7 Mar 2014 – The only foreign policy show on the U.S. media dial this past week has been the bashing of Russian President Putin over the Ukraine crisis \u2013 with a slap or two at President Obama for having worked with Putin on Syria and Iran. Lost in this \u201cgroup think\u201d is the why behind this demonization.<\/i><\/p>\n
The U.S. political-media elites, which twisted themselves\u00a0into\u00a0a dangerous \u201cgroup think\u201d over\u00a0the\u00a0Iraq War last decade, have spun\u00a0out of control again in a wild\u00a0overreaction to\u00a0the Ukraine crisis.\u00a0Across the ideological spectrum, there is rave support for the coup that overthrew Ukraine\u2019s elected president \u2013 and endless ranting against Russian President Vladimir Putin for refusing to accept the new coup leadership in Kiev and intervening to protect Russian interests in Crimea.<\/p>\n
The \u201cwe-hate-Putin\u201d hysteria has now reach the point that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has\u00a0deployed the \u201cHitler analogy\u201d against Putin, comparing Putin\u2019s interests in protecting ethnic Russians in Ukraine with Hitler citing ethnic Germans in Eastern Europe to justify aggression at the start of World War II.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just want people to have a little historic perspective,\u201d the reputed 2016 Democratic presidential frontrunner told a question-and-answer session at UCLA on Wednesday, confirming reports of her using the Hitler analogy during an earlier private fundraiser.<\/p>\n
Some Clinton backers suggested she made the provocative comparison to give herself protection from expected right-wing attacks on her for having participated in the\u00a0\u201creset\u201d of U.S. policy toward Russia in 2009. She also was putting space between herself and President Barack Obama\u2019s quiet effort to cooperate with Putin to resolve crises with Iran and Syria.<\/p>\n
But what is shocking about Clinton\u2019s Hitler analogy \u2013 and why it should give Democrats pause as they rush to coronate her as their presidential nominee in 2016 \u2013 is that it suggests that she has joined the neoconservative camp, again. Since her days as a U.S. senator from New York \u2014 and as a supporter of the Iraq War \u2014 Clinton has often sided with the neocons and she\u2019s doing so again in demonizing Putin.<\/p>\n
Democrats might want to contemplate how a President Hillary Clinton would handle that proverbial \u201c3 a.m. phone call,\u201d perhaps one with conflicting information about a chemical weapons attack in Syria or muddled suspicions that\u00a0Iran is moving toward a nuclear bomb or reports that Russia is using its military to resist a right-wing coup in neighboring Ukraine.<\/p>\n
Would she unthinkingly adopt the hawkish neocon position as she often did as U.S. senator and\u00a0as\u00a0Secretary of State? Would she wait for the \u201cfog of war\u201d to lift or simply plunge ahead with\u00a0flame-throwing\u00a0rhetoric that could make a delicate situation worse?<\/p>\n
There\u2019s also the question of Clinton\u2019s honesty. Does she really\u00a0believe that Putin protecting ethnic Russians from an illegitimate government that seized power in a right-wing coup on Russia\u2019s border is comparable to Hitler invading Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland?<\/p>\n
Media Endorsement<\/b><\/p>\n
Normally, anyone who uses a Hitler analogy is immediately chastised for both absurd hyperbole and anti-Semitism. Besides the extreme exaggeration involved, the Hitler analogy trivializes the scope of Hitler\u2019s crimes both in provoking World War II and carrying out the Holocaust against European Jews.<\/p>\n
Usually neocons are among the first to protest this cheapening of the Holocaust\u2019s memory, but apparently their determination to take\u00a0down Putin for his interference in their\u00a0\u201cregime change\u201d plans across the Middle East caused some neocons to endorse Clinton\u2019s Hitler analogy. One of the Washington Post\u2019s neocon editorial writers, Charles Lane,\u00a0wrote on Thursday: \u201cSuperficially plausible though the Hitler-Putin comparison may be, just how precisely does it fit? In some respects, alarmingly so.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yet, outside of this mad \u201cgroup think\u201d that has settled over Official Washington, Clinton\u2019s Hitler analogy is neither \u00a0reasonable nor justified. If she wanted to note that protecting one\u2019s national or ethnic group has been cited historically to justify interventions, she surely didn\u2019t have to go to the Hitler extreme. There are plenty of other examples.<\/p>\n
For instance, it was a factor in the Mexican-American War in the 1840s when President James Polk cited protecting Texans as a justification for the war with Mexico. The \u201cprotect Americans\u201d argument also was used by President Ronald Reagan in justifying his invasion of the Caribbean island of Grenada in 1983. Reagan said he was protecting American students at the St. George\u2019s Medical School, even though they were not in any real physical danger.<\/p>\n
In other conflicts, human rights advocates have asserted the right to defend any civilians from physical danger under the so-called \u201cresponsibility to protect\u201d \u2014 or \u201cR2P\u201d \u2014 principle. For example, neocons and various U.S.-based \u201cnon-governmental organizations\u201d have urged a U.S. military intervention in Syria supposedly to protect innocent human life.<\/p>\n
However, if anyone dared compare Ronald Reagan or, for that matter, R2P advocates to Hitler, you could expect the likes of Charles Lane to howl with outrage.\u00a0Yet, when Putin faces a complex dilemma like the violent right-wing coup in Ukraine \u2013 and worries about ethnic Russians facing potential persecution \u2013 he is casually compared to Hitler with almost no U.S. opinion leader protesting the hype.<\/p>\n
Who Were the Snipers? <\/b><\/p>\n
There is also new evidence suggesting that the sniper shootings in Kiev \u2014 a pivotal moment in the uprising to overthrow President Viktor Yanukovych \u2014 may have been the work of neo-Nazi provocateurs trying to foment a coup, not\u00a0the police trying to stop one.<\/p>\n
According to an intercepted phone conversation between Estonia\u2019s Foreign Minister Urmas Paet and European Union foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton, Paet reported on a conversation that he had with a doctor in Kiev who said the sniper fire that killed protesters was the same that killed police officers.\u00a0As reported by the UK Guardian<\/a>, \u201cDuring the conversation, Paet quoted a woman named Olga \u2013 who the Russian media identified her as Olga Bogomolets, a doctor \u2013 blaming snipers from the opposition shooting the protesters.\u201d<\/p>\n Paet said, \u201cWhat was quite disturbing, this same Olga told that, well, all the evidence shows that people who were killed by snipers from both sides, among policemen and people from the streets, that they were the same snipers killing people from both sides.<\/p>\n \u201cSo she also showed me some photos, she said that as medical doctor, she can say it is the same handwriting, the same type of bullets, and it\u2019s really disturbing that now the new coalition, that they don\u2019t want to investigate what exactly happened. \u2026 So there is a stronger and stronger understanding that behind snipers it was not\u00a0Yanukovych, it was somebody from the new coalition.\u201d<\/p>\n Ashton replied: \u201cI think we do want to investigate. I didn\u2019t pick that up, that\u2019s interesting. Gosh.\u201d<\/p>\n However, the sniper fire has been cited by the U.S. government and major U.S. news outlets as evidence of Yanukovych\u2019s depravity, thus justifying his violent removal from office last month when he was forced to flee for his life after neo-Nazi militias seized control of government buildings.<\/p>\n Yet, despite the new evidence suggesting that the coup-makers may have been responsible for instigating the violence, the mainstream U.S. press continues to revise the preferred narrative by putting white hats on the coup-makers and black hats on the Yanukovych government. For instance, the New York Times has stopped reporting that more than a dozen police officers were among the 80 or so people killed as protests in Kiev turned violent. The typical new version<\/a>\u00a0in the U.S. press is simply that Yanukovych\u2019s police opened fire on peaceful demonstrators, killing 80 of them.<\/p>\n And to take a contradictory view of this conventional wisdom marks you as \u201ccrazy.\u201d When\u00a0Yanukovych and Putin raised questions about who actually opened fire, the U.S. news media dismissed their suspicions as \u201cconspiracy theories\u201d and proof of \u201cdelusional\u201d thinking. It is now a virtual consensus across the U.S. news media that Putin is \u201cunstable\u201d and \u201cdisconnected from reality.\u201d<\/p>\n The Washington Post called Putin\u2019s Tuesday news conference \u201crambling.\u201d\u00a0However, if you read the transcript<\/a>,\u00a0it is anything but \u201crambling\u201d or \u201cdelusional.\u201d Putin comes across as quite coherent, expressing a detailed understanding of the Ukraine crisis and the legal issues involved.<\/p>\n Putin begins his response to reporters\u2019 questions by puzzling over the reasons for the violent overthrow of Yanukovych, especially\u00a0after the Ukrainian president agreed to European terms for surrendering much of his power,\u00a0moving up elections and ordering police to withdraw. But\u00a0that Feb. 21 agreement lasted only two hours, ended by neo-Nazi extremists seizing control of government buildings and forcing Yanukovych to flee for his life.<\/p>\n Putin said, \u201cThere can only be one assessment: this was an anti-constitutional takeover, an armed seizure of power. Does anyone question this? Nobody does. There is a question here that neither I, nor my colleagues, with whom I have been discussing the situation in Ukraine a great deal over these past days, as you know \u2013 none of us can answer. The question is why was this done?<\/p>\n \u201cI would like to draw your attention to the fact that President Yanukovych, through the mediation of the Foreign Ministers of three European countries \u2013 Poland, Germany and France \u2013 and in the presence of my representative (this was the Russian Human Rights Commissioner Vladimir Lukin) signed an agreement with the opposition on February 21.<\/p>\n \u201cI would like to stress that under that agreement (I am not saying this was good or bad, just stating the fact) Mr. Yanukovych actually handed over power. He agreed to all the opposition\u2019s demands: he agreed to early parliamentary elections, to early presidential elections, and to return to the 2004 Constitution, as demanded by the opposition.<\/p>\n \u201cHe gave a positive response to our request, the request of western countries and, first of all, of the opposition not to use force. He did not issue a single illegal order to shoot at the poor demonstrators. Moreover, he issued orders to withdraw all police forces from the capital, and they complied. He went to Kharkov to attend an event, and as soon as he left, instead of releasing the occupied administrative buildings, they [the armed militias] immediately occupied the President\u2019s residence and the Government building \u2013 all that instead of acting on the agreement.<\/p>\n \u201cI ask myself, what was the purpose of all this? I want to understand why this was done. He had in fact given up his power already, and as I believe, as I told him, he had no chance of being re-elected. Everybody agrees on this, everyone I have been speaking to on the telephone these past few days. What was the purpose of all those illegal, unconstitutional actions, why did they have to create this chaos in the country?\u201d<\/p>\n Now, there also is independent evidence suggesting that elements of the right-wing militias may have killed both protesters and police to destabilize the Ukrainian government and justify the coup.<\/p>\n U.S. Hypocrisy<\/b><\/p>\n In the same news conference, Putin noted the U.S. government\u2019s hypocrisy in decrying Russia\u2019s intervention\u00a0in Crimea. He said: \u201cIt\u2019s necessary to recall the actions of the United States in Afghanistan, in Iraq, in Libya, where they acted either without any sanction from the U.N. Security Council or distorted the content of these resolutions, as it happened in Libya. There, as you know, only the right to create a no-fly zone for government aircraft was authorized, and it all ended in the bombing and participation of special forces in group operations.\u201d<\/p>\n There is no denying the accuracy of Putin\u2019s description of U.S. overreach in its interventions in the Twenty-first Century.\u00a0Yet, Secretary of State John Kerry has ignored that history in denouncing Russia for using military force in the Crimea section of Ukraine.\u00a0Kerry said on Tuesday: \u201cIt is not appropriate to invade a country and at the end of a barrel of gun dictate what you are trying to achieve. That is not Twenty-first Century, G-8, major-nation behavior.\u201d<\/p>\n Despite Kerry\u2019s bizarre lack of self-awareness \u2014 as a senator he joined in voting to authorize the U.S. invasion of Iraq \u2014 it is Putin who gets called \u201cdelusional.\u201d\u00a0While virtually all mainstream U.S. news outlets\u00a0join in the demonization of Putin, there have been almost no words about the truly delusional hypocrisy of U.S. officials. Ignored is the\u00a0inconvenient truth that the U.S. military invaded Iraq, still occupies Afghanistan, coordinated a \u201cregime change\u201d war in Libya in 2011, and has engaged in cross-border attacks in several countries, including Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia.<\/p>\n Though we\u2019ve seen\u00a0other\u00a0examples of the U.S. political\/media elite losing its collective mind \u2013 particularly during the crazed run-up to war in Iraq in 2002-2003 and the near stampede into another war with Syria in 2013 \u2013 the frantic madness over\u00a0Putin and Ukraine is arguably the most dangerous manifestation of this nutty Official Washington \u201cgroup think.\u201d<\/p>\n Not only does Putin lead a powerful nation with a nuclear arsenal but his cooperation with President Obama on Syria and Iran have been important contributions toward tamping down the fires of what could become a wider regional war across the Middle East.<\/p>\n Yet, it is perhaps Putin\u2019s assistance in finding\u00a0peaceful ways out of last year\u2019s Syrian crisis as well as getting Iran to negotiate seriously over its nuclear program \u2013 rather than pressing for violent \u201cregime change\u201d in the two countries \u2013 that earned Putin the undying enmity of the neocons who still dominate Official Washington and influence its \u201cgroup think.\u201d<\/p>\n Maybe that enmity explains part of\u00a0the mysterious why behind the Ukraine crisis and the endless demonization of Putin.<\/p>\n Elliott Abrams, a leading neocon who oversaw Middle East policy on President George W. Bush\u2019s\u00a0National Security Council staff, was quick to pounce on the Ukraine crisis and the pummeling of Putin to urge a new push for legislation that would pile on more sanctions against Iran, a move that President Obama has warned could kill negotiations.<\/p>\n \u201cThis would be a very good time for Congress to pass the Menendez-Kirk legislation,\u201d Abrams wrote<\/a>. \u201cOne lesson of events in Ukraine is that relying on the good will of repressive, anti-American regimes is foolish and dangerous. Another is that American strength and strength of will are weakened at the peril of the United States and our friends everywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n While at the NSC, Abrams was one of the neocon hardliners \u2013 along with Vice President Dick Cheney \u2013 who \u201c\u201dwere all for letting Israel do whatever it wanted\u201d regarding attacking Iran\u2019s nuclear facilities, according to former Defense Secretary Robert Gates in his memoir, Duty<\/i>.<\/p>\n That attack-Iran argument nearly carried the day during the final\u00a0months of the Bush-43 administration since, according to Gates, \u201cBush effectively came down on Cheney\u2019s side. By not giving the Israelis a red light, he gave them a green one.\u201d<\/p>\n But a 2007 National Intelligence Estimate, representing the views of the 16 U.S. intelligence agencies, concluded that Iran had stopped work on a nuclear weapon four years earlier. Bush has acknowledged that this NIE stopped him from going forward with military strikes on Iran.<\/p>\n The neocons, however, have never given up that dream. Now, with the \u201cwe-hate-Putin\u201d group think gripping Official Washington, they may feel\u00a0they have another shot. [For more, see Consortiumnews.com\u2019s \u201cWhat Neocons Want from Ukraine Crisis<\/a>.\u201d]<\/p>\n ________________________________<\/p>\n Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his new book, America\u2019s Stolen Narrative, either in print here<\/a> or as an e-book (from Amazon<\/a> and barnesandnoble.com<\/a>). For a limited time, you also can order Robert Parry\u2019s trilogy on the Bush Family and its connections to various right-wing operatives for only $34. The trilogy includes America\u2019s Stolen Narrative. For details on this offer, click here<\/a>.<\/i><\/i><\/p>\n