by Leo Hohmann, Leo’s Newsletter:
Part of the propaganda messaging the neocons love to repeat ad nauseam is that Russia is the new Nazi Germany and Putin is the modern Hitler. It makes good TV but what’s the evidence for this?
The neocon war drums are beating louder than ever for the U.S. to go to war on multiple fronts with various rival nations — Russia, Iran, China. All three were mentioned as needing a beat down from the U.S. military at a June 11 Senate hearing dominated by the slithery slimy Lindsey Graham.
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But it wasn’t just Graham.
The pro-war propaganda show started when General Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the top military advisor to President Trump, told senators that he does not believe Russian President Vladimir Putin would stop at Ukraine if he succeeded in conquering the country.
Caine made the comment during testimony before the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, where he appeared alongside Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to address U.S. military posture and global threats.
When Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) asked whether he believed Putin would stop at Ukraine’s borders, Caine said, “I don’t think he is.”
Hegseth, who was asked the same question, responded more cautiously with: “Remains to be seen.”
Graham, a notorious Russia hater and neoconservative war hawk, dismissed Hegseth’s answer, and scolded him like an misbehaving first grader, stating:
“It doesn’t remain to be seen. [Putin] tells everybody around what he wants to do.”
Graham pointed to Russia’s stockpiling of weapons, reportedly over and above what is needed for the war in Ukraine.
Of course, the reason for such stockpiling should be obvious to any objective military analyst. Russia knows it’s not just fighting Ukraine. It’s the whole of NATO using Ukraine as its proxy war machine that Russia is up against. Even Secretary of State Marco Rubio has admitted this. It’s the worst kept secret in Washington.
And the NATO war machine has continuously expanded over the years, deeper and deeper into Putin’s backyard. The leaders of France, Britain and Germany have all talked openly about their desires to make Ukraine a NATO member and send in their troops to help it fight Russia.
But Graham continues to push the tired old neocon narrative of an expansionist Russia, when all you need is a modern political map to see that the biggest threat to peace in Europe is an expanding NATO, encroaching closer and closer to Russian territory. NATO is up to 32 member states now, with Finland and Sweden the most recent additions. They’ve nearly completed the surrounding of Russia’s western flank. All that’s needed to complete that strategic maneuver is for Ukraine to join NATO.
All it would take to end this nasty Russia-Ukraine border war would be a bit of honesty and integrity. If you’re Trump, tell Putin that you realize past administrations have been spitting in your face and disrespecting your national-security interests and sign a guarantee that Ukraine won’t ever join NATO. Putin would likely end his “aggression” against Ukraine tomorrow if that guarantee were made, along with a few basic security measures. But Washington and its allies won’t do that.
To cover NATO’s own aggressive chess moves, Graham and his fellow neocons in the military-industrial-congressional-intelligence complex continue to accuse Russia of what NATO is guilty of doing. And, worse yet, they roll out the hyperbolic trope about “Russia is Nazi Germany. Putin is Hitler.” They did it again at Wednesday’s Senate hearing.
Graham said Hitler told everyone he wanted to “kill all the Jews,” arguing that Western leaders in the 1930s “miscalculated” and did not take Hitler’s words seriously, missing an opportunity to act early and head off the Holocaust.
“The danger of that is that like 50 million people get killed,” Graham said, referring to Putin. “So let’s don’t do that now.”
And, yet, Graham and General Caine never provided a shred of evidence that Putin has made public statements in any way comparable to those of Hitler. They just accuse him of it and we’re supposed to believe them.
Oh, don’t get me wrong. Putin has made threats. But his threats have always been tied directly to Western military escalations, crossing Russian redlines. You do this and I’ll do that…. This is the type of rhetoric President Trump uses almost daily, only worse. Trump repeatedly tells Iran that if it doesn’t sign his nuclear agreement he will bomb them into oblivion. Putin says he will bomb Germany if they allow Ukraine to fire German-made Taurus missiles into Russia and he’s Hitler.
I think the real source of the neocons’ anger toward Putin is, not his so-called “aggression” but rather his incredible restraint and refusal to take the West’s bait. He refuses to walk into the trap they have set for him. They’ve pulled out every trick in the book to provoke a Russian attack on a NATO member but Putin refuses to do so.
