Consortium News' Joe Lauria was interviewed about an article he had written June 13, âDemocrats Put Partisanship Before Prospects for Peace.â which referred to their criticism of his meeting with Km Jong-Un and, more recently, about his upcoming meeting with Vladimir Putin. How the approach of this crop of Democratsâhe names Pelosi and Schumer as examplesâcompares with an earlier generation, citing Senators Ted Kennedy and Mike Mansfield as examples, who welcomed the trip of Nixon to Peking to meet Mao Tse Tung in 1972 in the midst of the Cold War and the hot war in Vietnam.
Unlike today's Democrats, with few exceptions, those in 1972 were able to separate their criticisms and loathing of Nixon from this gesture towards peace, accusing Trump, by having canceled the scheduled war games with So. Korean forces on the No. Korean border and describing them as âprovocative,â as having âgiven away the store,â
Lauria sees the present as the most partisan in memory with Democrats doing to Trump what Republicans did to Obama, oppose every measure he takes with what's good for the country ignored.
The situation with Putin is far more serious with false accusations of Russian aggression which is non-existent and NATO troops stationed and doing exercises on Russia's border and about to expand as laying the groundwork for overthrowing Putin and installing another US puppet in the mold of Boris Yeltsin. Lauria is particularly concerned about War Secretary Jim Mattis's 30-30-30 plan which calls on NATO allies to assemble 30 land battalions, 30 air squadrons and 30 combat vessels capable of deploying in 30 days or less by the year 2020. This, Lauria points is not for defense against non existent Russian threats but, more likely, but preparation for Western intervention in Russia.
Lauria decries Hillary Clinton for comparing Putin with Hitler after the annexation of Crimea and John Kerry having the nerve to say that invading another country's territory is unthinkable in this century, referring to Crimea, especially considering the US invasion of Iraq which he supported.
Lauria points out that anyone in the media seen denying Russia's âaggressionâ and criticizing the overreaction to this illusion is viewed as a âPutin sympathizer,â in a new wave of McCarthyism, led by the liberal Democrats such as Rachel Maddow, who Lauria refers to as a âuseful idior,â who is afraid that Trump will pull NATO troops away from Russia's borders.
He points out that recently released documents validate Russia's claims that the first George Bush's Sec. off State, James Baker, had promised Mikhail Gorbachev that there would be no NATO troops stationed near the Russian border after Gorbachev gave his approval for the combining of East Germany with the US supported West, providing it did not become a NATO member]. Unfortunately, says, Lauria, Gorbachev, didn't get promise in writing.