MICHAEL WALSH: AMERICAN FREE PRESS

According to Willie Nelson, ‘Your enemy is not the refugee. Your enemy is the one who made him a refugee.’

It is a profound understanding that gives pause for thought. After all, the world’s blocs and countries that keep themselves to themselves don’t have an unwanted and costly migrant problem.

On the other hand, alliances and countries were responsible for what Putin calls ‘the ball of empires’ (colonialism). Today, they sleep uneasily in beds of their own making.

American intervention in the Somali civil war began in 1991. It is yet another example of the road to hell being paved with good intentions.

Who or what inspired Washington to invade a distant African desert nation? Was it mission creep with sinister intentions? This nation is being torn apart by tribal conflicts.

Operation Restore Hope (1992-1993) was claimed to be an UN-led multinational mission to secure the delivery of humanitarian aid. The outcome culminated in the Battle of Mogadishu.

Deploying gung-ho U.S. forces to capture the warlords of Mohamed Farrah Aidid seems to be a pretty loose interpretation of ‘humanitarian aid.’

During the operation, two Black Hawk helicopters were brought down, 18 U.S. troops lost their lives, whilst hundreds of Somalis were slain.

America’s military humiliation was headline news and the source of countless public debates.

This was a prototype of military embarrassments still in the pipeline. This failure in international diplomacy continued until the Somali conflict ended in 1994.

Washington’s ‘humanitarian aid’ to Somalia resumed in 2007 and continues to the present. This tribal war is one of America’s longest-running military engagements, but as a media talking point, it is shadow-banned.

Washington has engaged in this remote region for 33 years. As a direct consequence, around 260,000 displaced people of Somali descent live in the United States. They currently endure a survival of sorts.

U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt’s ‘walk softly but carry a big stick’ foreign policy has a habit of ricocheting. This leads to what the English poet Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) described fittingly as ‘The Whiteman’s Burden’.

Those who can’t remember the past are condemned to repeat it. 

The NATO overthrew Libyan head of state Muammar Gaddafi (1942 – 2011). He recognises this truism. Why can’t the hapless foot-in-the-mouth Western Alliance leaders see it too?

“Now listen, you people of NATO. You’re bombing a wall. It stood in the way of African migration to Europe. It also blocked al-Qaeda terrorists.

“This wall was in Libya. You’re breaking it. You are idiots, and you will burn in Hell for thousands of migrants from Africa.”

The NATO Alliance, which is 67 per cent funded by the United States, is supposedly a defensive coalition. Yet the quarrelsome bloc has initiated five major conflicts. It has also been caught up in scores of minor skirmishes since its inception in 1945.

Reality check: NATO’s contribution to world peace has been zilch. However, the consequences of NATO meddling in the ways of the world have created numerous refugee crises.

The rare tourist may occasionally visit, as might a business visitor. Otherwise, Westerners going about their lives can hardly expect to chance upon a bearded and turbaned Afghan. As a world traveler, before 2004, I had met only one Afghan who was an airline pilot.

However, since the Afghan war debacle, 200,000 Afghans have been relocated to the U.S. 

This calamity of displacement occurs again at the expense of the taxpayers. It has had a similar outcome in NATO’s ‘protected’ European Union.

The most compelling lesson to be learnt must surely be the current catastrophe unfolding in central Europe.

Before the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the population of Ukraine was 55 million. Moreover, Moscow’s favourite nation prospered with full employment and a standard of living to be envied.

Then, the largest nation in geographical Europe, Ukraine, was the roaring Ruhr of the Soviet Union. The industrial class of Soviet Ukraine put the USSR on wheels and their satellites in space.

NATO has implausibly denied promises not to step one inch to the east. This understanding was agreed upon by President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s respective administrations.

In 2014, Victoria Nuland, U.S. Secretary of State, bragged of her part in overthrowing Ukraine’s elected president. She contributed to the installation of what can only be described as a failed state. This action had foreseeable dire consequences.

Official figures of displaced Ukrainian refugees can be taken with a pinch of salt. Today, the luckless nation’s former population of 55 million is reliably presumed to be fewer than 20 million.

Leaving aside a near-death experience of a zero birth-rate, NATO’s intervention has caused population displacement. It presumes over 30 million Ukrainians are either displaced or absorbed by Russia.

At such times of wide-ranging social upheaval and multinational distress, number crunching becomes increasingly difficult.

We can assume that 20 million Ukrainians have been affected by this Washington-inspired regime change operation. Some have fled to the Russian Federation. Alternatively, their former Ukrainian regions have chosen to be absorbed by their Russian neighbours.

This leaves the Western Alliance with 10 million headaches and yet another fiasco in a long string of NATO disasters. With friends like NATO, who needs enemies? 

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