Dr. Michael Vlahos & Col. Douglas Macgregor: Why NATO strategic failure? A war of deceit, denial Pt2

Dr. Michael Vlahos ^ | December 9, 2022 | Colonel Douglas MacGregor

[CatHerd]

My apologies! I copy-pasted from an earlier post to tlozo. I meant him (or her, as the case might be), and forgot to change “you” to “tlozo”.

[sauropod]

No worries then.

Just don’t confuse me with him!

Merry Christmas,

‘Pod

[CatHerd]

Thank you for being so gracious. I’m truly sorry for my error, and promise not to confuse you!

Merry Christmas!

[sauropod]

Back at ya!

[higgmeister]

Z is a porn star?

I am afraid to ask how you know this?

Perhaps because we have all seen the video of him playing the piano with his penis.

[higgmeister]

Consider the like button clicked.

[CatHerd]

Aw, thank you. I rarely post on Ukraine-Russia threads as they are almost always Twitter-style slugfests between angry ignoramuses. Like British football hooligans going at each other — as if this were some sports match. Yay for my side, boo on yours, but nastier.

But I just had to defend the good colonel :)

[higgmeister]

When Russia overthrew the Soviet Union because of all of President Reagan's machinations behind the scenes to win the Cold War.   That was the truth by the way.   The United States knew for a fact, at the highest levels, that the Soviet Union would fall, ten years before it happened.   It was like top secret information at the time.   All they had to do was sit back and wait.

I'll never forget when my Uncle the Colonel came to Grandma's house wearing a Soviet Red Army traditional fur hat, I was shocked.   I was still a USAF Staff Sergeant and he was still a USAF Reserve Colonel who wore his uniform to work once a week as a Defense Department contractor.   He told me it was his Cold War trophy and they were selling them on the streets in West Berlin.   Months later I had that Cold War victory substantiated first hand where I was assigned overseas.

When the Russian people took to the streets and ended the Soviet Union, I embraced them as free citizens to befriend with love and compassion.   I never imagined that, the powers that be in Washington, DC, the "MIC" that President Eisenhower had warned us about, would demonize Russians then and forever still, as "The Evil Empire", only to keep the defense dollars flowing into their coffers.   The Globalist Elite Oligarchs and their NeoCon lackeys should rot in Hèll!

[FreshPrince]

I dont think pretending to play the piano with your penis makes u a porn star.

[CatHerd]

Thank you for sharing that.

When I became aware in the early 90s of how the USSR had been bleeding the poorest of countries in shocking ways back in the 80s, I thought “surely we must have known about this, known the Soviet Union was like one of those trees that looks okay on the outside but is completely rotten in its core — with trees you often don’t find out until they fall over one day during a storm, but surely we knew this long before it fell.”

It’s shameful how we treated Russia after the fall. And, in IMHO, against our own interests. At that point, in our own self-interest, we should have quietly become less (and less and less) favorable toward China, more kindly toward Russia. Too bad no one listened to Keenan, but instead jumped on the Wolfowitz train to ruin. And pushed a reluctant Russia into alliance with China. Our previous policy was wisely to keep them at odds with each other.

Our treatment of the Russians saddened me, too. The people had believed Reagan when he said our beef was not with the people of Russia, but with their leadership. They wanted so badly to have democracy and rule of law like us, wanted so badly to join the West, but it was not to be. We treated Russia like a beaten dog. I was so ashamed and horrified. And the terrible poverty and hardship there during the 90s was truly heartbreaking.

Of course Russia was too big and too nuclear to join NATO (even though many ordinary Russian people had some hopes for that early on, and later hoped the “Partnership for Peace” was more than a cruel Booby prize that essentially mocked them). And of course Russia was too big and too nuclear to ever be let into the EU*. And of course our interests and Russian interests will naturally diverge on some points, but it would have behooved us to work with Russia when our interests aligned, which they actually do in some important respects, and counter them when we are odds.

Instead, we arrogantly rubbed the bear’s nose in the mud until finally pushed too far and Putin came to power. And still we pushed. Now look.

I’ve said since the beginning that whoever “wins” this war in Ukraine, China will be the real winner.

*The EU being the euphemism for the new German Empire, one that seems kinder and gentler in that it allows all those other countries to keep their flags and anthems and whatnot. Former Yugoslavia was also too big for German tastes, and had to broken onto bite-sized pieces, starting with Slovenia and Croatia, both of which they coveted as markets and second-tier labor pools. And so it had to break up. We went along, but played our own game to show Germany and the rest of Europe who their Daddy is.

[higgmeister]

Exactly as you say.

When the Moscow theater hostage crisis hit our news I thought that would be the event that allied us in a global effort to fight terrorism, especially after what we just at that time had gone through.   We have had so many opportunities for camaraderie and peace that we rejected and pushed away.

It's funny, as my own personal gesture to support them back then, I tried to learn Russian.   I was surprised to learn that so many words in Russian are pronounced exactly as they are in English.   Taxi is Такси (taxi).   Also, Hispanics feel a connection between Spanish and Russian.

[CatHerd]

Yes, we certainly could have teamed up better when it came to terrorists. I remember the Moscow theater, also Beslan (real heartbreaker!) and the subways, too. All so tragic. And tragic that we pushed all chances for camaraderie and peace, as you said so well.

That’s wonderful you tried to learn Russian! It’s not easy for us English speakers. At least not for me.

I liked Russian “taxi beer” (means “so so” and has nothing to do with taxis or even taxi girls). “How are you?” “Taxi beer.” For some reason, I found it amusing.

I was trying to learn Russian right after Serbo-Croat*, which sounds a lot like Old Church Slavonic to Russians and sort of country bumpkin. I would come out with these Frankenstein words that were a mashup of Serbo-Croat and Russian that Russians found hilarious. Those were really tough times in Russia (late 90s), so I’m glad I could give them something to laugh about. It was truly heartbreaking, the poverty and all.

Russian Cyrillic is somewhat different from Serbian, so I sometimes “wrote funny” too. And always like a child, because I only learned to print and never mastered cursive.

*I refuse to call it Bosniak, Croatian and Serbian — it’s the same darn language. Although Croats’ accent is slightly different when pronouncing certain words. And Serbs use Cyrillic.

[higgmeister]

Well of course I understand the laughter, my having a Southern accent which is laughable to some.

I still have the books, the tapes and such but the "old dogs and new tricks" thing makes it more unlikely.

[CatHerd]

I have a Southern accent, too! Unless I’m around people who don’t. I pick up accents very easily. Not sure what that says about me. Anyway, I finally decided to hang onto my Southern accent and do my best to keep it up no matter what.

My best friend from grad school had the most beautiful Columbia, South Carolina, accent, which carried over into her French. She was fluent, but in a very lovely Southern way. She died young of cancer, and I still miss her.

Yes, the older we get, the harder it is to learn new tricks.

[Jacob Kell]

>Croats and the ethnic Serbs of Croatia both came from the same stock, were >genetically identical (except for the Dalmatians along the coast), s

How are the Dalmatians different genetically?

>Same for Ukrainians/Russians: they come from the same stock and are >genetically homogenous (except for some Galicians in Western Ukraine),

Are those Galicians the result of intermixing with Romanians or Hungarians?
DIdn’t the ancestors of the Russians assimilate quite a few Finno-Ugrians who lived in modern Russia before the Slavs arrived? Also, didn’t the ancestors of the Ukrainains assimilate Trypilians and Iranians (West Scythio-Sarmatians) as well?

[CatHerd]

Dalmatia was ruled by Venice for centuries (15th through 18th), so Dalmatians are also culturally distinct from the rest of Croatia. The architecture of Dubrovnik is quite different from that of Zagreb for a reason. The isolation of the islands naturally conserved and amplified genetic differences, too. There has also been admixture from the mainland Slavs, of course. Lots of intetesting and colorful history -- Uskoks, pirates, etc.

Ukraine means "[on the] frontier" or "borderlands". Ukraina is pronounced the same as Krajina (minus the "oo" part at the beginning), the frontier between the old Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires in the Balkans. The reason ignorant people call it "the Ukraine" (and think they sound smart doing so -- eye roll) is because the region was once called that for obvious reasons "the frontier" or "the borderlands". It's kind of like how some people ignorantly say "the Sudan" meaning the country, when "the Sudan" actually refers to a region that does not conform in any way to the present country.

Anyway, Ukraine was never its very own country until 1991. And the borders in the area of Ukraine have certainly shifted over time:

If you want to go all the way back to the Sarmatians ... the Slavic tribes (not Ukrainians or Russians yet!) that coalesced around the Viking rulers of Kiev likely mixed with them and whoever else was toodling around the area, too, before the Mongols rode in and whooped up on everybody and split the Rus in two (and the languages began to diverge, with Belarusian and Ukrainian being more alike than Ukrainian and Russian). Yes, there was more Russian assimilation of Finno-Ugric peoples.

There are still tiny pockets of Hungarians, Romanians, etc., on the western and southwestern edges of Ukraine.

As you can see on this old map of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Lemberg (Lvov, Lviv) was considered a Polish city, even though it was in the eastern or "Ukrainian" part of Galicia:

Ukrainians and Russians intermarried, crossed back and forth between Russia and Ukraine the same way we would cross a state line, as from Texas to Oklahoma, during Soviet times, and most considered themselves more alike than different. Well into the 1990s, Ukrainians still consumed lots of Russian language media, etc. Of course many became more Ukrainian in identity and exaggerated differences, especially after the 2014 coup and even more since the Russian invasion, even some who speak Russian at home.

Back to eastern Galicia/western Ukraine, the Poles were still very much around into the 20th century. Between first the commies, then second, the nationalist Ukrainians who ethnically cleansed them during the 1930s, and third, after WWII, Stalin, not so many left there now. See: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poles_in_Ukraine