Douglas Valentine: The CIA and the War in Ukraine (2022) (+ My Views)

This is a great video that explains a lot, but even in the beginning, the author either doesn’t know or doesn’t admit how deep the rabbit hole goes. For example, he mentions that the U.S. was “surprised” by Pearl Harbor. However, the U.S. had already confiscated Japanese property, much like they did with Russia’s assets today, in a deliberate provocation. They knew this would force Japan to attack. At Pearl Harbor, all the aircraft carriers were conveniently stationed outside the base, and the U.S. military leadership was aware that Japan was on its way. Equipment and personnel were sacrificed in order to turn a pacifist nation—where over 50% of the population didn’t want to join WWII—into one with over a million volunteers for war in just a few days. That’s why, in the PNAC (Project for the New American Century), they called for a “new Pearl Harbor,” which, of course, was 9/11. Nonetheless, much of what the author says afterward is fascinating.

At 37:30, the author says:

“Let me ask one thing. Isn’t this sort of indoctrination happening to all of us now through the internet? What effect does having a whole society so ideologically motivated have, in your opinion?”

Well, that’s the end result of decades of military propaganda in the United States, and it goes back to the Iliad. The rulers of society, who own the property and control the means of production, hire people like Homer to tell their story. Their story only focuses on the heroic soldier who goes off to fight in foreign wars and becomes a hero. It’s the hero myth. The myth tells us that the only way to become a true hero is to fight and die for your country overseas—supposedly in service of the nation, but really in service of corporations like General Electric, Morgan Stanley, and pharmaceutical companies.

This has nothing to do with the 90% of the population who don’t want to get involved in wars or see their sons and daughters sent off to die. But enough people buy into this hero myth. It’s everywhere in the media, which is why Ken Burns can get away with calling the Vietnam War a ‘noble cause.’ Otherwise, he’d be saying that the soldiers who fought and died there did so for nothing. You can’t have that in America. America can’t be a near-imperial power without a steady conveyor belt of cannon fodder.

That’s the purpose of military propaganda, based on this idea of the hero myth ingrained in Western literature. After the Vietnam War, there were one or two anti-war films, but then movies like Rambo and The Deer Hunter came along—which could just as easily have been called ‘Hate Hunter.’ The Vietnamese were portrayed as evil, while the only victims shown were American soldiers.

The narrative since then has portrayed American soldiers as the sole victims of the Vietnam War. You never hear about the landmines still scattered across Vietnam, the people dying from Agent Orange, or the sanctions that crippled the country until 1991. You never hear about the enemy’s suffering, only about American soldiers, because they’re the heroes.

That’s the nature of military propaganda: it’s become more ideological, more fascist, and more ingrained. Many people really believe this myth. The whole purpose of their life is to join the military and fight in foreign wars. If they can’t, they become mercenaries. Our society glorifies violence in defense of the country.

Pacifists, like those in Ukraine, are vilified. You can’t be a pacifist in Ukraine today. Zelensky has essentially outlawed pacifism. This situation has been evolving for decades and is now playing out on the Ukraine-Russia border. A lot of it has to do with the mythology of the war hero and the fascist military-industrial state. Communism was supposed to counteract this, but it got off track a long time ago. Fighting it is hard, and the fascists have gone all in. The world is getting smaller, and only the strong survive. Fascists have always glorified strength, commitment to ideology, and violence—just like the Nazis. No mercy for the enemy. That’s what’s happening now, and that’s why Americans support it. They’ve been trained to believe that’s how the world works, and how it must work.”

While the author makes a lot of valid points, I think there’s a bigger picture. Global events like the “War on Terror,” climate change, and the COVID-19 pandemic are all mechanisms for control. While smaller players fight among themselves, there’s a larger, global trend at work.

To quote Whitney Webb:

“This isn’t free-market capitalism—it’s crony capitalism, it’s cartelism. These are fundamentally corrupt players who don’t play by the rules. They manipulate the free market to advance themselves, generate more money, and become more powerful.

This is really a merging of the public and private sectors, but it’s the private ones in control, operating as a cartel rather than free-market capitalists. That’s essentially where we are now. This was admitted before Congress by a prominent figure, Samuel P., now best known as the stepfather of current Secretary of State Antony Blinken. He testified before Congress about the rise of what he called the ‘trans-ideological corporation.’ Essentially, Western capitalists cooperated with those running state-owned enterprises in the Communist bloc. Together, they built a network of corporations so powerful they could render the nation-state irrelevant. This is the model we have today.”

Now, as we witness global economic collapse on both sides, we must ask: is it just an accident? China’s economy is collapsing due to the housing market, despite ghost towns being known for years. Meanwhile, the West is facing its own economic collapse, driven by Ponzi schemes with overvalued assets and hidden losses.

Raoul Pal once said:

“You are being slaughtered, and you don’t realize it. It all happened already in 2008. The world stopped. The whole debt system blew up, and we’re paying the debts by printing money—pure debasement. The system broke in 2008. We then changed the financial system with the Basel III agreements, forcing banks to lend less and hold more treasury. Why? Because there would be a lot of treasury supply. The whole system—everyone knows it’s broken.”

Everyone is aware of this, but the problems are only now surfacing. I suspect something big is coming, perhaps tied to the “Great Reset.” Whitney Webb mentioned a cyber-attack scenario, and if Klaus Schwab has been planning a cyber epidemic simulation, it’s worth remembering that he also planned a coronavirus pandemic simulation just before COVID happened.

While the West and BRICS may fight, the “trans-ideological corporation” that makes the nation-state irrelevant could be planning another global event. Just like the “War on Terror” and COVID-19, this next event may be global in scope—perhaps a large-scale financial system hack. Such an event would allow them to blame hackers for losses in the economy instead of facing the consequences of China’s housing bubble, Western Ponzi schemes like FTX, and other financial scandals.

It could be framed as a “global digital war on terror,” targeting misinformation, internet crime, and more. They could claim it’s necessary to make the internet a “safe space,” free from bad ideas for what Walter Lippmann called the “bewildered herd”.

“Walter Lippmann:…that the mass of the public are just too stupid to be able to understand things. If they try to participate in managing their own affairs, they’re just going to cause trouble. Therefore, it would be immoral and improper to permit them to do this. We have to tame the bewildered herd, not allow the bewildered herd to rage and trample and destroy things.” -Noam Chomsky, Media Control

“It is crowds rather than isolated individuals that may be induced to run the risk of death to secure the triumph of a creed or an idea, that may be fired with enthusiasm for glory and honour… Such heroism is without doubt somewhat unconscious, but it is of such heroism that history is made.” -The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind – Gustave Le Bon

“How numerous are the crowds that have heroically faced death for beliefs, ideas, and phrases that they scarcely understood!” -The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind – Gustave Le Bon