Dogs of war howling loud

Caught part of Matt Galloway’s show on CBC Radio this morning. He and his panel of experts were speculating as to what horrors Bad Vlad is about to unleash on not only Ukraine, but the “free world” at large.

Expert One was a reporter for a Western-financed internet news portal in Kyiv. Experts Two and Three were veterans of US think tanks lavishly financed by the likes of Lockheed-Martin and Raytheon. All the experts agree that Putin’s gonna go big if he can get away with it.

Yup, those Russian battle-tanks are gassed-up and waiting for the signal to seize the entirety of Ukraine… and who knows where they’ll stop? Poland? The English Channel?

That’s why it’s so important that all democratic nations stand united with Ukraine, because if we don’t stop Putin now, we’ll soon be fighting Russians in the streets of Brampton. The Big Dog, leader of the Free World dog pack, has made it abundantly clear that there will be no American boots (officially) on the ground, but we’re sending best wishes and rushing in hundreds of millions worth of weapons, so that the Forces of Righteousness can fight Putin’s hordes right down to the last Ukrainian.

For the most part, the hyperventilating across our legacy media studiously avoids any mention of actual Russian concerns, chief among them the steady expansion of NATO ever eastward. The semi-official rebuttal to that claim is NATO never promised not to expand eastward. Last Saturday The Globe’s Doug Saunders made the comically stupid argument that if such assurances were made, they were made to Gorbachev, not Putin, and therefore don’t count.

We tend not to hear much about the Minsk Agreement either. Kyiv signed off on that, promising greater regional autonomy to the predominantly Russian-speaking eastern areas of the country. Needless to say, that didn’t happen, nor do we ever hear any politicians in the West imploring the Ukraine side to honour their obligations.

What we hear a lot of is the sanctity of Ukraine’s territorial integrity and how Putin needs to give back Crimea before we can revisit “normal” relations with the subservient Russia of the Yeltsin era.

That’s an especially rich argument when Canadian politicians make it. Twice in my lifetime Canada has agreed to redraw its own “territorial integrity” if 50% plus one Quebec voters chose Quebec sovereignty. Prior to Russia’s “annexation,” a referendum was held in Crimea, and some 95% of the population voted to reunite with Russia as opposed to sticking with the crew of anti-Russian ultra-nationalists brought to power in the US-sponsored coup of 2014.

Double standards, anyone?

Yet here we are. The Brits and the Yanks are promising Zelensky a bonanza of anti-tank weapons. The Canadian poodles, always wanting to impress the bigger dogs, are clamouring that we must assist in the arming of Ukraine too.

Realistically, in the event we fail to contain our confrontational rhetoric, all those hundreds of millions in weapons and munitions will be destroyed in their warehouses in the first 24 hours of hostilities.

But not to worry… Raytheon and Lockheed-Martin will be happy to ramp up production and sell plenty more!