Who Is the Aggressor? By Dave Svetlik

WHO IS THE AGGRESSOR?

By Dave Svetlik

Older Americans remember well the Cuban missile crisis in 1962 when the
US and the Soviet Union (USSR) nearly launched a civilization ending war
because the Soviets had placed nuclear missiles in Cuba. But what was
kept from US media at the time was that a year earlier the US had
installed nuclear missiles in Turkey [1], bordering the Soviet Union.
Moscow and other Russian cities were easy targets. Americans also never
heard that in agreeing to remove the missiles from Cuba, the USSR forced
America to remove its missiles from Turkey.

Americans will find it hard to accept, but the Soviets simply did to the
US what the US had done to them. It was America that originated the
aggression, not the Soviet Union. The January, 2013 issue of the
Atlantic Magazine [1] provides a well-documented history of the crisis.
The blocking of investigative journalism at the time blinded Americans
to the incredible hypocrisy of their own nation.

Moving to the present, imagine for a moment Russia has placed missiles
and troops in Mexico along the US border and has warships patrolling the
Gulf of Mexico. Russian media – Moscow Times, TASS, Russia Times, and
Russian broadcasting – repeats endlessly that “America is being
aggressive.” When the US moves troops to Texas to protect itself from
the Russian military, Russian media screams – “the US is planning to
attack Mexico! Russia must send more arms to Mexico to protect it from
imminent attack. American aggression must be stopped.” Listening to
their media, the people of Russia are certain America is threatening
them. Russian politicians grandstand – “we must fight the Americans
over there so we don’t have to fight them here in Russia.”

We would immediately recognize how dystopian Russian media is, how it
totally misrepresents the truth. It would be obvious Russia is the
aggressor. Yet we are blind to the fact that for years the US has been
has been installing missiles and conducting war games in nations near
Russian borders and stationing warships off Russian ports in the Black
Sea. We are blind to the broken US promises not to move NATO “one inch
to the east” [2] after the fall of the Berlin wall when Russia
disbanded the Soviet Union. And in complete denial of obvious, opposing
facts, US corporate media repeats endlessly that “Russia (not to
mention China) is being aggressive.”

America is not “defending” Ukraine. As stated by former President
Carter’s national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski in his book
_The Grand Chess Board_ (pg. 46), [3] Ukraine is a pawn. If Ukrainians
must be sacrificed in a bloody war to advance US imperialism, so it
goes.

US military and state leadership has been _dead wrong_ since Vietnam.
America sacrificed over a million innocent people in that war and
hundreds of thousands more in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria. It
sacrificed tens of thousands of its own young men and women. Not one of
these wars was won, and history has shown every one of them was based on
lies. Now this same “brilliant” leadership is dragging us into a war
with Russia, a nuclear armed power that is simply asking America to
honor its promises and keep the nations on its borders free from US
missiles, troops, and war games.

America is playing the ultimate game of “Russian roulette,” with a
fully loaded nuclear gun pointed at all humanity. The only –
_temporary_ – winner is the US military/industrial/congressional
complex making trillions off the misery of others.

Like many average Americans, I feel powerless to change this trajectory.
I know the political and military “leaders” of my country listen
only to big money. The corrupt Supreme Court _Citizens United Decision_
[4] ensured this. But if I could send a message to the current American
“masters of the universe” – – –

You are not going to rule the world, it isn’t going to happen. You
have no right to risk all life on Earth to feed your insatiable greed
and power lust. Take your guns and your missiles, your drones and your
bombs, take your murderous warships and killer attack submarines, and go
home. Go home. Take care of your families, your communities. Do
something decent with your lives. Let people live. America, your own
nation, is a shambles because your military adventurism drains its
wealth, poisons the minds of its people, and destroys its democracy. The
world desperately needs cooperation, not more of your insane, endless
wars. Go home. Show true strength and courage. Do something decent with
your lives.

Dave Svetlik

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/01/the-real-cuban-missile-crisis/309190/
[2] https://consortiumnews.com/2022/01/28/the-tangled-tale-of-nato-expansion-at-the-heart-of-ukraine-crisis/
[3] http://www.takeoverworld.info/Grand_Chessboard.pdf
[4] https://campaignlegal.org/update/how-does-citizens-united-decision-still-affect-us-2022

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