by Steve Cook
Often described as the "Wise Man of Politics" by his wife, the deeply thoughtful Joris Bohnson today gifted the world pearls if political wisdom that, while they might not actually avert Word War Three, may at least bring it forward.
In the great tradition of saying very wise things things free of contamination by facts or evidence or even common sense, that nobody but half a dozen corporate oligarchs and media owners ever thought up before, Bohnson solved all the world's ills in a single pronouncement rich in inanity and blessed with a clarity of vision only those hell-bent on political advancement at any price can enjoy.
His wisdom can be summed up in these simple but nevertheless disingenuous points:
Everything is Vladimir Putin's fault and the UK, USA and so forth are blameless victims in a Kremlin plot to Take Over The World without actually invading anybody.
Everything was going just fine until Vladimir Putin came along, America was being nice to everybody until Putin forced it to Get Tough and start trying to get a nuclear holocaust going.
The Middle East was getting along peacefully and not being bombed, dismantled or pillaged by America and her vassal states (Israel, UK, France and other far-flung provinces).
On the odd occasion that Muslims were in fact reluctantly . . . um. bombed or droned to buggery (every year of this century but the century is only 16 years old so it's not that many), the Muslims were in fact quite happy to be killed so long as it was for Democracy.
It was only when Russia intervened and started bombing the popular and humane humanitarian movement known as ISIS. much to America's dismay, that the Muslims started not to like it very much.
Unlike the Evil Russia, America and its stooges never once killed anybody who did not have it coming, such as hospital patients, wedding parties, bus queues, innocent bystanders and other Forces of Evil. Let's face it, anyone fey enough to be an innocent bystander or live in a town earmarked for demolition is just asking for trouble. Besides, despite the odd million or two accidental killings, America did manage to avoid killing anyone in Syria or Libya and so forth belonging to ISIS, which must count for something!
America was trying to help Syria's Assad without being asked to by creating ISIS and arming and financing extremist mercenaries that sought to topple Assad, then bombing said extremists but somehow managing to miss. Then Russia came along to lend a hand at Assad's request and starting bombing the extremists with considerably more success, thus helping Assad, thus pissing off the Americans who wanted to help Assad by helping the extremists topple his government. When Assad then started to win the battle for his country, this annoyed the Americans, who had wasted a lot of money and weapons helping the extremists only to see it all go up in smoke so to speak. In Washington's view, this is a War Crime of some magnitude. This also spoiled the plans of American corporations and other benign not-at-all-criminal-or-corrupt organisations to bring the joys of free enterprise to the Middle East, in exchange for which beneficence, said charities planned to walk of with its oil.
This also annoyed Israel, which had been looking forward to Assad being helped to destruction and Putin is very much to blame for putting a large dent in its dreams of a Middle East Empire. Bohnson, a self-styled "passionate Zionist" concluded that war with Russia is therefore the only option if we are to stop Putin bringing more disappointment to the humanitarian efforts of Western charitable organisations such as the Military Industrial Complex or NATO.
Putin's Russia spends as much as a whole tenth of America's expenditure on war, which is a sure sign of his intent to Take Over The World or, worse, stopping American from taking it over.
Russia has as many as TWO military bases on foreign soil, thus outnumbering the mere 300 or so maintained by the USA, which is quite right to feel threatened,
Russia is guilty of invading Ukraine, even though it didn't and provoking NATO to set up military bases all along its borders to peacefully sort out the Russian threat. Even though there has not yet been a threat, it is considered in Washington - "quite reasonably so" opined Bohnson,"if I may say so without appearing to grovel in the hope of a leg up the political career ladder, which I'm not, honestly!" - that there is no point waiting for a threat to actually happen before intimidating the evil genius who might one day, possibly, threaten somebody. This is in the great legal tradition of locking people up BEFORE they have a chance to do anything and thus making everybody safe. Besides, it it just a small step from threats to boots on the ground or assisting terrorists as many people in receipt of the lost art of American diplomacy will tell you.
The engineering of the coup in Ukraine by the West that toppled its elected government and installed a minority government of neoNazis, much to the annoyance of Ukraine's Russian-speaking majority, and virtually everybody in Crimea who voted en masse to rejoin Russia, was all Vladimit Putin's fault. Putin is manifestly guilty of living next door when all hell broke loose. If he had just cooperated with Western plans to Rule The World and a few neighbouring planets by turning a blind eye to it all, none of this would have happened.
Bohnson's bio lists "historian" as one of his many talents and the blindness of an historian to recent historical facts in Ukraine and Syria can only be explained by a problem with his short-term memory. Evidently, if you want some version or other of events from hundreds of years ago, he's your man but if you want an accurate recollection of what happened yesterday, best to ask someone whose intellect is still intact.
Be that as it may. a war with Russia that lays waste to the planet will solve the problem as war is the only language Putin understands.
You would never find The USA or UK threatening or invading anybody, murdering their citizens or walking off with their natural resources but this is just the sot of thing Russia might one day do, so best to kill the human race off before it gets the chance.
The problem is in persuading small minorities such as the citizenry of dozens of countries that this is a Good Thing, as nobody is very enthusiastic about this latest wheeze to enrich corporate oligarchs and other needy sectors.
But Bohnson is doing his best to win hearts and minds and rally humanity to the cause of its own suicide. This is believed to be best achieved by lying through your teeth and hoping that enough people are dumb enough to believe you.
Meanwhile, experts warn that not having World War Three could have catastrophic consequences for the US economy, which is dependent on the maintenance of conflict so as to prevent its bankruptcy getting worse - or even being noticed. Economists are convinced that a profitable nuclear wasteland is the only way to balance the budget by killing off the world's surplus population (anyone whose surname is not Rothschild. Rockefeller, Soros or Clinton).