vincentML
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Joined: 10/31/2009
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quote:
ORIGINAL: tamaka
The year is 2017. Why should we be afraid of Russia? Caution i can understand. But outright fear?
One hundred years ago the Americans and British invaded Russia to intervene in the civil war between the Reds and the Whites. The Reds won. Lenin's stated intention was to spread the Bolshevik doctrine internationally.
There is a long history of Communist infiltration for the purposes of espionage and disruption of American Industry through the labor unions during the Great Depression and into every part of our government during WW2. The Soviets were really highly successful planting spies in our State Department, CIA, and Nuclear Energy facilities.
The Soviet system was untenable after the war although it hung on for dear life until 1989.
We had two huge "Red Scares" which shaped our historical/political psyches.
In 1920 the Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer lead an unconstitutional sweep of alien anarchists and communists while in the 1930s through the 1960s J.Edgar Hoover lead an intricate FBI counterintelligence program using burglary, listening devices, and warrantless phone taps. They even developed techniques to open mail and close it back up again without leaving a trace. Hoover developed a list of about 20,000 suspects qualified to immediate deportation if hostilities were to break out. People from every part of American life, especially the Civil Rights Movement and Hollywood. Hoover knew which politician diddled with which little boy or girl where and when, his counterspies were so effective.
So, we have a history of paranoia with respect to Russia. The problem is both Palmer and Hoover were at least partly correct.
Some forty letter bombs were mailed around the U.S. in 1920. One exploded on Palmer's doorstep in Georgetown. A horse drawn wagon exploded on Wall Street killing 32 people in 1920. In the 1950s and 1960s Russian spies were infiltrated deeply into our institutions.
As I said, we have a history of paranoia towards Russia but it is somewhat justified because now we are faced with Mr. Putin, Oligarchical and Kleptocarcal (?) whose stated goal is to return Russia to its glory days as a world hegemony, which it was briefly, sort of, maybe, in the 1960s and 1970s. Hard to pin down because it was so fleeting, just about the length of one sputnik orbit of earth.
Our thin line of defense is the Orange haired Manchurian Candidate who is ensnared with the Russian banks and looks like he is prepared to try to turn us into a satellite nation. Scared? You betcha.
That’s why we are afraid.
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vML
Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter. ~ MLK Jr.
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RE: Why should the US be afraid of Russia? - 
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