JOHN CHUCKMAN

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY NATALIE NOUGAYREDE IN THE GUARDIAN

Response to another reader’s comment:

Merkel is indeed a disaster.

Across the board, in every major area of policy.

And the main reason for that is that she is a slavish follower of American policy, exactly as is Natalie Nougayrède in her own way.

And American policy today is the most destructive by any major power in many decades, indeed, since the pre-WWII world.

America’s establishment feels things slipping away, and it reacts by being hyper-aggressive, trying to secure their control of affairs.

The world is unquestionably moving towards a multi-polar reality, and the American establishment – which had after WWII the world as its oyster, so to speak – does not want to accept the growing new reality of its relative diminishment.

That is the basis of the ghastly policies which have given us 15 years of Neocon Wars as America’s establishment seeks to hold onto “full-spectrum dominance” everywhere that counts.

Weak leaders in Europe – Merkel, Hollande, Sarkozy, Cameron, Blair – have greatly assisted in this effort.

I almost think Merkel still thinks as an old East German, fearful of Soviet power and eternally grateful to the United States for being there. She is utterly blind to what America does today, accepting, for example, with never a whimper of opposition horrible things like America’s proxy war in Syria.

And to show she actually has a kind heart, she accepts the floods of refugees created by the very policy she has accepted. It might all have been prevented by a real statesman standing up to the United States years ago.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY ALLAN MALLINSON IN THE TELEGRAPH

Allan Mallinson, this is simplistic, uninformed propaganda.

“Undermined at home” smacks of charges of “defeatism” or “stab in the back” or “fifth columnists,” and in using it, you demonstrate a lack of clear thought.

Morale always suffers when you send armies to do the wrong thing, and Iraq and Afghanistan were colossal mistakes.

The British public had overwhelmingly shown its opposition to the invasion of Iraq, but Tony Blair managed to abuse the immense power of a modern prime minister by joining in that pointless mass murder.

Afghanistan cannot be “won” because you are fighting a major part of the population itself, and you are attempting to foist institutions and customs on a people mostly not ready for them.

The invasion of Afghanistan was the product of Bush/Cheney/ Rumsfeld paranoia. The fact that major NATO nations refuse to seriously engage there is owing to the simple fact that they do not perceive a threat there. As well, they do not see how anyone can “win.”

The Bush administration was the most shamefully ignorant and brutal in memory for any Western society. Blair’s having slavishly followed that troika from hell speaks for itself. The man is an ethical nullity.

Given those facts, your words ring oddly uninformed and, indeed, rather dangerous.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY MICHAEL NAZIR-ALI IN THE TELEGRAPH

 

Jesus wouldn’t have voted for Blair either.

Or Bush.

Or Sarkozy.

Or a lot of other politicians.

He would have driven the entire American Congress off Capitol Hill just as he drove the moneychangers from the temple.

And now we know he would do the same with the Mother of Parliaments.

Seems to me his recommendation here is not a strong one.