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US Soldiers at Grafenwoehr Army Base, Bavaria, Germany |
(A) Some Introductory Remarks
[1] Grafenwoehr army base, Bavaria - the largest US base outside America. Male soldiers parade in women's shoes with signs "We Are ALL hurt by Rape", "LOVE Should NOT Hurt", "Walk a Mile in Her Shoes".
This MIGHT make sense if it was a "cunning plan" by Joe Biden (AKA Baldrick) to trick Putin into (A) believing that US soldiers are decadent wimps (B) thus encouraging Putin to attack the West and be annihilated. The problem is that only (A) is likely to be valid!
[2] Tweet by Richard Moore who apparently is really the Chief of British spy agency MI6 and this is not a Parody Account!
Richard Moore @ChiefMI6 · Feb 25 With the tragedy and destruction unfolding so distressingly in Ukraine, we should remember the values and hard won freedoms that distinguish us from Putin, none more than LGBT+ rights. So let’s resume our series of tweets to mark #LGBTHM2022
[Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Trans+ History Month 2022]
[3] And of course Ireland - trying hard not to be left behind in the slide towards self-destruction: Target of 35pc female involvement in military is ‘ambitious’
The Defence Forces have described a target of 35pc overall female participation within the organisation as “ambitious”. The target was recently recommended in a report by the Commission into the Defence Forces which also cited a “masculine” culture in the military.... The Commission was established by Defence Minister Simon Coveney in late 2020 in response to concerns about the capabilities of the military and an ongoing retention crisis. [ Note (i) ]
:
“The horrible events in Ukraine ask our western states what is it that they stand for. Amongst the threats to our society is not just a rampant Russian war in Central Europe, but the fact that liberal democracies look like little more than economic or industrial entities. Does Europe have any pretence at virtue or at generosity that goes beyond self-interest?..." A widespread emphasis on entitlement and on victimhood generates a corrosive blame culture. It is unhealthy when we demand that something impersonal called the ‘State’ should pick up the pieces of every mess that we make. A dependency culture weakens us individually and communally. Virtue and responsibility will build hope and healing"......"If western countries are unable to offer the world more than consumer goods and mind-numbing entertainment then we have nothing to boast of except our hollow economic power which struggles to drown out our nightmares."
[5] Major General Jonathan Shaw former Director of Special Forces in the British Army shares the concerns of Bishop McKeown
"The West will only truly win when the Russian people reject the current regime and its ideology. My fear now, however, is that whatever happens in Ukraine, the West will lack the moral staying power to see down the threat posed by Putin...." Meanwhile the curse of the 24-hour news cycle is that we can obsess over the dramatic and the visual at the expense of the important. This focus on what is happening on the ground distracts us from the real battle: that of values. Putin believes that the West is morally degenerate, that its support for democratic values is weak, and that its populations are more interested in their quality of life than Ukraine."
(B) The Decadence of the USA - and NATO
On January 26th 2022 the Irish Independent published an article by conservative Catholic, columnist and author Sohrab Ahmari that originally appeared in the Washington Post: Biden is Correct to Ignore War Hawks over Ukraine. I actually disagree with his conclusion regarding Ukraine but he provides a wealth of information - including (remarkably) some issues that Left and Right in the USA agree on!
"Left and right agree on very little these days, but they share a sense that something has gone profoundly wrong with America – internally. The two camps disagree over the diagnosis, whether it’s structural racism or elite liberalism that’s to blame, but the symptoms are apparent to both: the decrepit infrastructure, the loneliness that haunted young Americans long before social distancing, widespread job and health precarity, addiction and homelessness."Then there’s the cultural incohesion, an inability to agree on the most basic facts about US history and identity...... Biden’s [original] posture was perfectly sensible, given the political mood in Europe and especially its pivotal power, Germany. It also reflected a deeper wisdom, in continuity with his two immediate predecessors, that US power is over-stretched, exhausted and battered by domestic polarisation and decay."
Ahrami believes that the "war hawks" are asking the US President to be more zealous for European security than are Europeans themselves. He states that a majority of Europeans are ambivalent, at best, when it comes to America, Nato and the Russian threat.
"A 2020 Pew Research Centre survey of populations in 16 key Nato states found a majority opposes using force to defend a fellow member state in a conflict with Russia."In France, 53pc oppose fulfilling the Western Alliance’s Article 5 obligations under such a scenario, compared with 41pc who would back military action. More startling still, 60pc of Germans oppose using force to defend a fellow member state. [!] Ukraine isn’t even a Nato member.".
Ahrami believes Western Europe’s has no real commitment to Ukraine’s territorial integrity and points to our lackadaisical response to Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and "stealth invasion" of the eastern Donbas region of Ukraine:
At various points since, Paris and Berlin resisted economic sanctions against Moscow, on occasion even calling for existing sanctions to be lifted. Meanwhile, Germany has remained determined to push ahead with Nord Stream 2, a natural gas pipeline running from Russia to Germany under the Baltic Sea, thus bypassing Ukraine and Poland and tightening Moscow’s energy stranglehold on the continent.Successive US administrations of both parties begged for a rethink, to no avail, until Biden dropped the issue last year. Lately, Berlin has signaled it might abandon the project if Russia invades Ukraine – maybe!
Sohrab Ahrami believes it's crazy for the USA to try to police Europe’s borders when Europeans have been this indifferent, this long. I disagree with his conclusion while recognising that the premises of his argument are largely correct!
On similar lines Ian O'Doherty writes in "The Divided States of America – Now a Country Ripping Itself Apart in Self-Loathing"
On the foreign fields, the shambolic and shameful abandonment of Afghanistan will go down in the history books as one of the most craven acts by any US leader. It also rang the dinner bell for Vladimir Putin’s Ukrainian invasion. After all, when news emerged that Mr Putin had watched the live footage of the evacuation and laughed throughout, the die was cast. He already had the idea of invading Ukraine, but the American performance in Afghanistan told him that now was the time to make that idea a reality. [ Note (ii) ]
(C) The Decadence of Germany
[ 60pc of Germans oppose using force to defend a fellow NATO member state!]
On 29 January Ambrose Evans-Pritchard the international business editor of the Daily Telegraph wrote Markets Remain Calm despite Talk of Imminent War yet Putin knows he has a Narrow Window and a Strong Hand
It is now or never for Mr Putin. The stars are unusually well-aligned for the overthrow of the post-Cold War settlement....The Kremlin enjoys the same partial advantage on the politico-military front. European Nato disarmed through the austerity years and is now near rock-bottom, while Russia has been re-arming for a decade. The White House is perceived to be a pushover after waving its objections to the Nord Stream 2 pipeline in a shabby deal with Germany....Mr Putin does not have to worry about serious economic retaliation. Germany has effectively vetoed use of the financial “nuclear option”, which would to expel Russia from the SWIFT system of international payments. Berlin’s argument is that such sanctions have asymmetric blowback. The US has little direct exposure and would suffer modest loss. German and European companies with large interests in Russia would take the brunt... “I don’t see anything on the economic front that would seriously frighten Putin,” said Ian Bond, former ambassador and British security planner now at the Centre for European Reform......Energy dependence has turned core Europe into an accomplice by default.... Top figures in the German Social Democratic Party are not even willing to take Nord Stream 2 off the table if Mr Putin annihilates Ukraine. Defence minister Christine Lambrecht said there is “no connection” between the two issues. Chancellor Olaf Scholz has belatedly agreed to demands from Washington and his Green coalition partners that there should be some linkage but the commitment is too vague and half-hearted to have much deterrent value. He still insists that the pipeline is a purely “commercial” matter. Germany has not only refused to sell vital weapons to Ukraine but is actively preventing its Nato allies from doing so.
Regarding this point British journalist (and Berlin resident) Justin Huggler described an encounter between the mayor of Kiev Vitali Klitschko and German foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock at a Security Conference meeting in Munich (!)
"We need defensive weapons. We face one of the strongest armies in the world. We are ready to fight, to defend our families,” Mr Klitschko told Ms Baerbock. “Thank you for the 5,000 helmets,” he went on, referring to a shipment of helmets Germany sent instead of weapons. “But we can’t defend our state with them, it’s not enough.”The emotional outburst laid bare divisions that remain within the Western alliance. Germany claims it has a longstanding policy of not sending arms to conflict zones because of its Nazi past. [ Note (iii) ]
See also Reuters article dated 21 January Germany blocks Estonia from Exporting German-origin Weapons to Ukraine
Germany is blocking NATO ally Estonia from giving military support to Ukraine by refusing to issue permits for German-origin weapons to be exported to Kyiv as it braces for a potential Russian invasion, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday...[The USA and] Many other NATO allies, including Britain and Poland, also agreed to export weapons directly to Ukraine, but the German government declined to do so.
“Germany has not supported the export of lethal weapons in recent years,” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz told a news conference on Friday. In the case of Estonia, Berlin is refusing to allow a third country to send artillery to Ukraine because the weaponry originated in Germany, the Journal cited Estonian and German officials as saying.
Germany has had a belated change of heart as described by Telegraph journalists in
Since the end of the Cold War, Germany has reduced its troop strength from 500,000 to about 200,000 today. On the day Mr Putin ordered his troops into Ukraine, Alfons Mais, the chief of the German land army, admitted that the Bundeswehr was in a desperate state and was “more or less bare”. “The options we can offer to politicians to support [Nato] are extremely limited,” he wrote on LinkedIn.
(D) Conclusions
60 per cent of Germans oppose using force to defend a fellow NATO member state! How many would refuse to defend their own country and collaborate with any enemy for a peaceful life? [ Note (iv) ]
At a Conference in Munich (!) Germany claimed it has a longstanding policy of not sending arms to conflict zones because of its Nazi past. For the same reason it banned Estonia from sending German-manufactured weapons to the Ukraine to help it defend itself. Germany has a degraded and perverse attitude to its Nazi past - more akin to Self-Hatred than Repentance. (Catholic confessors used to be good at distinguishing between the two.) One example is the case of the 93 year old "Nazi Grandma" Ursula Haverbeck convicted several times for the crime of Holocaust Denial, released from prison at the end of 2020, quickly charged again and due to face a new trial about now. The German authorities have been pursuing her since 2004 as their armed forces decayed, they made themselves dependent on Russian energy supplies and resolved not to assist a non-NATO member attacked by Russia - because of Germany's Nazi past! This is the kind of Weimar Decadence that helped Hitler to power in the first place and is now empowering Putin! [ Note (v) ]
BUT Germany has reversed course, has agreed to major sanctions against Russia and is sending arms to Ukraine and beefing up its military forces - so all is now OK! Forgive my cynicism but I agree wioth the Telegraph's Jeremy Warner that West Totally Unready for Sacrifices Needed to Really Hurt Putin
Are western electorates even remotely prepared for the economic deprivations this latter course of action – a war with Russia in all but name – is likely to entail? The already near hysterical political reaction to the cost of living squeeze suggests strongly they are not. Without wishing to trivialise today’s hardships, they are as nothing compared with what would come. “Welcome to the brave new world where Europeans are very soon going to pay €2,000 for 1,000 cubic metres of natural gas,” said Putin’s sidekick, Dmitry Medvedev, rubbing it in over Europe’s unfortunate dependence on Russian gas.We have grown so complacent and lazy on the fruits of globalisation that the idea of anything more than a temporary interruption in the onward march of economic progress is so far beyond any recent experience as to be thought almost impossible.....So forgive my scepticism when the West promises to put up a meaningful fight against Putin’s power play. Even ignoring the threat of nuclear annihilation, the price of defiance will be high. It is not clear that mollycoddled western voters have the stomach for it. By all means, Europe must scramble to wean itself off dependence on Russian gas, but exactly the same thing was said in 2014 after Crimea. Small wonder Putin thinks he can get away with it.
"Mollycoddled western voters" indeed. Long before the Welfare State was even thought of, the main functions of the State were supposed to be defense against external aggression and maintenance of internal order. In part A above, I quote Bishop Donal McKeown regarding our "dependency culture", "emphasis on entitlement and on victimhood" and "demand that something impersonal called the ‘State’ should pick up the pieces of every mess that we make". These attitudes are now rotting the foundations of the State especially in Germany where the chief of the German land army, admitted that the Bundeswehr was in a desperate state, was “more or less bare” and unable to contribute to NATO's response to Putin.
If this crisis continues and impacts seriously on the State's ability to supply voters with goodies, I predict that our sympathy with the people of the Ukraine and refugees will evaporate with extreme speed. Western voters will start denouncing President Volodymyr Zelensky for 'intransigence' and demand he conclude a "peace at any price" with Russia!
NOTES
(i) I recall reading about an Irish guy who joined the British army during the Second World War and became one of its highest decorated veterans. After the war he left the army and led a troubled unhappy life until dying in a car crash about 1950 - a time when there were few cars on Irish roads. A country needs people like that in times of War (although they can be trouble in peacetime). Our current Defence Minister and his "Commission" are doing their best to alienate such men and ensure they will never join the army. "Masculine Culture" indeed!
(ii) It's likely that Putin's advisers showed him the photo at the head of this article. If so he undoubtedly laughed a lot!
(iii) Another nice illustration of the link between Barbarism on one side and Decadence on the other! And it also happened at a Conference in Munich!
(iv) For Irish equivalent see "Archbishop Diarmuid Martin, the Simpsons and Our Insect Overlords"
(v) Another example of the corruption of Germany's attempts to face up to its Nazi past dates from 1970 when the Red Army Faction (or 'Baeder Meinhoff Gang') started a terrorist campaign that lasted until 1998. As per Wikipedia "the group was motivated by leftist political concerns and the perceived failure of their parents' generation to confront Germany's Nazi past, and received support from Stasi and other Eastern Bloc security services." (On meetings with KGB in Dresden the group was also met by Vladimir Putin, then KGB resident in East Germany!) In 1977 Jillian Becker published "Hitler's Children: The Story of the Baader-Meinhof Terrorist Gang" a study of the 'first generation' of the RAF that pointed out that the terrorists were more akin to Nazi Stormtroopers than to the forces of the German Federal Republic that opposed them. In addition German journalist Stefan Aust wrote in 1985 "The Baader-Meinhof Gang drew a measure of support that violent leftists in the United States, like the Weather Underground, never enjoyed. A poll at the time showed that a quarter of West Germans under forty felt sympathy for the gang and one-tenth said they would hide a gang member from the police. Prominent intellectuals spoke up for the gang's righteousness (as) Germany even into the 1970s was still a guilt-ridden society."
As per Wikipedia: "Horst Mahler, a founding RAF member, is now a vocal Neo-Nazi and Holocaust denier. In 2005, he was sentenced to six years in prison for incitement to racial hatred against Jews. He is on record as saying that his beliefs have not changed: Der Feind ist der Gleiche (The enemy is the same)."
