False equivalence between Iraq, Ukraine wars

George Wright claims the US and NATO started the Ukraine war to overthrow the Russian government. I don’t believe it.

In 1985, I returned to CSU, looking to get my degree and be done. I needed one prerequisite, Political Science, taught by Mr. Wright. He had a visceral dislike of many American icons, ranging from Ronald Reagan to General Motors, and even the song “Let it Be” by Paul McCartney.

Mr. Wright is drawing a false equivalence between the Iraq wars and the Ukraine war.

Yes, there was little excuse to go into Iraq in 2003. But the US has never invaded a neighboring country, and then proceeded to systematically kill, rape, torture and enslave its civilian inhabitants. Which is what Russia is doing without an once of shame or regret.

Russia has never been a democracy. Under the Czars, the serfs were little more than slaves, only being “emancipated” in 1861. This just upgraded them into “peasants,” that’s sharecroppers Russian style. When the Czars were ejected in 1917, the peasants got a new set of bosses.

Under Stalin, millions of Ukrainians died of starvation when Russia sought to “reform” its agriculture. Stalin also had no qualms about enslaving millions of Russians in gulags, or simply taking them into the back courtyard and giving them a pill in the back of the head.

It looks like Vladimir Putin is cut from the same cloth.

Climb down from your ivory tower, Mr. Wright, and stop drinking the Russian Kool-aid.

— Dale Rasmussen, Chico