by John M. Curtis
(310) 204-8700

Copyright February 28, 2015
All Rights Reserved.

                Dishing a painful dose of reality to the U.S., senior Russian diplomat Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Rybakov echoed his boss Sergei Lavrov’s the Feb. 23 remarks in the U.N. Security Council, blaming the U.S. for all the problems in the Middle East and North Africa.  After listening to Secretary of State John Kerry accuse Russia of lying to his face Feb. 24 about the Ukraine, Lavrov opened up with both barrels, blaming today’s Mideast chaos on former President George W. Bush’s Iraq War, toppling Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein April 10, 2003.  Since Saddam’s army tore off their uniforms and jumped in the Tigris River, Iraq became the breeding ground for terrorists now engulfing the Middle East with the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria—started by the late Abu Musab al-Zarqawi who battled U.S. forces in Afghanistan in 2001 until killed by the U.S. in Iraq June 7, 2006.

             With the help of Saddam’s former lead Gen. Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, ISIS blitzkrieg captured some 30% of Iraq and Syria during a six-month period from Jan. 2014 to June 2014.  Iraq’s battered military was spread far too thin to stop ISIS from capturing Mosul in oil-rich Kurdistan June 10, 2014.  Before seizing Mosul, ISIS Imam Abu Barkr al-Baghdadi declared a new Islamic caliphate July 6, 2014, demanding loyalty from Sunni Islam’s disparate radical groups, including al-Qadea’s al-Nusra Front.  Once Bush-43 got rid of Saddam, the prophecies of former Bush-41’s military officials came true:  The dreaded power vacuum opening the floodgates of terrorism.  Knowing this, Lavrov and now Rybkcov blasted Washington for daring condemn Russia for consolidating power in its land grab in Ukraine.  Rybakov declare that the U.S. “lacks the moral right” to judge Russia in Ukraine.

             Kremlin officials expect the same patience during Oct. 7, 2001 Operation Enduring Freedom, invading Afghanistan to track the late Osama bin Laden down in the wake of Sept. 11.  When the Taliban refused to handover Bin Laden, Bush-43 authorized the now 14-year war, toppling the once-U.S.-backed Taliban government Nov. 12, 2001.  Bin Laden had flown the coop, eluding U.S. Special Forces on motorbikes through Afghanistan’s rugged Khyber Pass to the no man’s land of Waziristan, Pakistan.  U.S. officials—especially Kerry—don’t acknowledge how the well-documented history of the U.S. backing Bin Laden to fight a proxy war with the Kremlin in Afghanistan from Dec. 24, 1979 to Feb. 16, 1989 soured U.S.-Russian relations.  When the Taliban and Bin Laden’s mujahedeen fighters prevailed on the Soviet Union Feb. 16, 1989, Taliban came to power in 2004.

             Kremlin officials have long memory for how the U.S. sabotaged Kabul’s Russian backed Afghan leader Nur Mohammed Taraki, leading to the eventual collapse of the Berlin Wall Nov. 9, 1989 and eventual end of the Soviet Union under Russian Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev Dec. 26, 1991.  Russian President Vladimir Putin recalls well how the U.S. battled the Soviet Union during the Cold War, eventually leading to its collapse.  Putin and the Kremlin view the U.S. as its main ideological rival, competing across the globe for world domination, and, more recently, global energy sales.  As Putin consolidates land grab in Ukraine’s strategic Crimean Peninsula and Donbass region of Southeastern Ukraine, he continues to violate the Sept. 19, 2014 and Feb. 12 Minsk ceasefire agreements.  Putin pushes pro-Russian separatist to complete his land bridge from Russia to Crimea.

             No one in the U.S., EU or NATO wants to confront Russia’s military aggression.  Putin figured when he met no resistance seizing Georgia’s South Ossetia and Abkhazia regions Aug. 7, 2008, that he can do as he pleases in Ukraine.  German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande sold Ukraine down the river Feb. 6 when they met with Putin at the Kremlin.  Six days later, Russia, Germany, France and Ukraine signed a new ceasefire deal, essentially forfeiting Southeastern Ukraine to the Kremlin.  Rybakov insists, like Putin and Lavrov, that the Kremlin has nothing to do with the actions of Alexander Zakharchenko’s pro-Russian separatists that continue to battle for more Ukrainian land.  Calling Kerry’s charges of Russia’s breaches of the Feb. 12 Minsk agreement “absolutely unfounded” and “unacceptable,” Rybakov warned of more Russian countermeasures.

             Whatever happens in Ukraine, Russia likes to throw up to the U.S. the past administration’s failed Iraq War that turned Iraq and Syria into a hotbed of Islamic terrorism.  Russia’s Foreign Ministry rejects the U.S. calling Moscow out on its actions in Ukraine.  Russia wants the same kind of deference given to the U.S. when it invaded Afghanistan Oct. 7, 2001 and Iraq March 20, 2003.  After Sept. 11, despite disagreements with the U.S. over its actions in Afghanistan and Iraq, Moscow let the U.S. prosecute its war on terror without much interference.  “Our bilateral agenda with the United States has become utterly negative because of the destructive course taken by Washington,” said Rybakov, putting the White House on the defensive.  Putin and his smooth-talking foreign ministers sling propaganda like a Frisbee, blaming the whole mess on the U.S.-backed Feb. 22, 2014 coup in Kiev.

John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news. He’s editor of OnlineColumnist.com and author of Dodging The Bullet and Operation Charisma.

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