For the last 14 months the world has witnessed an international relations debacle the likes of which no history book has yet recorded. The latest relations ruination tale unveils three more US ambassadors to Ukraine bereft of their senses.
This is a story some of you will not believe, and one some will be ashamed to hear. As for this American, I am outraged.
This asinine LA Times Op-Ed will have framed for you most of what is wrong in our world. When I heard that three former US diplomats had suggested moving the victory in Europe (VE Day) celebrations from Moscow to Kiev, Ukraine, I choked from laughter. I thought it was a joke, to be honest.
Then I read the piece, the madness in it sank in, and my dead ancestors whispered "Foul, this will not stand." Here is a quote from the piece, to save you the reader some time. Now remember, 20 times more Russians died that Americans or Brits in World War II.
"Western leaders could not sit in a reviewing stand on Red Square and watch parading Russian troops, whose comrades had recently waged... war in eastern Ukraine."
Let that sink in for a moment. They cannot pay their respects to an ally in the fight to end a planned 1000-year Reich that would have subjugated a billion people and exterminated an entire race? When your head is done wobbling, recall 100 other insipid ideas spewed from the mouths of such as these the last months. Whether or not you believe CNN or Fox News, rerouting history and debauching the honored dead is insufferable.
Europe is not speaking German and goose-stepping right now because tens of millions of Russians fought with bare hands if need be to prevent it. Their honor and dignity is something every human being on Earth should acknowledge, just as other nations are so revered.
Excuse me, I’m going to have to shine floodlights on Steven Pifer, John Herbst and William Taylor; the Three Stooges of all that is wrong in America. The victory celebrated on May 9 in Moscow, the conflict Russians refer to as ‘the Great Patriotic War’, should be no less venerated by Americans. Russians saved millions of our parents’ and grandparents lives. Surely intelligent people can calculate the forces arrayed against Imperial Japan, Nazi Germany, fascist Italy and the armies of the so-called Axis Powers. Pifer, Herbst and Taylor are uneducated, crazy or driven by unseen interests, in my view.
The leader of my Stooges, Steven Pifer, is a think tank fellow, if you can imagine that. A senior fellow at theBrookings Institution's Center on the United States and Europe, the former Ukraine ambassador is also (not surprisingly) Zbigniew Brzezinski’s fellow Russophobe. I’ve not space to aptly frame his part in the current US policy debacle, but the sentient reader can add two and two. These people are devout Russia haters, plain and simple, and somehow the American people do not see the danger.
Right Sector during a march on the 72nd anniversary of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army in Kiev. (RIA Novosti / Alexandr Maksimenko)
If you need more proof that Pifer belongs nowhere near a US embassy, track down a report named ‘Mutual Security on Hold? Russia, the West, and European Security Architecture’, via another think tank country club in America. These men write many books showing their intellectual prowess, but I put it to you, as Oscar Wilde once said “The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.”
On to former Ambassador John Herbst’s frolicking among this triumvirate of Brzezinski trolls, his bureaucratic resume reads is solidified in one post, in Ukraine about the time of the Orange Revolution. Herbst was “around” when everything going on in Kiev today was just a strategy on somebody’s agenda. Associations with alleged criminals like Yury Lutsenko, his efforts at setting up so-called ‘unbiased’ media in Ukraine.
The career diplomat has also been the director of the National Defense University Center for Complex Operations since 2010. For those who wonder if he is a ‘spook’ NSA or CIA type, the places he’s been posted and the initiatives and money he’s overseen are not mutually exclusive of such. The same faces being seen at critical events around the world, that’s the sort of clue any chief inspector might look for from the scene of the crime.
The third servant of US democracy, William Taylor, is a surprise for me personally. A graduate of the military academy at West Point, Taylor has all the earmarks of a man of honor. Unless he’s a product of Army Intelligence, he’s assuredly aware of EXACTLY how dishonorable shunning Red Square on May 9 will be.
If a man of honor, someone entrusted as Taylor has been, is somehow involved in a misinformation campaign, a mudslinging fit by the Obama administration, there’s deep trouble ahead in my view.
U.S. Lieutenant General Henry Obering (R), head of the missile defence agency, U.S. ambassador in Ukraine William Taylor (C) and other officials attend talks with Ukrainian officials in Kiev March 14, 2007. (Reuters / Gleb Garanich)
U.S. Lieutenant General Henry Obering (R), head of the missile defence agency, U.S. ambassador in Ukraine William Taylor (C) and other officials attend talks with Ukrainian officials in Kiev March 14, 2007. (Reuters / Gleb Garanich)
Taylor is key at the highly controversial United States Institute of Peace(USIP). While administration mouthpieces and senatorial supports claim USIP is a vital instrument for peace, detractors claim the so-called peace organization actually "looks more like the study of new and potential means of aggression." The trade embargoes, massive sanctions, and even the European austerity programs we see, are said to be levers Washington pulls to exert US worldwide hegemony.
If Taylor is not an Army Intelligence (INCSOM) product, Washington missed a good chance at one. Maybe the creed of these soldiers is aptly stated here:
“I am a Soldier first, but an intelligence professional second to none.
With pride in my heritage, but focused on the future,
Performing the first task of an Army:
To find, know, and never lose the enemy.
With a sense of urgency and of tenacity, professional and physical fitness,
and above all, INTEGRITY, for in truth lies victory.
Always at silent war, while ready for a shooting war,
The silent warrior of the ARMY team.”
As for ‘victory’ in truth, we all know that the end victory for humanity depends on who is defining what truth. Certainly making a lie of tens of millions of dead soldiers’ sacrifices, defiling their memory in a barefaced lie, this is an act of dishonor. A Japanese soldier would commit seppuku as an act of Bushido, and a Soviet soldier under then commissar Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev, he’d simply be handed a loaded pistol…
I hope I’ve made no secret of my personal disdain for what these men suggest, and for what they represent. After all, this is what op-ed pieces are for. Russia, like any other country, has her skeletons tucked inside dark closets. However deeply-buried any Kremlin state secret may be, the world today or tomorrow cannot be misled from the iron fact and utter decency that May 9 demands. I leave you with some thoughts on these matters from an institute founded to further the ideals of a great American WWII general and later president, Dwight Eisenhower.
On the ‘WW II Soviet Experience’ the Eisenhower Institute’s JT Dykman prefaces the perspective with a quote and footnote from Eisenhower himself, it is poignant for those of you able to imagine:
"When we flew into Russia, in 1945, I did not see a house standing between the western borders of the country and the area around Moscow. Through this overrun region, Marshal Zhukov told me, so many numbers of women, children and old men had been killed that the Russian government would never be able to estimate the total."
I urge you my fellow human beings to read what’s lain out via the good general’s institute, it should be mandatory reading at West Point, especially given American generals on Fox News calling for still more dead Russians today.
We’ve allowed indecent leadership, unruly secret interests, and complete nincompoops to sully every chance of peace in my lifetime. Let’s not dishonor our fallen forefathers further. What a travesty that would be, I hope you’ll agree. As for the men I’ve framed here, my father would have invited them on to the field at any hour of their choosing. So who am I to argue against his bronze star?
Phillip Butler for RT
Phil Butler is journalist and editor, and a partner at the digital marketing firm, Pamil Visions PR. Phil contributes to the Huffington Post, The Epoch Times, Japan Today, and many others. He's also a policy and public relations analyst for Russia Today, as well as other international media. You can find Phil's blog at http://www.phillip-butler.com.
This is a story some of you will not believe, and one some will be ashamed to hear. As for this American, I am outraged.
This asinine LA Times Op-Ed will have framed for you most of what is wrong in our world. When I heard that three former US diplomats had suggested moving the victory in Europe (VE Day) celebrations from Moscow to Kiev, Ukraine, I choked from laughter. I thought it was a joke, to be honest.
Then I read the piece, the madness in it sank in, and my dead ancestors whispered "Foul, this will not stand." Here is a quote from the piece, to save you the reader some time. Now remember, 20 times more Russians died that Americans or Brits in World War II.
"Western leaders could not sit in a reviewing stand on Red Square and watch parading Russian troops, whose comrades had recently waged... war in eastern Ukraine."
Let that sink in for a moment. They cannot pay their respects to an ally in the fight to end a planned 1000-year Reich that would have subjugated a billion people and exterminated an entire race? When your head is done wobbling, recall 100 other insipid ideas spewed from the mouths of such as these the last months. Whether or not you believe CNN or Fox News, rerouting history and debauching the honored dead is insufferable.
Europe is not speaking German and goose-stepping right now because tens of millions of Russians fought with bare hands if need be to prevent it. Their honor and dignity is something every human being on Earth should acknowledge, just as other nations are so revered.
Excuse me, I’m going to have to shine floodlights on Steven Pifer, John Herbst and William Taylor; the Three Stooges of all that is wrong in America. The victory celebrated on May 9 in Moscow, the conflict Russians refer to as ‘the Great Patriotic War’, should be no less venerated by Americans. Russians saved millions of our parents’ and grandparents lives. Surely intelligent people can calculate the forces arrayed against Imperial Japan, Nazi Germany, fascist Italy and the armies of the so-called Axis Powers. Pifer, Herbst and Taylor are uneducated, crazy or driven by unseen interests, in my view.
The leader of my Stooges, Steven Pifer, is a think tank fellow, if you can imagine that. A senior fellow at theBrookings Institution's Center on the United States and Europe, the former Ukraine ambassador is also (not surprisingly) Zbigniew Brzezinski’s fellow Russophobe. I’ve not space to aptly frame his part in the current US policy debacle, but the sentient reader can add two and two. These people are devout Russia haters, plain and simple, and somehow the American people do not see the danger.
Right Sector during a march on the 72nd anniversary of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army in Kiev. (RIA Novosti / Alexandr Maksimenko)
If you need more proof that Pifer belongs nowhere near a US embassy, track down a report named ‘Mutual Security on Hold? Russia, the West, and European Security Architecture’, via another think tank country club in America. These men write many books showing their intellectual prowess, but I put it to you, as Oscar Wilde once said “The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.”
On to former Ambassador John Herbst’s frolicking among this triumvirate of Brzezinski trolls, his bureaucratic resume reads is solidified in one post, in Ukraine about the time of the Orange Revolution. Herbst was “around” when everything going on in Kiev today was just a strategy on somebody’s agenda. Associations with alleged criminals like Yury Lutsenko, his efforts at setting up so-called ‘unbiased’ media in Ukraine.
The career diplomat has also been the director of the National Defense University Center for Complex Operations since 2010. For those who wonder if he is a ‘spook’ NSA or CIA type, the places he’s been posted and the initiatives and money he’s overseen are not mutually exclusive of such. The same faces being seen at critical events around the world, that’s the sort of clue any chief inspector might look for from the scene of the crime.
The third servant of US democracy, William Taylor, is a surprise for me personally. A graduate of the military academy at West Point, Taylor has all the earmarks of a man of honor. Unless he’s a product of Army Intelligence, he’s assuredly aware of EXACTLY how dishonorable shunning Red Square on May 9 will be.
If a man of honor, someone entrusted as Taylor has been, is somehow involved in a misinformation campaign, a mudslinging fit by the Obama administration, there’s deep trouble ahead in my view.
U.S. Lieutenant General Henry Obering (R), head of the missile defence agency, U.S. ambassador in Ukraine William Taylor (C) and other officials attend talks with Ukrainian officials in Kiev March 14, 2007. (Reuters / Gleb Garanich)
U.S. Lieutenant General Henry Obering (R), head of the missile defence agency, U.S. ambassador in Ukraine William Taylor (C) and other officials attend talks with Ukrainian officials in Kiev March 14, 2007. (Reuters / Gleb Garanich)
Taylor is key at the highly controversial United States Institute of Peace(USIP). While administration mouthpieces and senatorial supports claim USIP is a vital instrument for peace, detractors claim the so-called peace organization actually "looks more like the study of new and potential means of aggression." The trade embargoes, massive sanctions, and even the European austerity programs we see, are said to be levers Washington pulls to exert US worldwide hegemony.
If Taylor is not an Army Intelligence (INCSOM) product, Washington missed a good chance at one. Maybe the creed of these soldiers is aptly stated here:
“I am a Soldier first, but an intelligence professional second to none.
With pride in my heritage, but focused on the future,
Performing the first task of an Army:
To find, know, and never lose the enemy.
With a sense of urgency and of tenacity, professional and physical fitness,
and above all, INTEGRITY, for in truth lies victory.
Always at silent war, while ready for a shooting war,
The silent warrior of the ARMY team.”
As for ‘victory’ in truth, we all know that the end victory for humanity depends on who is defining what truth. Certainly making a lie of tens of millions of dead soldiers’ sacrifices, defiling their memory in a barefaced lie, this is an act of dishonor. A Japanese soldier would commit seppuku as an act of Bushido, and a Soviet soldier under then commissar Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev, he’d simply be handed a loaded pistol…
I hope I’ve made no secret of my personal disdain for what these men suggest, and for what they represent. After all, this is what op-ed pieces are for. Russia, like any other country, has her skeletons tucked inside dark closets. However deeply-buried any Kremlin state secret may be, the world today or tomorrow cannot be misled from the iron fact and utter decency that May 9 demands. I leave you with some thoughts on these matters from an institute founded to further the ideals of a great American WWII general and later president, Dwight Eisenhower.
On the ‘WW II Soviet Experience’ the Eisenhower Institute’s JT Dykman prefaces the perspective with a quote and footnote from Eisenhower himself, it is poignant for those of you able to imagine:
"When we flew into Russia, in 1945, I did not see a house standing between the western borders of the country and the area around Moscow. Through this overrun region, Marshal Zhukov told me, so many numbers of women, children and old men had been killed that the Russian government would never be able to estimate the total."
I urge you my fellow human beings to read what’s lain out via the good general’s institute, it should be mandatory reading at West Point, especially given American generals on Fox News calling for still more dead Russians today.
We’ve allowed indecent leadership, unruly secret interests, and complete nincompoops to sully every chance of peace in my lifetime. Let’s not dishonor our fallen forefathers further. What a travesty that would be, I hope you’ll agree. As for the men I’ve framed here, my father would have invited them on to the field at any hour of their choosing. So who am I to argue against his bronze star?
Phillip Butler for RT
Phil Butler is journalist and editor, and a partner at the digital marketing firm, Pamil Visions PR. Phil contributes to the Huffington Post, The Epoch Times, Japan Today, and many others. He's also a policy and public relations analyst for Russia Today, as well as other international media. You can find Phil's blog at http://www.phillip-butler.com.
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