The End Justifies the Means, or Why the US Forgives Kiev of Mass Murder

Eternal Illusion

Starting from the time of Peter the Great, and perhaps even earlier, a veneration of the West has existed in Russian society.

The laws there are more just, the people are more cultured, and the technology more sophisticated, they say.

There was undoubtedly a basis for such sentiments. But the blind contraposition of a “progressive West” and an “obscurantist Russia” leads to completely false conclusions.

During perestroika, that sort of a stereotype appeared: the totalitarian Soviet Union, which had tried to impose the socialist system on the world, was the instigator of the Cold War while the U.S. and Western countries, piously defending the ideals of freedom and democracy and regarding human rights as the highest value, were alone forced to contain this expansion.

It is precisely this stereotype that makes the claim today, “The Kiev authorities are not committing mass murder of their political opponents and of civilians because if such a thing were happening, the United States, state-champion of freedom and defender of human rights, would never support Poroshenko’s regime.”

This is an absolutely erroneous conclusion that stems from a failure to understand the principles of U.S. foreign policy.

The main principle of this policy is that even the most bloody and heinous crime is not a crime if it’s done in the name of U.S. interests.

The Black Shadow of Condor

So that you understand why official Washington does not shudder at the burning of people in Odessa, at the death of women and children as a result of the shelling of eastern Ukraine’s cities, at mass graves with eviscerated bodies; I will give just one example from the recent past.

In Latin America in the mid-1970s, several extreme right-wing dictatorships, called up to stifle the growing influence of leftist forces in the region, came to power all at once with the support of the United States.

But they weren’t able to remove the leftists’ influence completely. And then the CIA organized Operation Condor, a large-scale “purge” of forces in the region who expressed anti-American sentiments.

The actual execution of the dirty work was left to the intelligence services of Chile, Argentina, Paraguay and other countries where pro-American dictators had by that time entrenched themselves.

Over the course of Operation Condor, according to the most conservative estimates, nearly 60,000 people were killed — communists, socialists, labor union activists and other ideological opponents.

They annihilated not only the leaders, but the rank-and-file members of organizations and members of their families, no matter their gender or age.

That the U.S. was directly involved with the killings became known in the early 1990s when, after the fall of military dictatorships in Latin America, documents confirming it came to light.

Stolen Lives

The investigation of crimes committed in the years of the military dictatorships is still ongoing. And here is a fact for you, officially proven by the court.

In the years of the so-called “Dirty War” in Argentina, nearly 500 pregnant women — communists, socialists, wives of members of the guerrilla movement and other “unreliables” — were captured and thrown into secret prisons.

These women weren’t killed until their delivery date drew near. The newborns were taken from their mothers and handed over to a military family loyal to the regime in which they were diligently raised as anti-communists. The Argentine junta thus “rooted out the red contagion.”

Careful readers of aif.ru will recognize the style: It’s precisely what was done by the Nazis, to whose atrocities a special investigation by “Argumenty I Fakty” journalist Georgiy Zotov was devoted. Just as Hitler’s forces brought up the children of the Soviet partisans and underground fighters they killed as “true Aryans,” so the Argentine junta tried to raise the children of the regime’s opponents as its loyal watchdogs.

None of the 500 mothers from whom children were taken away was freed. Some were shot, while others were sent on a “death flight” — drugged and dumped from a helicopter into the Atlantic Ocean.

In Argentina, they’re still looking for children who were taken away from their families, their names changed. As of now they have managed to find more than a hundred of the 500. But it is safe to say that many of the children whose parents were exterminated during the dictatorship will never know the truth.

Until the Expiration Date

Did the United States know about the crimes of its henchmen? Absolutely. But as long as the Argentine regime was protecting U.S. interests in the region, Washington turned a blind eye.

U.S. foreign policy hasn’t changed one bit since then. Thus, neither the children killed by the punitive forces in Donetsk and Luhansk, nor the hundreds of eviscerated bodies bearing signs of torture, nor any other most savage atrocity will make Barack Obama abandon support for the current Kiev regime.

And then the day will come when Petro Poroshenko and Arsen Avakov are written off as scrap and Ukraine will shudder in horror listening to the long list of atrocities committed by them.

But by no means will everyone in Ukraine live to see that day.