Let’s face facts, the only reason we give half a shit about Ukraine is so we can keep selling arms. That’s what we do, and we don’t care who we send them to. We’re turning more to State to run the country’s foreign policy, but the five-sided fistagon still keeps peddling warfare all over the globe.
So, with that in mind, is it no surprise that we find ourselves in bed with Russian assets to fight the thing we hate most? That would be Islamists, whose extremist popular revolutionary notions is anathema to the conflicts that the U.S. and Russia are responsible for. So long as we have major business interests in the Middle East and Africa, we will continue to fight them and back some truly odious folks.
Said folks are awful on both sides…
MALIAN SOLDIERS AND foreign fighters, identified as members of the Russia-linked Wagner Group, have committed extrajudicial executions and forced disappearances of dozens of civilians in central Mali since December 2022, according to a new Human Rights Watch report shared with The Intercept. Researchers found that the longtime U.S.-backed Malian military also tortured detainees in an army camp and destroyed and looted civilian property as part of its protracted campaign against militant Islamists.
In essence, we are working together by being on the same side as the damn Russian mercenaries. The myth that Prighozin was any threat to Putin’s firm grip on the Russian army is in hindsight laughable. But since we are still pretending to AUMF our way to killing revoutionary Islam, we don’t seem to care who our bedfellows are.
I won’t say I am some sort of a Russo-phile, but it can hardly be argued that at least in this century and the last that Russia has been under siege, within and without. The betrayal of the revolution of 1917 happened as soon as Trotsky put his head in the way of an icepick. What Marx discovered about our behavior should have and did change the world, but unfortunately every time there is a Red revolution the revolution betrays itself. Simpletons insist that Communism only works on paper, and by the data they may be right, not counting Cuba’s rough-around-the-edges successes. Today, former Communist countries have become capitalist fiefdoms, like Vietnam. China is a totalitarian technocracy that violates every spirit of a worker revolution. And Putin is, as far as anyone can tell, allergic to freedom-they jail their dissidents harshly and people who oppose them take amazing falls or get very sick and die. However, it is small wonder that Putin wants to breathe life back into the Soviet Republic, subsuming Ukraine and other small nations to do so. But we have never, ever trusted the Russians fully. We’ve aggravated their attempts for hegemony at every turn.
Russia most certainly finds Islam to be as annoying as the West when it comes to Russia’s desires. Indeed, they have a bad taste in their mouth after dealing with the lunatic warlords in Afghanistan. Extremist Islam has proved to be quite a match for we playing the superpower game.
At bottom, the world is still divided into nations. And only two are playing at grandmaster level. Bin Laden tought us to destroy by hook or crook anyone who abetted 9/11 (and anyone even remotely peripherally linked to them) and Russia has been watching. But helping Wagner stay afloat while supporting the terroristic Malian junta seems odd, but unsurprising as we choose winners regardless of their political practices. If we get some Russian for-profit slime on us, no one is watching.