Washington's "Pivot" hits a Brick Wall
Obama’s “Catastrophic Defeat” in Ukraine
by MIKE WHITNEY published in Counterpunch*
WEEKEND EDITION AUGUST 29-31, 2014
“We are currently witnessing an epic
and historic event. The Ukrainian regular army and the punitive
battalions are suffering a catastrophic defeat to the south of
Donetsk…..It still is not quite clear how the Junta intends to
avoid a complete defeat here…. By squandering the most
combat-capable brigades in systematic offensive operations, the Junta
sustained enormous losses and at the same time suffered a crushing,
purely military defeat. The southern front has collapsed.” – The
Southern Front Catastrophe – August 27, 2014″, Colonel
Cassad, Military Briefing, Novorossiya, Ukraine
“The reports out of Novorussia (New
Russia) are nothing short of incredible… sources are reporting that
Novorussian forces have bypassed Mariupol from the north and have
entered the Zaporozhie region!” – News from the Front,
Vineyard of the Saker
Barack Obama has pushed Ukraine to the
brink of political, economic and social collapse. Now he wants to
blame Russia for the damage he’s done. It’s absurd. Moscow is in
no way responsible for Ukraine’s descent into anarchy. That’s all
Washington’s doing, just as Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and now Syria
were Washington’s doing. If you want to blame someone, blame Obama.
Ukraine’s troubles began when the US
State Department toppled the elected president in February and
replaced him with a compliant stooge who agreed to follow
Washington’s directives. The new “junta” government quickly
launched a full-blown war against Russian-speaking Ukrainians in the
east which split the civilian population and drove the country to
ruin. The plan “pacify” the East was concocted in Washington, not
Kiev and certainly not Moscow.
Moscow has repeatedly called for an end
to the violence and a resumption of negotiations, but each request
has been rebuffed by Obama’s puppet in Kiev leading to another
round of hostilities. Washington doesn’t want peace. Washington
wants the same solution it imposed on Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and
Syria, that is, a chaotic failed state where ethnic and sectarian
animosities are kept at a boiling point so forward-operating bases
can be established without resistance, so resources can be extracted
at will, and so a formally-independent nation can be reduced to a
“permanent state of colonial dependency.” (Chomsky) That’s the
basic gameplan wherever Washington goes. The same rule applies to
Ukraine. The only choice the people have is to arm themselves and
fight back. Which is what they’ve done.
Donetsk and Lugansk have formed
militias and taken the war to the enemy. They’ve engaged Obama’s
proxy-army on the battlefield and pounded it into mincemeat. That’s
why Obama deployed his propagandists to lie about the fictitious
“Russian invasion”. The administration needs a diversion because
the Novorussia forces (aka-the “pro Russia separatists”) are
kicking the holy crap out of Obama’s legions. That’s why
Washington and Kiev are in full panic-mode, because none of this was
supposed to happen. Obama figured the army would put down the
insurrection, crush the resistance, and move him one step closer to
his goal of establishing NATO bases and missile defense systems on
Russia’s western flank.
Well, guess what? It’s not playing
out that way and it probably never will. The Novorussia fighters are
too tough, too smart and too motivated to be one-upped by Obama’s
feckless troopers. (Check out this short video and you’ll see
why the rebels are winning: Vineyard of the Saker)
Putin hasn’t sent tanks and artillery
into Ukraine. He doesn’t need to. The militias are loaded with
battle-hardened veterans who know how to fight and who are quite good
at it. Just ask Poroshenko whose army has been taking it in the
shorts for the last couple of weeks. Check out this blurb in
Thursday’s Itar Tass:
“Over the week of August 16-23, the
self-defense fighters of the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics
seized 14 T-64 tanks, 25 infantry fighting vehicles, 18 armored
personnel carriers, one armored reconnaissance and patrol vehicle,
one Uragan multiple launch rocket system, two Gvozdika self-propelled
artillery guns, four D-30 howitzers, four mortars, one ZU-23-2 air
defense system and 33 vehicles.” (East Ukraine militias seize large
amount of Ukrainian armor, Itar Tass)
Get the picture? The Ukrainian army is
getting beaten to a pulp, which means that Obama’s glorious “pivot
strategy” just slammed into a brick wall.
Bottom line: Russia has not invaded
Ukraine. The propagandists in the media are just trying to hide the
fact that the Novorussia Army Forces (NAF; aka-the pro Russia
separatists) are kicking ass and taking names. That’s what’s
really going on. That’s why Obama and his gaggle of miscreant
neocons are in a furor. It’s because they don’t know what to do
next, so they’ve returned to their default position on every issue;
lie like hell until they settle on a plan.
Naturally, they’re going to blame
Putin for the mess they’re in. What else can they do? They’re
getting their heads handed to them by a superior army. How do you
explain that to the folks at home? Check out this excerpt from the
New York Times Number One fiction writer, Michael “aluminum tubes”
Gordon (who, not surprisingly, co-authored pieces with infamous Judy
Miller in the lead up to the Iraq War):
“Determined to preserve the
pro-Russian revolt in eastern Ukraine, Russia reinforced what Western
and Ukrainian officials described as a stealth invasion on Wednesday,
sending armored troops across the border as it expanded the conflict
to a new section of Ukrainian territory.
The latest incursion, which Ukraine’s
military said included five armored personnel carriers, was at least
the third movement of troops and weapons from Russia across the
southeast part of the border this week, further blunting the momentum
Ukrainian forces have made in weakening the insurgents in their
redoubts of Donetsk and Luhansk farther north. Evidence of a possible
turn was seen in the panicky retreat of Ukrainian soldiers on Tuesday
from a force they said had come over the Russian border.” (Ukraine
Reports Russian Invasion on a New Front, New York Times)
“Stealth invasion”? In other words,
Gordon has settled on a substitute for WMD. What a surprise.
This isn’t even good fiction; it’s
more like Grimm’s Fairy Tales. And where are the photos? If you
have evidence, Gordon, let’s see it. But, please, make sure it’s
better than the last time, you know, those fake photos of Russian
soldiers that were supposedly operating in Ukraine. That was another
deceit, wasn’t it? (See: Another NYT-Michael Gordon Special?,
Robert Parry, Consortium News)
This is like the Malaysia airlines
crash, isn’t it? Remember how Kerry went on a five-TV-talk-show
blitz the day after the crash, making all kinds of spurious
accusations, about surface-to-air missiles and phantom Russian
convoys, without a shred of evidence, and then— the very next day–
Russian military experts calmly produced hard evidence, from radar
and satellite data, that a Ukrainian fighter plane was seen closing
in on MH17 just moments before it was downed. (BBC also interviewed
eyewitnesses who saw the SU 25 approaching the passenger plane.)
So, who do you believe; Kerry or the
facts? And who are you going to believe this time; “Aluminum tubes”
Gordie or Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE)
monitor Andrey Kelin who said yesterday:
“We have said that no Russian
involvement has been spotted, there are no soldiers or equipment
present.”
“Accusations relating to convoys of
armored personnel carriers have been heard during the past week and
the week before that. All of them were proven false back then, and
are being proven false again now.” (RT)
Repeat: “No Russian involvement”.
All the accusations “were proven false.” “False” as in fake,
phony, propaganda, bunkum, lies which, by the way, appears to be
Gordon’s area of expertise.
Anyone who has been following the
conflict knows that the Washington-backed junta in Kiev has waged a
war against its own people in the East, and that they’ve been
bombing hospitals, schools, libraries, apartments, public buildings,
residential areas, etc, all in an effort to drag Putin into a war
that will sabotage EU-Moscow economic integration and further US
interests in the area. It’s all geopolitics, every bit of it.
Remember the pivot to Asia? This is what it looks like in real time.
A lot of people get butchered so the big money guys in Washington can
maintain their grip on global power for another century or so.
Well, you can put that pipedream to
rest now, mainly because a group of scrappy ex-military types in east
Ukraine gathered themselves into an effective and lethal militia
which has turned things around pronto. If you follow developments on
blogs that chronicle the daily events, you’ll know that what I’m
saying is true. The disorganized and demoralized rabble they call the
Ukrainian Army has been routed in nearly every dust up they have with
the Novorussia militia. Here’s how blogger Moon of Alabama summed
it up on a post on Thursday:
“Their moral is bad, their equipment
old, ammunition is low and the entire aim of their campaign is
dubious. Now even a few weak counterattacks, the “counteroffensive”,
have them on the run.”
The only thing he could’ve added to
the litany is the fact that they are led by the biggest moron to ever
hold high office, Petro Poroshenko, the overstuffed buffoon who
thinks he’s Heinz Guderian deploying his Panzers through the
Ardennes and on to Paris. What a joke!
The Times even admits that the
Ukrainian army is badly demoralized. Take a look at this:
“Some of the Ukrainian soldiers
appeared unwilling to fight. The commander of their unit, part of the
Ninth Brigade from Vinnytsia, in western Ukraine, barked at the men
to turn around, to no effect. “All right,” the commander said.
“Anybody who refuses to fight, sit apart from the others.” Eleven
men did, while the others returned to the city.
Some troops were in full retreat: A
city busload of them careened past on the highway headed west, and
purple curtains flapped through windows shot out by gunfire.” (New
York Times)
Have you ever heard of a commanding
officer asking his men whether they want to fight or not? It’s
ludicrous. This is a defeated army, that much is clear. And it’s
easy to understand how the average grunt feels, too. The average
working guy doesn’t have the stomach for killing his own people.
That’s not something he’s going to feel good about. He just wants
to see the war end and go home, which is why they’re getting
whooped so bad. It’s because their hearts aren’t in it. In
contrast, the farmers, shopkeepers and miners who make up the militia
are highly-motivated, after all, this isn’t some geopolitical game
for them. Most of these people have lived in these cities their
entire lives. Now they’re watching neighbors get gunned down in the
streets or pulling friends out of the wreckage of bombed out
buildings. For these people, the war is real and it’s personal.
They’re defending their towns, their families, and their way of
life. That tends to build resolve and focus the mind. Here’s more
from the NY Times:
“The United States has photographs
that show the Russian artillery moved into Ukraine, American
officials say. One photo dated last Thursday, shown to a New York
Times reporter, shows Russian military units moving self-propelled
artillery into Ukraine. Another photo, dated Saturday, shows the
artillery in firing positions in Ukraine.
Advanced air defenses, including
systems not known to be in the Ukrainian arsenal, have also been used
to blunt the Ukrainian military’s air power, American officials
say. In addition, they said, the Russian military routinely flies
drones over Ukraine and shares the intelligence with the
separatists.” (Ukraine Reports Russian Invasion on a New
Front, New York Times)
Photos? What photos? Gordon doesn’t
have any photos. Ah, but he has heard about a New York Times reporter
who saw a photo.
This is ridiculous, but, then again,
isn’t that what you’d expect from a journalist who helped craft
the pretext for invading Iraq?
Here’s how Russian Foreign Minister
Sergei Lavrov responded to the claims of a Russian invasion. He said:
“It’s not the first time we’ve
heard wild guesses, though, so far, the facts have never been
presented…
There have been reports about satellite
imagery exposing Russian troop movements. They turned out to be
images from videogames. The latest accusations happen to be much the
same quality…
We’ll react by persisting in our
effort to reduce the bloodshed and to support negotiations about the
future of Ukraine, with participation of all Ukrainian regions and
political forces, something that was agreed upon back in April in
Geneva, but which is now being deliberately avoided by our Western
partners.” (RT)
There you have it; there is no Russian
invasion anymore than there were WMD, mobile weapons labs, aluminum
tubes, Sarin gas etc, etc, etc. It’s all BS concocted by a servile
media pursuing the agenda of a warmongering political establishment
that wants to escalate the conflagration in east Ukraine at all cost.
Even if it leads to a Third World War
WEEKEND EDITION AUGUST 29-31, 2014
Moskau: Kiew lügt über russischen Einmarsch in Ukraine
