Why Would Ben Hodges Lie.

Russian fairy tales contain such personage as Koschei Bessmertnyi (Koschei the Immortal). He hides his soul inside nested objects to protect it. For example, the soul may be hidden in the needle that is hidden inside the egg which is carried by the duck that flies away whenever anyone tries to catch it. Why nested objects? Because once the needle is broken Koschei dies. But the metaphor here is even deeper--this nesting "of the soul" is akin to deeply hidden and suppressed psychological complexes, which is a part of the soul, apart from the obvious security measures (nesting) to guard one's life which is in the needle. The needle is a representation of something we all guard as the utmost personal secret we take to the gave with us. We all have our needles, which are hidden in some eggs, inside the duck. Ben Hodges' needle, however, is not in the egg--it is deep in his ass and there is nothing secret about it, since it reveals Ben Hodges' most important and domineering complex--complex of inferiority. It is also a very relatable issue for the modern United States whose ascendance to superpowerdom happened because of the incredible combination of geopolitical factors which preserved the US from a devastation of Europe and Asia in WW II. 

Retired US Army Lieutenant General Ben Hodges has been accused of an “outright and primitive lie,” after casting doubt on the consensus that Russia lost millions of lives during World War II, claiming they were all Ukrainians. Hodges is the former Commanding General of the United States Army Europe and now serves as a lobbyist at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), a Washington and Warsaw-based pressure group that promotes the agenda of US military contractors in Eastern Europe. In addition to arms industry interests, it is also funded by the US State Department and NATO.In recent years, the Second World War has been a target for historical revisionism, with figures on both sides of the Atlantic being attacked for supposedly rewriting established truths for modern-day political gain. While most of the rhetoric has centered around claiming responsibility for the defeat of the Nazis, Hodges has shocked many commentators by suggesting that widely agreed figures surrounding the war’s casualties are actually false.

This is a very American idiosyncrasy--an extreme sensitivity to the fact that without sacrifices by historic Russia, known then as the Soviet Union, who did 80% of fighting and annihilating the cream of the cream of the Axis, there would have been no American (or Allies) victory. Ben Hodges is not Dinesh Souza who is an ignorant propagandist selling lubok of American exceptionalism both retail and wholesale in order to tickle American rah-rah and own ambitions. No, Ben Hodges is a graduate of the USMA in West-Point and of the Army War College, he also had under his command serious forces in Europe. So, it is reasonable to ask the question--who and how taught Ben Hodges military history, a mandatory subject in any military academy in the world, that this guy not only blatantly lies but parades himself as a jackass?

 

The answer to this is very simple: apart from being a paid shill for Banderite (crypto-Nazi) lobby in the US, Ben Hodges is butt-hurt with the needle of his "soul" (or complexes) protruding from his behind because he himself knows damn well that on the scale of military accomplishments he is nothing but a loser despite his senior general level officer paraphernalia. Ben Hodges never fought in defense of his country (as no American servicemen ever did starting from the times of America's founding), he never achieved any tangible military-strategic success and he knows that the United States didn't win any wars (except in Grenada) even against the third-rate opponents, never mind Russia who even in her disassembled state in 1990s could still wipe the United States off the map. Not to mention today, when Russia can do this conventionally against any combination of the forces in European theater. 

 

Latest Russian military successes, from shocking disposal of the Georgian Army under 120 hours in 2008 and Russians do not even brag about it, to effectively demolishing a bulk of ISIS in Syria, while preserving successfully Syrian State and its legitimate government, to unveiling revolutionary weapon systems and changing geopolitical balance--this bothers, irritates and drives Ben Hodges. He feels that he is merely a footnote, an insignificant word, a pronoun, in the book of Russia's military history which saw military-political figures many orders of magnitude larger than Ben Hodges ever was or will be defeated by Russians in a scale of operations which simply have no analogues in the US military history. The Ben Hodges' Koschei Needle is his envy and jealousy which no amount of spin and outright lies can  allay and he resorted to lowering himself to a level of part-time crypto-Nazi propagandist capable only of smearing someone who is simply better than him.

There are no respected academics that support Hodges’ assertion that millions of Russians did not die, but he received no pushback from the other speakers taking part in the talk. The Zoom call was part of the 12th annual US-Ukraine Security Dialogue, a conference organized by the Center for US-Ukrainian Relations, a lobby group accused by some of having ties to OUN-B, an offshoot of the far-right Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists. 

But then again, this is the level of the modern American "elites" and it is too bad that Ben Hodges just happened to be a man who wore the officer uniform. These "elites" will lie, they will cheat they will steal. It is one thing when this activity is performed by spies and politicians--one would expect this from them. It is totally another when a former very high rank American officer loses any sense of professionalism, honor and propriety, let alone of elementary respect for tens of millions of Russian people, civilians and soldiers alike, who went through hell, which Ben Hodges cannot even grasp, to defeat the deadliest enemy in history. Leningrad alone lost more people from 1941 through 1944 than the United States lost throughout its whole military history combined. One cannot compensate for the lack of class which Ben Hodges, once one reviews the history of his statements, never had to start with. But then again, try sitting still on your butt with a needle in it--an impossible task and Ben Hodges demonstrated this extremely well.