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He Who Hesitates Is Lost And Russia Hesitated

by Paul Craig Roberts

The Russian government deceived itself with its fantasy belief that Russia and Washington had a common cause in fighting ISIS. The Russian government even went along with the pretense that the various ISIS groups operating under various pen names were “moderate rebels” who could be separated from the extremists, all the while agreeing to cease fighting on successive verges of victory so that Washington could resupply ISIS and prepare to introduce US and NATO forces into the conflict. The Russian government apparently also thought that as a result of the coup against Erdogan, which was said to implicate Washington, Turkey was going to cease supporting ISIS and cooperate with Russia.
Alas, the Russians so fervently, or perhaps I should say feverishly, desired an agreement with Washington that they deceived themselves. If Finian Cunningham’s report is correct, Washington has taken advantage of Russia’s urging that Washington and Turkey join in the attack on ISIS by invading northern Syria under the guise of “fighting ISIS.”
Syria has now been partitioned, and the pretend or fake “moderate rebels” can be built up inside the US/Turkish occupied areas of Syria and the war against Syria kept going for as long as Washington wants. The western presstitutes will report that the Turkish/American forces occupying areas of Syria are not invaders but are attacking ISIS.
With US, Turkish, and, little doubt, soon other NATO troops operating inside Syria, the neoconservatives will have many opportunities to provoke a conflict with Russia from which Russia will have to stand down or reply with force. In the event of a Trump presidential victory, the neocons want to make certain Trump is embroiled in a war that will prevent an accommodation with Russia.
It is unclear whether US Secretary of State Kerry’s effort to arrange a Syrian ceasefire was sincere and he was sandbagged by the Pentagon and CIA. Regardless, if Kerry was sincere, he is obviously unable to stand up to the neocons, blessed as the State Department is with Victoria Nuland and a number of other warmongers.
Obama is equally weak, which is why he was chosen by the oligarchy as president. A person without experience and knowledge is an excellent tool for the oligarchy. American blacks and white liberals actually believed that an inexperienced candidate from nowhere without an organization of his own could make a difference. Apparently, the gullibility of a majority of Americans is endless. This American hallmark of gullibility is why a handful of neoconservatives can so easily lead the sheeple into endless wars.
The idiot Americans have been at war for 15 years and the morons have no idea what has been achieved. The fools are unaware that the US in its decades long accumulation of weakness now confronts two major nuclear powers: Russia and China.
Americans have been taught by the presstitutes serving the military/security complex that nuclear war is not all that different from ordinary war. Look at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, two targets of American atomic bombs. Today, seven decades later, the cities are flourishing, so what’s the problem with nuclear weapons?
The atomic bombs that Washington dropped on these helpless civilian centers while the Japanese government was trying to surrender, were mere popguns compared to today’s thermo-nuclear weapons. One Russian SS-18 wipes out three-fourths of New York state for thousands of years. Five or six of these “Satans” as they are known by the US military, and the East Coast of the United States disappears.
Russia had a victory for Syria and democracy in its hands, but Putin lacked the decisiveness of a Napoleon or a Stalin and let his victory slip away as a result of false hopes that Washington could be trusted. Now a Russian/Syrian victory would require driving the Turks and Americans out of Syria.
If Russia struck hard and fast, Russia could succeed by using Washington’s lie and claiming that Russia thought the US and Turkish forces were ISIS, just as Washington claimed when Washington intentionally struck a known Syrian Army position.
If Russia actually annihilated the Turkish and US force, which Russia could easily do, NATO would collapse, because no European country wants to be destroyed in World War 3. But Russia won’t collapse NATO by decisive action. The Russians won’t fight until war is absolutely and totally forced upon them. Then they will pay a huge price for their indecisiveness rooted in their foolish belief that Russia has common grounds with Washington. The only common grounds Russia has with Washington requires Russia’s surrender. If Russia will surrender, Russia can achieve Western acceptance, and Washington’s agents, the Russian Atlanticist Integrationists, can rule Russia for Washington.


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falcemartello
falcemartello
Oct 1, 2016 5:02 AM

All valid points. I myself have always admired and still to this day admire and respect PCR. Has always been a strong critic of Us and western establishment. His arguments are sound and also valid. he argues like most anglo-western persons. Reactive and quick just like instant coffee . Orientalist do not fight like the west. History proves this. IE: Stalin would use diplomacy rite to the last moment. Stalin at the League of nations rite to its dying days was warning and arguing about the dangers of fascism/nazism . Further more he would sign the famous Ribbentrop/Molotov Pact that so many ant-soviet and anti russian histoRians like to use against the Russians. Diplomacy and keeping the lines of communications open is what it is all about. FURTHER MORE TRYING TO GET A POLITICAL/SOCIAL solution is far better than total NATO/US/ISRAEL style aggression to get to the end game.
The western /antlantacist narrative to all the tragedies from 9-11 to this day is all falling apart. Its only the sheeple in the west that r still drinking the kool-aid. Syrians ,Iranians,Chinese and the Russians will not fall for their extortion. The western elites have managed to ruin the Olympics, capitalism, democracy,pluralism,the United Nations, diplomacy all in one swoop . Remember we in the west r only circa one billion people. So I pose this question to Mr Roberts and all western readers from this site? Do u really think the rest of the world r going to be extorted to, and how would we in the west feel if someone started invading and bombing our cities and citizens ?

Bonnie
Bonnie
Sep 30, 2016 4:23 PM

Roberts, and the commenters here, represent the infinitesimal percentage of humans who understand that we are on the verge of a nuclear war. It’s long past time for reading of tea leaves and amateur psychologizing–those of us with awareness, and enough imagination to conceive of the attending and unfolding horror, must find effective courses of action to stop this.
I don’t know how. But my best guess is that less than 100 people on the planet want nuclear war. Their money, power and privilege isolate them from the seven billion of us who want to live, but they are not invulnerable. The systems they have in place to protect them from the will of the people–media, law, government–all rest on fragile pivots. The people, given more accurate information, would move toward sanity, as demonstrated by the response to Sanders’ candidacy. That the powers that be were able to quash that movement of course gives us pause, but we need to be using this pause to get smarter, more tactical, more efficient.
I’m not advocating any more violence than would be necessary to subdue those that would mindlessly, heartlessly destroy the future of the planet. I am advocating true intelligence and coordinated response to one of the greatest threats life here has ever faced.
Even the best human minds are vulnerable to distraction, disorientation in a field of lies, to being misled by false authorities, to despair and the subsequent failure of imagination. These vulnerabilities, and others, make it simple for TPTB to continually turn us against each other. We have the capacity to answer this; we’ve proven it again and again in small pockets throughout history. We must enlarge these capacities and develop them, intelligently, for the sake of all life on earth.
We have common cause. I pray that we understand and attend to this in time.

Arrby
Arrby
Sep 30, 2016 12:31 AM

“If Russia struck hard and fast, Russia could succeed by using Washington’s lie and claiming that Russia thought the US and Turkish forces were ISIS, just as Washington claimed when Washington intentionally struck a known Syrian Army position.” This is an interesting comment. Let’s analyze it. Is Mr Roberts saying that Putin is perfectly capable of deception but has been unwilling to employ it in the service of containing an expansionist, brutal American empire? I personally don’t believe that Putin is righteous. I only know that in relation to certain things – US-inspired color revolutions on Russia’s borders for example – Putin has been the victim, not the victimizer.
So, Is Putin, or a group of Russian leaders who Putin belongs to, truly opposed to the eventual disintegration of Russia and it’s absorption into a US-dominated global economic system?
It could just be, I think, that the brazenness of lawless, vicious American admins takes Putin’s (and all normal people’s) breath away and leaves him (and his associates) kind of stunned. That doesn’t make Putin a good guy, even if one has to give him credit for caring more about his country (in certain ways) than leaders like Obama care about theirs. (What kind of caring is it, though, when it’s solely due to an inability to project power – and all of the planet- and people-destroying activity that follows – due to the existence of a state that is more powerful and more vicious than yours?) All of these ‘leaders’ will allow the continuation of planet-destroying fossil fuel extraction and use. And none of the world’s ‘leaders’ have any use for humankind’s true savior, Jehovah God. Following any of them is no different than following blind guides. Sooner or later they and their followers will fall into a pit.

et Al
et Al
Sep 29, 2016 10:15 PM

Mr Roberts is just wrong here. Russia did everything by the book and it will live on as fact for much much longer than the automated propaganda by the Pork Pie News Networks. Everything has been a step by step process of advancing a little, holding, advancing and taking advantage where possible without loosing everything gained. It’s the long game vs. the short game.
The US will at some point get bored and walk away, once it realizes that a) it is not going to get its way; b) it is not going to bleed Russia dry by its strategy of StB (Shitting the Bed) – leaving devastation when it doesn’t get its own way; c) it starts to seriously cost the USA by diverting resources from more important issues.
So, where is the ‘quagmire’ that the US and all those very clever pundits promised Russia? Oh, I blinked and must have missed it. Has Russia made mistakes? Sure? Are they catastrophic? Nope. Is it unusual to make mistakes in a military situation? Nope?
As for InSultin’ Erdogan, his ‘Just a bit of Syria’ strategy is suffering from Mission, Creep! because so far it has been easy. If anything it is Ankara that is biting far more than it can chew on the back of its success against the pale imitation of the so-called ‘coup’.
The Kurds? They’re not monolithic, but they’ve been stabbed in the back & in the front by their allies publicly. Sure, the Syrian branch has taken a once in a many, many generation risk to help finally build some sort of state for the Kurdish people, but even a novice of the region knows what fickle allies the actors in the region make. One thing is guaranteed, they’ll be screwed mercilessly by their current allies. Maybe they’ll start fighting each other when it all goes Pete Tong and they’re left holding the baby.
Even if, in a worst case scenario Russia goes home with its tail between its legs and the PPNN trumpet Pooty-Poot’s failure and Syria collapses, wtf is left? The US still has to plan its future humanitarian wars in recognition of the significant spoiler role that Russia has played. And then we have China. Softly softly so far bu t it has been engaging itself gently more and more, providing Russia diplomatic back up and increasing its humanitarian role in delivering supplies. Their role will progress though who knows how?
As for Europe, you’ll have to excuse me while I stop laughing. There will be an European Army, they won’t call ti that, but it will exist and it will have its own independent European military planning. And what of the US here? Is the European public meekly going to accept new and upgraded ‘dial a yield’ stand-off B-61 mod 12 nuclear weapons back on its shores? Will Germany? I’m buying popcorn in bulk for that show.
So, no, I don’t accept Mr. Roberts rather straight forward analyses. Now I’m off to the temples of Delphi to find out what’s up next.

John
John
Sep 29, 2016 7:49 PM

This article is very US-centric. Let’s try thinking about the situation from a Russian perspective.
All the Islamist terrorists being killed in Syria are not in Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan or the Russian Federation.
From the Russian perspective, is that not a better outcome?
Also, involvement in Syria puts them on better terms with Syria, Iran and Southern Lebanon.
Indeed, do not many in the Arab-speaking world see them as a friend or ally and the US as THE enemy?
What’s not to like about this situation from the perspective of the Russians?
It also provides a very useful training and testing ground for their military and their weapons systems too.
I agree the US elite are fools so why waste time thinking about things from their perspective?
They really are of little or no account.

Norman Pilon
Norman Pilon
Sep 29, 2016 7:03 PM

What I thought an excellent article on the issue:
“Putin Ups the Ante: Ceasefire Sabotage Triggers Major Offensive in Aleppo”
By Mike Whitney
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article45576.htm

headrush69
headrush69
Sep 29, 2016 7:35 PM
Reply to  Norman Pilon

Also an article by Jack Smith today, which is quite long but goes into some depth on the general issues between the US and Russia.

Putin addressed the matter of engaging in a European war during a Sept. 1 interview conducted by Bloomberg News Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait, who asked if Russia intended to use force elsewhere in the region. The interview was conducted at the Far East Economic Forum held in Vladivostok.
Here is Putin’s response: “I think all sober-minded people who really are involved in politics understand that the idea of a Russian threat to, for example, the Baltics is complete madness. Are we really about to fight NATO? How many people live in NATO? About 600 million, correct? There are 146 million in Russia. Yes, we’re the biggest nuclear power. But do you really think that we’re about to conquer the Baltics using nuclear weapons? What is this madness?

Brian Harry, Australia
Brian Harry, Australia
Sep 29, 2016 10:50 PM
Reply to  headrush69

Putin usually makes a lot of sense when he speaks, unlike the duplicitous bastards who have Presided over the USA in recent decades, with their propaganda machine(the MSM) never holding them to account.

John
John
Sep 29, 2016 8:08 PM
Reply to  Norman Pilon

It is obvious that the whole balkanization project is a rolling-out of the Yinon Plan, designed to create the Eretz (Greater) Yisrael territory demanded by zionists at the 1919 Versailles Peace Talks, so the zionists could have a state not just from the Mediterranean Sea to the River Jordan but also from the River Nile to the River Euphrates.
People like Bolton are mere zionist stooges or lackeys, whose real loyalty is not to the US but to Israel.
That is why I describe them as neo-traitors, not neo-conservatives.

Norman Pilon
Norman Pilon
Sep 30, 2016 3:49 PM
Reply to  John

“Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by a corresponding political advance of that class. An oppressed class under the sway of the feudal nobility, an armed and self-governing association in the medieval commune(4): here independent urban republic (as in Italy and Germany); there taxable “third estate” of the monarchy (as in France); afterwards, in the period of manufacturing proper, serving either the semi-feudal or the absolute monarchy as a counterpoise against the nobility, and, in fact, cornerstone of the great monarchies in general, the bourgeoisie has at last, since the establishment of Modern Industry and of the world market, conquered for itself, in the modern representative State, exclusive political sway. The executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.” Karl Marx, “Manifesto of the Communist Party
The state of Israel is but the local subsidiary the global ruling capitalist elite wherever it may be headquartered. How then could the neo-conservatives, who are very much a part of and entrenched in the American bourgeoisie, be traitors to their class interests unless they came over to the side of the working class, the destitute and the poor?
The capitalist elite have no ‘national’ loyalties and certainly none to the subaltern populations over which they rule, be it in the United States or Israel or anywhere else that capital holds sway.
I’m not suggesting that the “Yinon Plan” isn’t an actual blueprint for dominating the Middle East, but it is a plan merely and deliberately dressed up in the terms of an ethnic and supremicist ideology à la Heideggerian zeitgeist to confound the little people. Jews are not the issue. Even the racist and fascist ideology of zionism is not really the crux of the matter. The issue is capitalism and the concentrated private political power that it makes possible.
If the rich could not be rich, how much of an army could they muster? If the logic of profit did not dictate economic production, then would there be an imperative to constantly incorporate peoples and lands at the geographic margins of the imperial center to boost and maintain profitability in home markets? As it is, the rich, the oligarchical classes, can mobilize the entire human and material resources of those units under capitalist executive management that we call ‘nation states’ and for the purpose of enslaving and expropriating entire peoples.
People need to learn to stop thinking in nationalist terms. The bourgeoisie is not on the side of the ‘nation,’ not matter what its vaunted ethnicity may be, but strives only to preserve its economic and political ascendancy. In their world, the ‘people’ only exist to serve them. “We” should keep that in mind.

John
John
Sep 30, 2016 4:18 PM
Reply to  Norman Pilon

Theoretically, what you say is right but practically speaking it is not.
It was widely believed at the times of the First and Second World Wars that nationalism was dead.
The ensuing carnage that resulted revealed that concept was outdated if it was ever right in the first place.
What we are seeing today in Israel is a new form of pseudo-ethnic religiosity, based around exceptionalism, racism, fascist belief in blood, soil and living space as personified by the Yinon Plan and harsh internal laws.
Stir in to that pot a form of exclusivist holocaust victimism and a belief in racial supremacism and you have all the ingredients needed for the vile kind of regime now found in Israel.
Neo-traitors like Bolton, Kagan, Wolfowitz, et. al. all help to ensure the interests of the USA are subordinated to the interests of Israel. Netanyahu right now is having a good laugh at the US presidential election campaign.
He has already met both candidates and secured their undying loyalty. As back-up is the fact that both candidates have daughters married to ultra-orthodox zionists so whoever ends up in the White House, Netanyahu and the racist state of Israel ends up winning – yet again.

Norman Pilon
Norman Pilon
Sep 30, 2016 5:46 PM
Reply to  John

I agree with everything you say except this: “What we are seeing today in Israel is a new form of pseudo-ethnic religiosity,”
If Israel’s “religiosity” is pseudo-ethnic, then all forms of “religiosity,” i.e., group identities more broadly speaking, are in some sense “pseudo-” or “contrived” or “constructed.” They are cultural ‘inventions’ that create psychological affective bonds of reciprocity between large groups of individuals, creating illusions of identity, of exclusionary oneness, between disparate individuals.
All group identities are inculcated and invented. There are no ‘authentic’ ethnic identities that you can counterpoise to ‘in-authentic’ ethnic identities.
People learn to think in ‘ethnic’ terms, in ‘nationalist’ terms, in ‘supremacist’ terms, and so on.
That’s what schools are for and that’s also what the purchased ideologues are for, to massage into the heads of people the proper outlook of the ethnicity or nationality that is ascribed to them by their betters and spiritual leaders.
And so you get all this talk about what a good American is or what is ‘essential’ about the Canadian psyche or of what it means to be Russ or Germanic, and so on. People buy into this, and to the degree that they do, they make these ‘group identities’ real. But they have to “buy into” them, otherwise it’s just so much fancy, and for those who choose to stand outside these charmed circles, they are wholesale mass delusions.
Nationalism lives only so long as people identify themselves as belonging to this or that nation as over against all other such proclaimed nations, and so it goes for any conceptualized and articulated and externalized and projected group identity. Blink the terms of any such identity, and the people you thought excluded from your group suddenly are not so removed or different from yourself on the basis of those terms.
The cure, for example, to racism is to simply stop thinking of yourself and others in racial terms. If you believe that there is no such thing as a race, you no longer see Blacks or Asians or Caucasians, etc., but merely men, women and children. This doesn’t mean that people are not discriminated against in reality on the basis of phenotypical characteristics and that ‘racism’ as a prevalent human malady is thereby extinguished, but clearly if everyone did stop thinking in racial terms, then that kind of discrimination would vanish although other kinds would continue to exist. The fight against racism, as but one example of discriminatory modes of thought, if it is ever to be complete, must also happen on the terrain of one’s own thinking and self-conception, regardless of the color of your skin.
If you see Bolton, Kagan, Wolfowitz, et. al. as traitors to the nation, the U.S.A., it is because you believe there is this thing called the U.S.A. that is a nation and that has interests that run counter to that other nation called Israel, to which Bolton, Kagan, Wolfowitz, et al. are more and treasonously devoted.
But how unitary are the interests of the U.S.A. conceived as a “nation” with respect to ordinary Americans?
Does the American economy really serve the interests of the many who see themselves as one under the banner of “their” nation?
Are the super-wealthy non-zionist, non-jewish American oligarchs more attuned to the interests of the Joe average Americans than to the common pollitical and economic interests of the Israeli oligarchy?
And if Bolton et al. are Israeli-zionist infiltrators of the American establishment, how is it that they were high ranking elites in the Washington administration?
And why do you think Washington has been subordinated to Israeli interests when in all probability it is Israel that serves Washington’s interests in the Middle East, in the same way, for example, that Saudi Arabia and Qatar do?
Is it no more plausible to believe that however disparate their actual interests may be, Jerusalem’s and Washington’s interests sufficiently overlap to make them, for the time being, unconditional allies?
The rich have but one allegiance: money for the sake of making even more money because money in the world such as it currently exists is “political ascendancy.”
People who believe that their capitalist rulers are ‘with’ them are delusional. If they have to murder you in your millions to remain at the top of the heap, they will, no matter how “American” and devoted to “America” they may be. Indeed, it is precisely because they are devoted to “their” idea of America that they have no difficulty murdering their own in their thousands and even millions. As it is in America, so it is everywhere else.

deschutes
deschutes
Sep 30, 2016 8:21 AM
Reply to  Norman Pilon

Whitney is one of my favorite writers. His analysis of the Syria conflict is far more penetrating than most. You can find all his articles on CounterPunch here-
http://www.counterpunch.org/author/mike-whitney/
Check out the article titled ‘Assad’s Death Warrant’. It really dissects the who, what, when, where and why of the Syrian conflict.

Norman Pilon
Norman Pilon
Sep 30, 2016 2:55 PM
Reply to  deschutes

He is also one of my favorites. He’s very readable and has a gift for remaining focused on the essentials of unfolding, complicated events. Thank you for the link. I note that I have missed many of Whitney’s recent articles. Time to catch up . . .

Norman Pilon
Norman Pilon
Sep 29, 2016 4:48 PM

Roberts, like most of the readers here, wants to see an end to American dominance. He is expressing more frustration than offering a detailed rational analysis. His appraisal is rational to the degree that he recognizes the intent objectively dominating the U.S. establishment, namely, to subjugate the entire planet by the only means possible, i.e., militarily. They won’t quit until they themselves are either subdued militarily or intimidated into an unconditional surrender. War is inevitable, in Robert’s opinion.
Consequently, the longer Russia puts it off, the uglier things will be because the hegemon and its vassals race along with Russia and China in their preparations for war. But Robert fancies that if war is coming, the best way to try and minimize its consequences is to try now, while there appears to be a window of opportunity, given the objective potential for fracturing NATO and the European Union, to do just that by demonstrating to Europe with a little over the top bluster by action that the time for direct confrontation draws nigh.
Either way, whatever the Russians decide to do, the situation is already perilous and becoming increasingly so everyday. On that point, I think, Roberts is right.
The establishment in the U.S. is itself deliberating on whether the time to enter into a shooting war with Russian isn’t at hand: http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/09/24/syri-s24.html

chrisb
chrisb
Sep 29, 2016 4:45 PM

‘The idiot Americans have been at war for 15 years and the morons have no idea what has been achieved.’
A lot of people have made a lot of money from the wars. It is a mistake to assume that there must be some master-plan. There are many people in the industrial-military-political complex who are quite content that year by year a large amount of money is extracted from US taxpayers and spent on arms principally but also on all the ancillary services required for military operations. It is not a coincidence that from 1995 until 2000 Cheney served as Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of Halliburton, a company which then won many government contracts deriving from the occupation of Iraq.

Arrby
Arrby
Sep 30, 2016 4:16 AM
Reply to  chrisb

That’s a consideration that was missing from Roberts’s analysis, but which is important. But it isn’t the only factor at play. These are human beings (with human, biologically) brains. There’s ego, motivations, emotions and all that.

chrisb
chrisb
Sep 29, 2016 4:38 PM

Just a guess but I think Russia might also suffer in a nuclear confrontation with the US. Maybe that’s why Putin is keen to avoid one.

Arrby
Arrby
Sep 30, 2016 4:17 AM
Reply to  chrisb

But unlike JFK, Putin isn’t actually doing things (like an assassination program targetting a NATO leader) that could cause one.

BALDEAGLE 11
BALDEAGLE 11
Sep 29, 2016 4:21 PM

This commentary is based upon a typical ‘Langley think-piece’ showing their total disability to understand the current Russian administration, and perhaps fatally wrong for those professional schemers at ‘ Foggy Bottom ‘.
Highly paid ‘ Bostonian Brainy Kids ‘ who obviously believe that one man like President Putin can rule Russia ( or like Napoleon ruled Europe ) no sir,
The success or failure of Putan in all things is being able to divine how far and why he can propose, and what and which he can dispose of with the full cooperation of the people he represents and the Government bodies he can lead ?
As for the invasion of Syria by a murderous combination of a tiny minority of Syrian Moslem brotherhood followers and a horde of islamic terrorists, mainly mercenaries from outside of the Levantine capital, and this is perhaps just act 3 for those who want to equate their prognostications with a theatrical flourish !

Le Ruscino (@LeRuscino)
Le Ruscino (@LeRuscino)
Sep 29, 2016 3:14 PM

Paul Craig Roberts has got it wrong as he assumes Russia & the rest of the World is stupid.
Putin is deconstructing a very dangerous monster piece by piece & humiliating the US can have catastrophic consequences Little by little Russia is lifting the veil & putting the giant into a corner & rest assured China is helping as is North Korea.
Backing the US monster into a corner = WW3
That being said I do think that at times & too often it does appear that Russia & Russians delude themselves into thinking that the US & the West in General has any regard for any humanity or has any fraternal instincts for the Slavic race.
If the US Power had a doomsday button that would ‘safely’ kill every living Russian & anyone else they didn’t like they would press it in a New York second!

Norman Pilon
Norman Pilon
Sep 29, 2016 7:24 PM

“If the US Power had a doomsday button that would ‘safely’ kill every living Russian & anyone else they didn’t like they would press it in a New York second!”
I don’t even think it goes as deep as “anyone else they didn’t like,” but rather as depthless as ” it’s nothing personal, only bidness, eh.” And yes indeed, “in a New York second.”

Brian Harry, Australia
Brian Harry, Australia
Sep 29, 2016 11:01 PM
Reply to  Norman Pilon

I imagine that New York City(and Washington) would be one of the first targets for the Russians if a war broke out between them and the USA. The “War Hawkes” in the Pentagon(Psychopath Central) might like to consider that before they push Putin too far……..

Norman Pilon
Norman Pilon
Sep 29, 2016 11:36 PM

You would think they would . . . But their over appreciative sense of their own cleverness blinds them just a tad to their real vulnerability.
They may yet overplay their hand, however, and deep down, especially in moments of acute outrage, that is certainly one of my most fervent and pleading hopes. But then I think of the price that even more innocents will surely have to pay for that to happen, and that hope disgusts me. You could call that a morally toxic cocktail of deeply conflicted feelings. I really want the bastards to get what they deserve, but don’t want ordinary people to get hurt as a result. And yet just having these monsters about guarantees that ordinary people will continue to be slaughtered and oppressed. Yup, it’s fucked up. If the entire scene didn’t piss me off so much, I’d be depressed and suicidal. As it is, I seethe (and hope) and do what little I can to try to nudge things in “that” direction . . . and otherwise my days are pleasant . . .

rtj1211
rtj1211
Sep 29, 2016 3:02 PM

I’d like Americans to see what a nuke in America looks like. TArget inside the beltway with 100% attrition rate at. LAngley as well.
Americans are complete wussies, look what 3000 dead on 9/11 did to their psyche. Try 3 million dead, the CIA, Pentagon and all Central Government wiped out.
Unfortunately, the oligarchs who control America aren’t, they are cold, heartless, calculating psychopaths without allegiance to any nation, philosophy or culture. For them, money and power is everything and everything they could get their hands on can be stolen, murdered for and appropriated.
Has anyone wondered what living with such people is like?

Norman Pilon
Norman Pilon
Sep 29, 2016 5:00 PM
Reply to  rtj1211

“Has anyone wondered what living with such people is like?”
The victims of direct and indirect U.S. military intervention world wide for the last 200 years know it all too well.

james carless
james carless
Sep 29, 2016 10:26 PM
Reply to  rtj1211

No one should wish a nuclear strike on another,not even America for all the meglomania of it’s neocon elite,the 3oo million majority,regardless how bewildering we think their electoral choices are, don’t deserve to be incinerated nor does all the flora and fauna.
No one can win a nuclear war.I repeat only louder, “NOBODY WINS IN A NUCLEAR WAR”.
That is the messge that needs to be hammered home to all those who think themselves invulnerable even in their deep bunkers,that a limited battle ground nuclear exchange is feasable,that Trident in any way protects or deters.
The only objective these diabolicle weapons can achieve: to push the climate change timetable that threatens extinction all life forms,from decades to months.
The real arms race is between which form of human folly will successfully bring about our own extinction soonest.

adambaumsocal
adambaumsocal
Sep 29, 2016 2:58 PM

Craig tries but loses more readers with sucky reporting

physicsandmathsrevision
physicsandmathsrevision
Sep 29, 2016 2:53 PM

Depressing read.