Russia

Russia is a vast country of great resources. It is also as Churchill said: “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma”. What is not a mystery about Russia today when facing down a terrorist threat, is that it will not compromise nor give in to those threats. The only language a terrorist understands before he loses a bowel movement is terror itself, and one so great that all those virgins on the other side of his disconnected reality will not do it for him anymore. Churchill at the outset of World War 11 said on taking the reins of power: “All I have to offer you is blood, sweat, toil and tears.” It is the reality of suffering before the rewards of victory.

Here the enemy does not reside.....

....but here and what he stands for

The European federation is not working, formed in part as a military buffer in the imagined threat of an attack from Russia. It is amazing what the politics of fear can achieve. The Soviet Union is also a country that is larger than Europe by millions of  square miles and the largest country in the world, and yet because of that by and large, Europe tries to ignore it and their concerns. It is stupidity in the raw.

Every political leader needs a scapegoat, a pet peeve, in order that the citizen may take their eye off the ball long enough for them to stay in power or get re-elected. And that scapegoating has become standard against Vladimir Putin, even being compared at one time or another to Vlad the Impaler. Yet it is Russia who now brings the fight to ISIS and not the other way round, while Europe and the rest of the other democracies wring their hands in the posturing of crocodile tears and the blame game so they can keep things the way they are. Politicians do this by the long practice of subterfuge and lies. Nothing stays the same or the way they were for very long and now ISIS are the new street thugs around the corner.

It was Russia who were the first to fight alongside France side by side against ISIS. It was Russia that finally stopped Hitler when he went one goose-step too far into their country. Had he defeated Russia he would have defeated the world and all that they believed in, whether it was Communism, socialism, capitalism, and which included all religions whether they were extreme or not.

Europe's fate rests heavily on what is happening now should Russia fail in its task of fighting ISIS or their lesser known cousins. It is Russia again that we should be in support of and not against, for that is in effect fighting against ourselves and a battle we are bound to lose. They are again the buffer for a Europe in distress and under siege from outside and internal forces. 

There is no barrier against Russia that should be allowed to stand in the context of where she stands today on the world’s stage. The metaphors we use for England is the Lion that roars yet we call Russia ‘She.’ There may be more than a kernel of truth in it for she has shown the benevolence and understanding of a very patient woman; she also carries the fury of a real lion unlike the one with no courage in the Wizard Of Oz movie. There is the difference, and like the craven politics that engulfed Europe just before Hitler engulfed them that exist again today, we must not repeat the mistakes of the past. A divided Europe without Russia against ISIS is ripe for more murder and mayhem and it will go on until someone stops the murderers in their tracks with the families and networks that support them. 

We must also be clear on the surface and below it in our support of Russia even if it pains that they are doing what we know we ought to have done a long time ago. Without labouring on the causes of Middle East conflict, Russia did not have a hand in redrawing the borders there that have fostered the constant conflict and infighting without end that now threatens to go global. Churchill did most of that paperwork. The migrant issue that we have today will seem like a day full of butterflies in the future as we look back at the past. 

Russia is not the enemy and she needs to be told that. They are not the ones doing mass beheadings, or radicalising idiots with less brains than a flea; they are not doing hara kari at European football stadiums, nor shooting people in wheelchairs. What’s more, they have the iron and might to put to permanent rest the enemy that is ours too. What better way to start a dialogue of trust when that becomes clear to both sides even if it took only seventy years since the last war to know now that then we were on the same side too. It is not how things began that remains, but how they end for the victor will always get the spoils. Russia is not a mystery anymore and as if it ever really was.

Barry Clifford