Bowing down to Russia may be a fatal mistake
To the editor:
When I was a little girl, I remember seeing the smoke on the horizon from the World Trade Center going down on Sept 1, 2001. The events of that day are central to the global upheaval now underway. Twenty-four years ago, before the attacks on our Twin Towers, Russia was prioritized as the U.S. top national security threat. After 9/11, the Bush administration removed Russia from the threats list. At the time, the U.S. wanted to topple Al Quaeda in Afghanistan, and we pinpointed Uzbekistan as a good military launch point to enter. Being a Eurasian country within Russia’s sphere of influence, the U.S. cowered to Russia in order to operate out of Uzbekistan. At that point, practically eating out of the palm of Russia’s hand, the U.S. got right to work on GWOT. But that was only after the often forgotten Pankisi Gorge Conflict, wherein the U.S. fought side-by-side Russian military in Georgia as one of our first foreign interventions post 9/11 in search for “Weapons of Mass Destruction” — which were never found.
What are the precedents we suffer today from bending to Russia during GWOT?
About 1,300 days ago, on Putin’s Feb 23, 2022 declaration of war against Ukraine, Putin stuck his finger in the healing wounds of our recent past, mocking the U.S. for false pretext of war and blaming the Iraq War on so-called “U.S. imperialism,” a pretext which he himself used as a basis to invade Ukraine, one of the most destroyed countries on Earth now thanks to Russian invasion.
Flash forward to this very week, article 4 of NATO has been enacted after Russian drone attacks on Poland. We are more close to Article 5 than ever before, which could mean the beginning of NATO-based U.S .troops in direct combat with Russia’s military. If we do go to war with Russia, the U.S. can suffer massive casualties. Rolling out the red carpet for Vladimir Putin at the U.S. military base in Alaska was a very very big mistake by President Trump and his cabinet, and it will have serious consequences in the coming time…….we just may not see it just yet. Ukraine has already taken many willing American volunteer soldiers away from us. In the wake of World War III, let us pray for our American troops over there, and our American troops back home and around the world, that our leaders may bring us closer to a lasting peace through strong defense policy, so we do not repeat the same mistakes by bending to the Russian terrorist state.
Alexandra Zakhvatayev
Cape Coral