Editor’s Note : Views in the article do not necessarily reflect the views of borkena.com
By Samuel Estefanous
They say every adult American who was alive on 7 December 1941 remembers exactly where he was and what he was doing when the Imperial Japanese military attacked the American naval base at Pearl Harbor. It remains a milestone in contemporary American history. In a way it defined an era, you know like our forefathers would mark a reference event to calculate age-something like በትሳስ ግርግር አባቱ ገና ሞሳ ጉብል ነበር፡፡
Last Sunday, Ukraine pulled off a surprise attack deep into Russian territory stretching across five time zones far out east at Irkutsk in Siberia and at Murmansk close to the Norwegian border. The surprise attack was so neatly coordinated and planned for 18 months that it made the FSB (the heir to the KGB) look like a staggering zombie holding a half-finished open bottle of vodka. One thing is for sure the mass drone attack rekindled the world’s collective memory of the tragedy that was Pearl Harbor and its dire consequences for Imperial Japan.
1-For once RT sounded like UT (Ukraine Today)
RT has been my reliable source of news and views for so long. Though the television is pulled off air, we have found alternative channels to access the network. Naturally the news of the unprecedented attack was broken to us by the RT App on Sunday in real time.
In contrast to the surprise drone attack, Ukraine’s incursion into the Kursk was idiotic. It was pressed on the Ukraine by sleepy and bored retired NATO Generals and liberal pundits. Ukraine got in and got out after sacrificing tens of thousands of its soldiers and that was the end of. What is more, the blunder allowed Russia the moral right to create a border buffer zone and looks like it has taken total control of the Sumy region in the Ukraine and the West wouldn’t even talk about it.
But the attack on military airfields in Murmansk and Irkutsk? That was spectacular. Even we here in Africa who did everything short of enlisting to join the Russian army (just kidding) were taken aback.
RT must have shared our sentiment. Breaking with tradition, it reported the attack in eerie details without dropping hints about Western involvement and it felt like reading CNN, Reuters, the Telegraph or the Hill. Incidentally, the latter have had field days. Five days later they are still gloating over the adventure breaking and re-breaking the news.
I tried Tass. It featured a small deserted village the army had taken in rural Sumy. It maintained deafening silence on the real breaking news. Honest to God our news outlets beginning from private forums like Alemeneh Wasse to Fana covered the event more sympathetically and in greater detail than the Russians did.
Something doesn’t feel right. Who knows the FSB might not be a zombie after all. I don’t know, maybe the Ukrainians had burnt up dummy cardboards. Perhaps the Russians have deliberately let the Ukrainians carry out the attack to enable them to do the reverse attack a gazillion fold as they are doing in Sumy. They might deliver the final solution to the Ukrainian question now that the world is re-drawing the victim vs bully alignment.
After all, in retrospect Pearl Harbor had made the United State the undisputed premier world leader with no viable adversary to this day. Bottom line, ever since Japan has been a US overseas territory-from military perspective. I mean, the existing Japanese Constitution was drafted and ratified by General Douglas MacArthur, wasn’t it? Driven by bravado, the Japanese gambled recklessly and enslaved five generations of their citizens to come, not to mention inviting the Armageddon that was Hiroshima and Nagasaki up on themselves.
2-‘Something’s Gotta Give’
I like this American saying. Somehow at some cost sooner than later this war has to end. Old Harry Truman reasoned that way when he signed the executive order to nuke Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Something’s gotta give. The war cannot go on for another five or more years, he had resolved.
The way I see it, the Ukrainian conflict has reached a tipping point. I am not just alluding to the war-fatigue, you know, like having enough of the war in Ukraine and scrolling related news fast. The Russian economy has been holding out miraculously. It has absorbed all the shocks. However a time comes when it says ‘this far but no further’. No question about it, Russians are one of the fiercest patriots one would come across. The other day, I was watching a documentary about Russian settlements in Brazil and one hundred years after their great grandparents fled South to escape the horrors of Bolshevism, their descendants talk like they are living somewhere along the Volga and not at the other end of the World. Yet even this patriotism wants to take a break at some point, inquiring for how long are we sending our kids to ‘the meat grinder’?
Somehow at some cost the war will come to an end even if it takes barrages of Orshnik to accomplish the great feat.
3- ‘Destroy Russia’
I don’t buy the contention that Joe Biden had been brain dead for the past three years and that Dr. Jill Biden, Obama, Schumer and Pelosi were actually running the country. True, while in office, sleepy Joe took a nap every quarter of an hour but the moment he woke up he railed against Putin and Trump. Half awake and dizzy from the onslaught of hate fever, he almost had started WWIII. He called Putin SOB, and we all have heard what we didn’t know was he had a plan ‘to destroy Russia’. Recently, Brazilian President Lula da Silva has told a French publication that Biden wanted to destroy Russia and he had discussed the subject openly with him. For now he is off the picture but Emmanuel Macron, Keith Starmer and Germany’s Merz have forged a ‘three musketeer’ kind of alliance to ‘break Russia’. Lucky for Russia, Trump and Rubio have got on the lunatic ways of the trio but I guess Russia won’t count on Trump to ensure its continued existence as a Nation. It is stoking all threats and is certain to strike back before it is too late by denying the West a clientele country.
4-What is in it for us?
I don’t even know for sure. All I know is it looks like almost all Africa (from Kenyan lawyer PLO Lumumba and Burkina Faso leader to Ride drivers in Addis) is more than just enthusiastic discussing the conflict in the Ukraine. Perhaps it appeals to the universal sense of justice we all are endowed with by the Almighty.
God Bless
The writer can be reached at : estefanoussamuel@yahoo.com
Editor’s Note : Views in the article do not necessarily reflect the views of borkena.com
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