CIA Veteran: Biden's Proxy War in Ukraine Evokes Strong Memories of Vietnam Disaster
13:55 GMT 21.12.2023 (Updated: 13:57 GMT 21.12.2023)
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President Joe Biden's "Russia threat" narrative conjures up the now-debunked Cold War "domino theory" spearheaded by Washington during the war in Vietnam, Ray McGovern, a former CIA officer, told Sputnik.
Joe Biden claimed earlier this month that the US can't let Russian President Vladimir Putin win in Ukraine since "he won't stop there."
"[If] Putin attacks a NATO ally — if he keeps going and then he attacks a NATO ally — we're committed as a NATO member to defend every inch of NATO territory, and we’ll have something that we don’t seek and that we don’t have today," the US president stated on December 6.
In response, Russian President Putin called Biden's claim "complete nonsense", adding that he believes that his American counterpart understands that. "Russia has no reason, no interest — no geopolitical interest, neither economic, political nor military — to fight with NATO countries," Putin emphasized on December 17.
"The more I hear Biden and his advisers, the more I think they actually believe that the Russians are out to take over Europe like us," Ray McGovern, a former CIA officer who prepared the president’s daily brief during the Ronald Reagan administration, told Sputnik.
"It reminds me of back in the sixties when I was working on Russian policy toward Vietnam and Southeast Asia. The domino theory or the Russians theory, the Russians were trying to take over the whole world, especially Southeast Asia. Not only that, but Indonesia, the whole world just better go down the drain if the Russians prevail in Vietnam."
The "domino theory" meant that "when one nation falls to communism the impact is such as to weaken the resistance of other countries and facilitate, if not cause, their fall to communism," as per a 1964 memo from the Board of National Estimates to the director of central intelligence. The US used the now-discredited theory to justify its involvement in the Vietnam War years after its unfortunate military campaign in Korea.
15 December 2023, 13:06 GMT
Eventually, the US got bogged down in Vietnam, with its leadership continuing to stick to the false narrative. The same is happening now in Ukraine, according to the CIA veteran: the more ludicrous Team Biden's idea about Russia's threat to Europe gets, the more desperately they stick to it.
"I saw this happen before," McGovern said. "There was a false narrative. We were winning in Vietnam and our forces were just about to complete the victory, except General Westmoreland was saying, and this is late 1967, 'We just need 208 more troops because we've got to go into Vietnam, right up to the Chinese border, and then we'll win for sure'. Now, that was delusional. That was crazy. And, you know, those of us who have been around a while knew what happened last time we went up to the Chinese border in Korea. Right?"
"So what happened? Well, during late January, early February, there was a so-called Tet Offensive where the North Vietnamese - and actually there was the Viet Cong in the south - amounted attacks, vicious attacks on every hamlet, town, village, the capital province in in South Vietnam, belying Westmoreland's rosy forecasts that we could prevail."
The Tet Offensive – which lasted until April 1968 – went down badly among the US public. Later, 53% of American respondents said that sending US troops to fight in Vietnam was a mistake. The Vietnam War polarized US society, triggering a series of nationwide protests. The October 15, 1969, peace protests brought together millions of people across the United States.
"So what's my point here? It took a major defeat of US forces and South Vietnamese forces in South Vietnam to put some sense, and then it took some wise men (...) And there ain't no sane wise man around in Washington anymore. And even if they were, Biden wouldn't know where to look for them. So the situation is even more delicate right now, the more so because we're talking about two powers, each of which have nuclear weapons, Russia and the United States," McGovern said.
One should also bear in mind that Team Biden's proxy war in Ukraine benefits defense contractors and various industries related to defense production. Similarly, the US military-industrial complex capitalized immensely on the Vietnam War.
If one wants to justify feeding the US defense contractors even more, one needs to continue creating a fuss over the alleged "Russian threat", according to the CIA veteran.
"You have to raise the threat. And the threat is, of course, the big picture, of course, is Russia, because that always works. And the people are pretty much denied the real story because of the mainstream media, they don't listen to Sputnik. They don't listen to other things that I'm on, they don't listen at all.
"They're really brainwashed and I use that term advisedly. And that's a very sorrowful situation because they could be led into a wider war, thinking that they're doing the right thing against their real threat when the threat is synthetic."
20 December 2023, 17:17 GMT
