America doesn’t care about the misery in Ukraine? You must separate the Govt actions from the sympathies of the people. Most people I speak too care about the suffering of the Ukanians but do no want to be further involved in their war.
@Belman I think we should start making a distinction between Western Ukraine which is Ukrainian and Eastern Ukraine which is Russian. Transnistria is largely Hungarian.
The West Ukrainians don’t give a shit about the lives and property of the people of Eastern Ukraine on whose behalf – as well as its own, pre-emptively, NATO has an impressive record of invading countries and overthrowing governments since 1990 – Russia intervened and, after 8 years of war, the feeling is entirely mutual.
They have a different history, too. Western Ukraine was part of Poland and was occupied by and collaborated with Nazi Germany.
The Ukrainian state created in 1991 from above was an inherently unstable makeshift entity like Iraq and various African states. The US funded the coup but it had a popular base.
@Zorn
Russia has no choice.
@Belman Neither does Russia, at this point. Some things are worth fighting for. But, it’s not our war. Though the military industrial complex is doing well by it.
@Zorn
What bothers me more is that the US doesn’t give a shit about the death and destruction it is causing to the people and property of Ukraine. This war is unconscionable.
@Ted Neither of you mentioned that the U.S. has sent more than $75 billion dollars to Ukraine just in the last year. I gather we are all agreed this must stop?
Here is a comment from FPM.
Peloni,
I have no idea why you’ve swallowed the “Hate Uncle Sam” cool-aid. You said,
First of all, while attacking Serbia was definitely in “NATO”‘s (Read, “Germany’s”) interest, it was not in America’s. I am well aware of the antagonisms between the various Jugoslav ethnicities. I am of Slovenian ancestry, though I supported Serbia in that conflict. Even so, Europe’s imperialist expansion into the former Yugoslavia resembled Russia’s imperialism against Ukraine, the Baltic States, Finland, Poland, etc. If you want to make a case against NATO and not against Russia, you have to be disingenuous. America’s involvement in that war came from the fact that we are historically and culturally deeply rooted in Western Europe.
Hello, Knish.
I agree 100% Until Ted et al joined in the fray, “Blame America First” seemed to be the bailiwick of BLM and Antifa — people who, frankly, have lost their minds. I suppose Ted gets a pass because he is or was Canadian; but give me a break! My country made peace with Canada about 200 years ago!
I wonder if I should counter this trend with “CLEARLY, CANADA IS THE AGGRESSOR IN THE UKRAINE!” Oh well.
No kidding! I don’t know a single Polish-American or Hungarian-American with any love for the Muskovites.
This is true, of course. This America-hatred is so absurd! If anyone here can HONESTLY AND LOGICALLY explain to me, why Jews continue to flee Russia and come to the US (even from Israel!), I might listen to charges that we are an inherently anti-Jewish and anti-Israel country — OR that Russia somehow isn’t!
Now, let’s see Ted’s rebuttal:
The Bible says, “In the mouths of two witnesses, let all things be established.” You may THINK, Ted, that you’re giving a disinterested assessment of my country; but I agree completely with Dan. As for your reference to the CIA, you would do well that the CIA, which ONCE UPON A TIME sought to further US interests abroad, has from about 2014 onward applied its skills and energies to attacking Americans.
running out of time and room here…
@Bear
Good to hear from you after a year of silence. It has truly been too long and you missed a good many good conversations in that time, so perhaps you will stay long enough to weigh in on more than just this one.
In any event, let us look at the excerpt from Daniel’s non-responsive response to Ted’s dialogue.
Daniel states that NATO poses no threat to Russia, and that it is only a drain on the US, while offering nations such as the Baltic states and Ukraine the false hope that they have a savior which allows them to forgo the expense of constructing a military strong enough to respond to Russia. Well, none of this is supported by the facts and it doesn’t even make sense taken all together.
If Russia is a dominating, belligerent power, determined to conquer its neighbors, and NATO is a paper tiger lulling these same neighbors of Russia into a false hope of having the US Cavalry at their beckoned call, why would Russia not want NATO to extend its false hope to those nations which Russia would first lay siege upon. Restating this, if Russia is the bad guy, and NATO is just depleting US funds with no hope of saving anyone, why would Russia make a fuss about NATO coming to fake-aid Ukraine. Would they not want to drain the US economy as much as possible, while also lulling Ukraine into having a military which is weak, undertrained and under-armed? I think if Daniel were correct in his supposition, this would be a fair consequence.
In fact, Ukraine has been armed with billions of US dollars in aid between 2014-2021 and hundreds of billions over just the past year, and Ukraine is not even a NATO member, even though many of their NAZI and marine units having received NATO training on NATO bases while using NATO arms gifted to them by the US. In 2014, Russia had an army which could only field about 6K troops, and in 2021 they had a fielded army in the fields of Dombas of over 120K, and that was just part of their army at the time. So I think NATO’s influence might be considered to be more significant than you and Daniel care to believe – this certainly was the case with regards to Ukraine.
Furthermore, as far as Daniel’s conjecture that
I wonder if this is what Serbia and Libya believed before they were bombed back to the stone age after having done, well, what was it that they did do to earn NATO’s enmity such that NATO violated international law simply to lay siege to these nations and murder their citizens and eliminate their leaders.
When Daniel says that Russia is obsessed with NATO, could the obsession not be just as easily linked (with more evidence than Daniel’s suggestion that Russia is gobbling up neighboring nations) to the illegal seizure of territory in Serbia in the name of the terrorist KLA, which ultimately led to the ruins of the Serbian state being truncated on a whim from the US State Dept to create Kosovo out of nothing?
Some things to think about. Good to hear more from you, in any event.
Oh, and by the way, Ted being a Russian plant? Way too funny.
@Bear
Welcome back. I hope you are hear to stay.
I hope you read my response to Greenfield before agreeing with him.
@Bear Shocking. Can I get paid, too? I like plants. 😀 In 2016, I got accused of being a Russian bot, a lot.
Greenfield is completely correct. Ted I am sorry to say you sound like a paid Russian Government Plant.
Howard Bockner emailed me.
I’ve been a fan of Greenfield since forever and I still intend to. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t disagree. I don’t recall Ted blaming America. To be more accurate, he is blaming in part, the Biden/Obama administration. And of course they are guilty. They are not alone in their guilt. The WEF, NATO, some countries, international weapons manufacturers and other nefarious groups and individuals are to blame. Does this mean that I think Putin is a trustworthy, good guy and he is guiltless? Of course not.
Would Putin not have invaded Ukraine if it wasn’t full of Nazis who are members of their parliament? Or had they not been killing and harassing millions of Russians over decades living in parts of Ukraine? Or had not the US moved its CIA into Ukraine over the past decade and helped run some of the worlds most deadly and illegal bioweapons labs in the world (and denying it)? Or had the USA not orchestrated a coup to remove Ukraine’s former leader who was sympathetic to Russia with the current, extremely corrupt puppet?
Who knows for sure. But these are the facts.
A much larger, more important fact is that the West (USA, WEF and others) are pushing for WW3 with Russia who has more tactical nukes by far than any other country over one of the most corrupt, non-democratic countries in the world, led by one of the most corrupt and compromised world leader who is taking a page out of the PLO playbook. Put a corrupt leader in charge, get him to play the role of a hero (Zelensky is an actor and plays his role perfectly, even better than did Arafat or Abbas), spew all sorts of lies about their enemies (Israel), beg the world for money, aid and arms, treat their people like dispensable fools (many are), kill or imprison their enemies/competition and get super rich.
We are all suffering big time over this war who so many political leaders supported by their paid off MSM continue to say out loud ‘We must support Ukraine at all costs!’. They have no end game and never thought it through. Biden and his gang are all just as corrupt or perhaps more so than even Zelensky and Putin put together. The Biden family is certainly more compromised. This argument has no connection with many on the woke Left who love to blame America for everything. Daniel I hope this is not what you are thinking of Ted or people like me on this issue. I often say ‘Thank G-d’ for America. Sadly, not lately. However you want to cut it, the current Biden administration is the # 1 culprit in putting the world in danger and not just vis a vis the war in Ukraine but in all of their policies and actions.
Like our Torah says, with great power and wealth comes great responsibility. The USA found itself in that position and cannot afford to mess things up now. She is.
We need to de-escalate and help to end the war. Biden is doing the opposite.
A curse on both their houses
Is this worth all the misery the innocent endured?
@Vivarto
Kudos to you for your comment.
I almost always loved Daniel’s analysis. This time I am really surprised.
Yes, Poles do hate Russia. And yes for over 100 years Russia, together with Prussia and Austria has occupied Poland. And it’s also true that from WWII to the Gorbachev, the Soviet Union, to high degree controlled Poland. So that’s about 150 years of Russian domination and interference.
What Greenfield does seem to know is that Poland occupied, colonized Russia and interfered in Russian affairs for many more centuries.
None of that justifies America supporting Ukrainian Bandera Nazis, and their Russophobe propaganda in Ukraine for 1/2 century. And US involvement in the violent coup in Kiev in 2014.
As the saying goes, two things can be true at the same time. Just as 9/11 was perpetrated by Muslims whose ultra-violent, hateful goals needed no assistance from one or more 3 letter agencies to help facilitate if not expedite their fulfillment – admittedly conjecture, but after Jan 6 believe it more than a little plausible – the bloody centuries old Russian/Ukrainian conflict may well have resumed sooner or later without US involvement, but as we can all plainly see most certainly has considerably sooner because of it.
Moreover I’d say the Arab/Israeli conflict, which needed no more than centuries of shariah supremacism to fuel it, has arguably been stoked more by the US than the Russians since the dissolution of the Soviet Union – not that the Russians have exactly been benign, far from it – particularly during the Obiden terms, (read: Obama’s three terms).
I’ve never been a “blame America first” type – I’m an America Firster – but after the past seven years in particular I’m afraid America is no longer the country I thought it was, that it’s lost it’s way seemingly due to a combination of elite capture by the CCP/WEF/Globalists, rampant institutional corruption, and civilizational decline, and consequently is much more a force for American malfeasance than exceptionalism. Unless Trump or possibly De Santis and others can help America find its way back to what it once stood for the whole country and the West generally may be lost forever.
Greenfield distracts from addressing Ted’s article, almost entirely. Even when Ted redirects him to specifically address the issues raised in Ted’s article which began the debate, Greenfield resists the challenge, only to state he is an American and not Ukrainian or Russian. I have to admit that I am disappointed by Greenfield’s refusal to respond beyond this.
In fact, I find Ted’s summary comment at the end of this debate to be quite decisive to revealing the motivations of many who support America in this war. Instead of celebrating the motto of ‘My Country, Right or Wrong’ I would suggest that the more responsible motto of “My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right” should be prefered, not usualy, not frequently, but always. The more wrong a nation might stray, the more relevant would be the criticism which would set her right. Right now, America has been straying for far too long, in ways which are far too injurious to both her character and the world’s stability, to not demand that she find the means to be set right once again.
The test of patriotism is not simply to be enraptured with one’s nation, but to mold one’s nations such that it should be the envy of all the world. This is were America once stood, and might stand once again, but only if she is reformed and admonished for where she is, and for where she is going.
Greenfield evades the central issues: The CIA facilitated the coup, The US has been manipulating and funding this quasi-fascist state with the deliberate intention of attacking Russia, They even admitted with a chuckle that the Minsk accords were just a ruse to buy time to arm. NATO has a history of invading countries since 1991.