The entire anti-Russia brouhaha has reminded me of what Mohammad Ali stated after receiving notice from his local draft board that he was being forced to serve in the U.S. military during the Vietnam War. Ali declared. “I ain’t got no quarrel with them Vietcong.”

Ali had a point. After all, what had the Vietcong done to him or any other American? No Vietcong had ever come to the United States and attacked civilians, soldiers, or CIA or NSA agents. No Viet Cong had ever expressed any interest in invading and conquering the United States and taking over the federal government and the nation’s public-school systems. All that they were doing was trying to win a civil war that would put the entire country under the rule of Ho Chi Minh, a declared communist.

What did that have to do with Mohamad Ali or any other American? Oh, sure, the Viet Cong were killing U.S. soldiers but those soldiers were over there. Operating on orders of the Pentagon, they had invaded a foreign land thousands of miles away from the United States. They had embroiled themselves in another nation’s civil war. They were killing people over there. If they hadn’t invaded, no Vietcong would have come to get us despite the Pentagon’s and CIA’s Cold War claim of a worldwide communist conspiracy that was supposedly based in Moscow, Russia, whose aim was supposedly to start knocking down countries like dominoes until they finally got the Big Domino,which was the United States.

Moreover, the U.S. government never enacted any law making the Viet Cong an official enemy of the United States. And the U.S. Congress never declared war on the Viet Cong or North Vietnam, which the Constitution requires as a prerequisite for sending troops into war.

I look at the anti-Russia brouhaha in much the same way. What have them Russians done to me? What have they done to any American? In fact, what have they done to the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA except to deprive them of an official enemy?

Sure, I hear that them Russians bought some Facebook ads to influence my vote in the presidential election. I don’t think I ever saw the ads but apparently they were designed to induce people to vote for President Trump over Hillary Clinton.

Whatever, they didn’t work on me. I voted for Gary Johnson, the Libertarian Party candidate. What about those voters who were induced to vote for Trump because of those pro-Trump Facebook ads purchased by them Russians? Well, maybe we ought to reconsider the value of public (i.e.,government) schooling if people’s minds can be so easily swayed to vote for someone who they don’t really want to vote for.

But here’s the odd thing about the supposed Russian “meddling”in the 2016 presidential election. The Russians were supporting Trump because Trump was saying that he intended to establish friendly relations with Russia. That was different from Hillary Clinton, who made it clear thather attitude toward Russia was going to be one of antagonism and hostility.

Thus, Russia clearly had an interest in the outcome of this campaign. If they wanted a continuation of the Cold War, they would have supported Clinton. The fact that they supported Trump showed that the continuation of the Cold War was not what they wanted. They wanted to establish friendly relations with the United States, which is why they supported Donald Trump for president.

One can easily recognize this phenomenon in the activities of the 28-year-old Russian graduate student Maria Butina, who is now being forced to plead guilty to failing to register as an agent of the Russian government. Mind you, U.S. officials are not accusing her of spying for Russia. They are complaining that she tried to befriend the United States on behalf of Russia. After all, openly going to conferences sponsored by such conservative organizations as the Heritage Foundation, CPAC, and others and networking with members of the conservative movement is not exactly the best way to spy on the Pentagon and the CIA. All of Butina’s activities point to one aim: to improve relations between Russia and the United States.

That’s her real “crime.” Forcing her to plead guilty for failing to sign an official U.S. government registry and then forcibly deporting her is both a sham and a disgrace. She is being punished for committing the cardinal sin of the U.S. national-security establishment: trying to improve relations between the Russia and the United States.

No one is supposed to do that, whether American or Russian. In fact, that’s what got Trump into hot water in the first place. He made it clear from the get-go that his aim was to improve relations between the two countries.

By the way, it’s also what got President Kennedy into hot water with the U.S. national-security establishment after he gave his famous Peace Speech at American University in which he expressed his intent to establish friendly relations with Russia and the rest of the Soviet Union. (See FFF’s ebook Why JFK’s War with the National Security Establishment: Why Kennedy Was Assassinated by Douglas Horne.)

It’s worth noting that Congress has never enacted any lawmaking Russia an official enemy. Congress has also not declared war against Russia. Therefore, why should any American have to treat Russia as an enemy? What’s wrong with Maria Butina trying to improve relations between the two countries?What’s wrong with Trump doing so?

The answer to these questions and the root of the entire anti-Russia brouhaha lies squarely within the U.S. national-security establishment, i.e., the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA.

These three agencies, which are the most powerful section of the federal government, know that the reason they were called into existence after World War II was to wage the Cold War against the Soviet Union, which, ironically, had been Hitler’s wartime enemy and America’s partner and ally. But once the war against Hitler ended, there were people who favored converting the federal government from a limited-government republic into a national-security state, a type of governmental structure that is inherent to totalitarian regimes, including the Soviet Union.

In order to achieve this conversion, President Truman was told that he would have to scare the “hell” out of the American people. Thus, the Soviet Union, of which Russia was the principal member, was converted from wartime partner and ally to official Cold War enemy of the United States.Americans were inculcated with a deep fear of the Reds, who, they were told,were coming to get them as part of a worldwide communist conspiracy based in Moscow, which is the capital of Russia.

Thus, it was fear and animosity against Russia and the rest of the Soviet Union that drove the national-security establishment and enabled it to secure ever-increasing amounts of tax largess to fund its operations through the Cold War decades.

Then, in 1989 the Soviet Union unilaterally ended the Cold War, which, in turn, shocked the national-security establishment. Suddenly,their justification for existence and ever-increasing tax largess was no longer present.

That’s when they inculcated Americans with a deep fear of Saddam Hussein, which lasted for about 10 years. Then after the 9/11 attacks, it became the terrorists, then the Muslims, and for a time ISIS. Sometimes drug dealers and illegal immigrants have been thrown into the fear mix for good measure.

But all those fears are transitory. They don’t compare to the fear of Russkies and the Reds, such as those in China, Cuba, and North Korea and even Iran. That’s why the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA are hell-bent to do whatever is necessary to keep all of these nations at arms-length and viciously oppose anyone who dares to establish peaceful and friendly relations with them and the United States.

There is but one solution to all this fear-mongering and crisis-engendering: Dismantle America’s drastic and destructive experiment as a national-security state and restore a constitutionally limited-government republic to our land. That would constitute a giant step toward restoring liberty, peace, prosperity, and harmony to American society.