Bittersweet Abattoir

Real Reason to Worry About Russia

I am old enough to remember arguing about the U.S.  withdrawal from Vietnam with a 3rd grade friend (Chris) while we did our warm up lap for gym.  We were just kids, parroting what our parents had already told us.  For as long as I remember, it has been taken for granted that we must face down the Soviet Union.  In Chris’ case in particular, his family was Hungarian and I think they were impacted by the 1956 Spring.  Anyway,  the Russians defended Communism, and though they beat back those Nazis during the war, the conventional wisdom always held that they wanted to take all that’s ours.

U.S. Naval personnel push a Huey helicopter into the sea in order to make room  on an aircraft carrier during the chaotic withdraw from South Vietnam in 1973.

In my lifetime, we have  supported numerous undemocratic South Vietnamese administrations, killed about one million Vietnamese combatants and non combatants, bombed and invaded Cambodia, supported pro western guerrillas in Laos,  supported fascist guerrillas in Nicaragua, briefly invaded the tiny Island nation of Grenada, supported the murderous El Salvadoran government, toppled the socialist Salvador Allende in Chile, supported military dictatorships in Haiti, Honduras, Guatemala, Brazil, Columbia, Peru, and Argentina.  In Africa, we supported the apartheid regime of South Africa, intervened in the civil war in Angola and interfered in the leadership of Chad when it seemed that their leader sympathized with Muammar Gaddafi.  This is just what I remember off the top of my head.   Also, this is just active military or CIA/Special Operations interference, not economic or diplomatic acts.  Also, this is just during my brief, fifty-three years on this Earth.  All of this shelling,  bombing, napalming, shooting, and overall butchery of soldiers and civilians was intended to face down the Soviet (i.e. Russian) threat.

We also built and maintained an arsenal of nuclear weapons, either in the form of bombs, cruise missiles, intercontinental ballistic missiles, medium and short range missiles stationed in Europe or Turkey, and countless tactical nuclear weapons.  We have maintained military bases in Europe, South Korea, until recently,  Okinawa, the Philippines,  and various other places throughout the world.  In general, we have created a military with destructive power unprecedented in 10,000 years of civilization and which in 2016, for example,  cost us $611 billion.  This was the highest amount spent in the world  and was  still more military spending than the next nine countries combined, only two of which are considered our adversaries.    This price also does not include the price we must pay in interest for the loans to spend this money.

Questions about Military Spending? Ask Forbes.

None of this includes the intellectual and moral price we have paid for generations of carrying on the Grand Facade called the Cold War.  Huge amounts of effort have been applied by academics in colleges and think tanks, dedicated to arguing for or against the Soviet/Russian threat.  Political capital was used to ferret out alleged Russian sympathizers in the U.S. government, academia,  and/or Hollywood; those who were accused were often jailed and/or ruined.  Physicists, mathematicians  and engineers were paid to invent new and more deadly weapons, instead of working on technological steps forward.   Grumman, Raytheon, General Motors and others received our nation’s treasures to build weapons to support this effort.  Although the space race resulted in great technological achievements, it was originally considered just another dimension of fighting the Russian threat.  Protests and counter protests accompanied the interventions mentioned above.  Some of these, such as the Kent State protest had tragic results.  The protest during the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago portrayed an America that resembled Munich in 1930.

Chicago Police breaking up protest during the 1968 Democratic convention, Chicago.

Now what do we have?  The Russians are truly working on damaging what is not a perfect democracy, but certainly is better than their backwards dictatorship.  The Russian economy produces nothing  the world wants to buy but weapons and mediocre vodka.  Who has ever bought a Russian or Soviet car?  A Russian cell phone?  Russian construction equipment?  A Russian kitchen mixer? A Russian laptop?

Intellectually, they certainly have some achievements, but they appear to put the most effort into using social media platforms to sow discord and hatred in the U.S., a country that has never reconciled itself to the evils of its past.  They have already been shown to have interfered in the 2016 election, seem to have compromised our President in various ways (I am being kind for now), bought off Lindsey Graham, Mitch McConnell, Devin Nunes, other GOP officials  and probably some unprincipled Democratic officials.  They have used the NRA as a means to again sow self-righteous anger as well as the notion that our government is incapable of dealing with the issue of mass shootings.  NOW they are trying to get people to avoid vaccines and make a big, loud and proud point of it, creating further discord, and proliferating disease.

Good Morning, America.  Our Country is under siege.  It is not the juvenile, gun-stroking fantasy that Americans enjoyed when Red Dawn was in theaters.   In that film, Russia physically invaded the country and high school kids became gun toting guerrillas,  fighting like Yankee Doodle Commandoes.  No, this is a siege of our collective intellect  and moral character.  We need leaders in power who know all of this and  have intellectual and moral character.

Patrick Swayze, unknown, and Charlie Sheen in the seeming NRA celebration, Red Dawn.