When I was a young boy, I didn’t know either one of my grandfathers, but I always envisioned Dwight Eisenhower as the grandfather I never knew, keeping the commies off me growing up in Pittsburgh.
I believe that if you were in the time frame of the Cold War regardless of where you grew up, your parents, or friends, or teachers would tell you your city was targeted for thermonuclear war. I later met guys from Detroit, Cleveland, Washington, D.C., and New York City who believed they were the first place to be struck when Khrushchev or Stalin launched. My Uncle Gene was sure it was Pittsburgh because of the coal mines and steel mills. Giving this some thought later, I don’t know how much steel would have made a difference.
But it affected the movies we saw from Hollywood, it was the foreign policy of the United States bringing us McCarthyism, The Thing From Another World, and the Vietnam War.
Now seemingly we are at war with Russia. But not against communism and certainly not against Stalin or Khrushchev. Back to Eisenhower, he warned us of the military industrial complex. Now as the last man turned off the lights in Afghanistan, and all the rending of garments and tearing of hair that we left hardware behind, I think the complex cheered that on because now we can sell them more. Joe Biden, remembering what his former boss said about there being nothing Biden can’t “f” up, has sent over $64 billion of military hardware and assistance to Ukraine.
We have all up and down the Front Range now what we should be calling Bidenviles. And yet Putin is the devil and somehow these people believe the Russians are subverting American democracy. The industrial lobby makes it clear sanctions just aren’t good enough. Advocates on both the GOP and Democrat sides and the media summon up the cry for blood.
Joe Biden and Uncle Sam, what a team.
Do you understand how this is going to be the inevitable outcome? George W. Bush screwed up American foreign policy in the Middle East and to an unforeseeable future; now Biden has done the same in central Europe. We now have the biggest war in Europe since the end of the Second World War. We were able to stay out of it all through my childhood, my young adulthood, and now as an old man, what am I watching?
Remember Eisenhower stayed out of it when the Hungarians were crushed, the Poles were crushed, and Stalin and Khrushchev stayed out when we crushed the government in Guatemala and Iran. How do these fools think they can end this? As people far smarter than me have said, it’s easy to get into a war, the hard part is getting out.
Orwell knew this. So, people have said whether it’s lockstep or goosestep, what is it the industrial complex now wants of you and your children when we face such domestic catastrophes that we now must stake the future of our country with a NATO alliance against Vladimir Putin.
Remember Eisenhower’s warning and the warnings of Thomas Jefferson. After the endless wars in Afghanistan, Vietnam, Iraq, Syria, and Central America, imperialism isn’t just a term thrown around by the Marxists, it really was the policy of our country. Like so many different things happening in the country today, people just don’t want to believe it. The truth speaks for itself. This is a rathole. If the European Union wants Ukraine to be in the EU, so be it. if Ukraine wants to be in the EU, so be it. The question to ask is, why are we involved?