A LETTER TO U.S. AMBASSADOR BRIGETY

The Letter I Would Write to Ambassador Brigety
If I Were a South African

by David Cherry, Schiller Institute USA
June 9, 2023

H.E. Ambassador Reuben Brigety
Embassy of the United States
Pretoria, South Africa

Dear Ambassador Brigety,

I think it proper and necessary to respond to your accusation
on May 11 that South Africa has supplied munitions to Russia.
I do not have knowledge of whether any munitions were sent
to Russia. But—whether sent or not sent—your accusation
was an example of the bullying that you claimed your country
does not practice. It was an example of ‘Do as I say, not as I
do’.
I wish to remind you of a like circumstance, in which the
United States itself would have been considered the culprit
according to your recent unfortunate address.

American Neutrality
At the beginning of World War II against Nazi Germany and
Fascist Italy, the United States, while still a declared neutral,
arranged to supply tanks and planes to the British and the
Soviet Union. (R.A. Divine, The Reluctant Belligerent:
American Entry into World War II, 1967, p. 107: “while still
technically a neutral”)
When Britain declared war on Germany in 1939, the United
States remained neutral. American opinion was strongly against fighting a war—until December 7, 1941, when Germany’s ally, Japan, bombed Pearl Harbour in Hawaii. That
changed everything, overnight. It led to U.S. declarations of
war against Japan and Germany.
But nine months earlier, the Lend-Lease Act of March 11,
1941 had enabled the United States government to sell,
transfer title to, exchange, lease, lend, or otherwise dispose of
munitions, to any nation whose defense the President
considered vital to the defense of the United States. (Emphasis
added.) See it here:

https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/lend-lease-act

The South African case today would be very similar, if indeed
South Africa were to sell munitions to Russia. South Africa
recognizes that Russia is a nation whose defense is vital to its
own security and sovereignty. (That is true for all African
countries.) Why? In a unipolar world, in which Russia has no
significant power, South Africa would have no friend with
power comparable to that of the U.S., to turn to. The defense
of South Africa and all Africa thus requires that neither Russia
nor China be crushed.
It is also in South Africa’s national interest to sustain
friendship with all countries, including America, and it strives
to do so.
But U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin declared on April
25, 2022 that Russia must be crushed and deindustrialised, so
that it can never again commit aggression against a neighbor.
In such a condition, it would also have to submit to U.S.
hegemony. The President, the Secretary of State, and the
National Security Adviser agree with him in word and deed. It
is true that the Biden administration now understands that its
proxy war against Russia—using Ukraine as cannon

fodder—has failed, and the administration is now looking for
a way out on that particular front. Yet the crushing of Russia
and China remains the administration’s objective.
Austin’s words on April 25, 2022:

https://ua.usembassy.gov/secretary-antony-j-blinken-and-
secretary-lloyd-austin-remarks-to-traveling-press/

At the Munich Security Conference in Munich, Germany, on
February 17, 2023, French President was hearing such talk
about the need to crush Russia, and sought to dissociate
himself from it the next day:

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/macron-france-wants-
russias-defeat-not-crush-it-2023-02-18/

If you think it is ‘outrageous’ (your word) to call the Ukraine
war a proxy war between the U.S./NATO and Russia, and to
say that it was induced by U.S./NATO actions, you may be
living in an information bubble. Does not Prof. John
Mearsheimer at the University of Chicago call it a proxy war?
And Ray McGovern, for 25 years a CIA analyst on the Russia
desk, who prepared the President’s Daily Brief and chaired the
preparation of National Intelligence Estimates in the 1980s?
And Col. Richard H. Black, who was the chief of the Army
Criminal Law Division at the Pentagon after flying combat
missions in the Viet Nam War? And Chas Freeman, former
U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, former Deputy Chief of
Mission to China, and vice chairman of the Atlantic Council
for 12 years? They and many others call it a proxy war. You
can find some of their contributions on YouTube, where they
explain why it is a proxy war and what dynamic brought it
about.
Seen in this context—of the U.S. striving to maintain its status
as the sole superpower—your May 11 attack on South

Africa—like many other U.S. actions—is consistent with the
policy to crush Russia as stated by Secretary Austin.
Your accusation misrepresented South Africa as a partisan in
the Ukraine war. It appears that one of your purposes was to
scuttle the African Peace Initiative of six African presidents
led by our President, Cyril Ramaphosa, which had been in the
works behind the scenes for many weeks. Such an initiative
would not be credible if President Ramaphosa could be
portrayed as a partisan. Despite your attack on May 11, the
Africa Peace Initiative was successfully launched on May 16.
Mr. Ambassador, there is a better America than the one that
motivated your attack. Let us recall it.

A Better America
In 1956 when General Eisenhower was the U.S. President,
Egypt’s President Nasser nationalised the strategic Suez Canal
and promised compensation to the British and French owners.
What then happened? Britain, France, and Israel went to war
against Egypt and were expecting that President Eisenhower
would join them. He refused. He realised that it was not in
America’s national interest, and that it would not be in the
interests of America’s friends in the Middle East. Instead,
President Eisenhower sought and obtained a resolution from
the UN General Assembly condemning the invasion. Without
U.S. participation, the war effort collapsed.
Please read about it here:

https://billofrightsinstitute.org/essays/eisenhower-and-the-
suez-canal-crisis

President Eisenhower was not always on the side of the
angels, but it is important that he responded to President
Kwame Nkrumah’s request for help in his initial effort to
build a major hydroelectric dam in Ghana. We recall President Obama saying to Africa, ‘We don’t do infrastructure’.
President Obama’s statement is reported, for example, here:

(https://lawrencefreemanafricaandtheworld.com/analysis/nigeria/)

President Eisenhower, in his farewell address at the end of his
second presidential term, also warned the America people of
the growing power of what he called the ‘Military-Industrial
Complex’.
President John F. Kennedy succeeded President Eisenhower in
1961. No one could say that Eisenhower or Kennedy was an
isolationist president. Kennedy, too, represented a better
America. There were then American troops in Viet Nam on a
small scale to help the Saigon government fight the
communist uprising. By 1963, the Saigon government was not
succeeding, and there was a debate within the Kennedy
administration over whether the U.S. should escalate its
involvement, or get out. In October, President Kennedy made
the decision to get out. He was not being advised by
‘communists’ or ‘Russians’. Among those who advised him
was the famous retired army general, Douglas MacArthur, in
1961. President Kennedy concluded that greater U.S.
involvement was not healthy for the United States. A month
later, in November 1963, he was assassinated, and U.S.
involvement in Viet Nam was immediately escalated. An
attempt was even made to conceal the fact that Kennedy had
made such a decision. Read about it here:

https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/galbraith-exit-strategy-
vietnam/

The ensuing Viet Nam War was a nightmare and a disaster for
the people of Viet Nam. It did great damage to America, too.
It opened the door to all of the ‘wars of choice’ that followed,
including the destruction in Somalia, Serbia, Afghanistan,
Iraq, Syria, and Libya. (Where was the ‘Protect’ in the ‘Right

to Protect’?) It damaged Americans’ conception of
themselves. It damaged America’s reputation in the world. It
shifted drug consumption in America to a higher level. And
many Americans were killed and maimed, or were
permanently damaged psychiatrically.
We have had many bad presidents, but presidents Abraham
Lincoln, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, and
John F. Kennedy were inclined in varying degrees to follow
the patriotic foreign policy of presidents George Washington
and John Quincy Adams.
It was Adams who, while Secretary of State, spoke of
America and her foreign policy to the Congress on the Fourth
of July 1821, and said,
‘Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence has
been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions
and her prayers be.
‘But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy.
‘She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of
all.
‘She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.
‘She will commend the general cause by the countenance of
her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example’.

The Cold Coup in Washington
The murder of President Kennedy by elements within several
U.S. agencies—including the CIA, Pentagon, FBI, and Secret
Service—was the opening shot of a cold coup that continued
to unfold with the assassination of Malcolm X in 1965 when,
having converted to Islam, he rejected hatred of white people;
of Martin Luther King in 1968, when he began to mobilise

Americans against the Viet Nam War; and Sen. Robert F.
Kennedy in 1968, who opposed the Viet Nam War and was
expected to win the Democratic Party nomination for
President.
Read about the assassination of President Kennedy here:
James W. Douglass, JFK and the Unspeakable (2010).
For the context, read what an insider has to say, former Chief
of Special Operations in the Pentagon, Fletcher Prouty, who
wrote The Secret Team: The CIA and Its Allies in Control of
the United States and the World (1973).
See Prouty interviewed about his book here:

America has never been the same since.
Today, the beneficiaries of the coup, the neoconservatives in
both parties, are utterly blinded by their preconceptions and
the arrogance that flows therefrom. They believe that toppling
governments and resorting to force is the answer when softer
methods fail. And if these fail, they redouble their application
of the same methods. But the world has changed. They see it,
but they misread it.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said that escalating
toward a nuclear confrontation is good, because it ‘makes it
easier for President Putin to make the hard choices’ that
Blinken is looking for. It is clear that Mr. Blinken believes
President Putin will be the first to blink. Does he not know
that the Soviet Union sacrificed 27 million lives to defeat Nazi
Germany in World War II? Twenty-seven million. Does he
not know that Russians today are patriots and that, as in World
War II, they are becoming more determined patriots as they
feel increasingly threatened? Even recently, Russians thought
well of Americans, but that is changing now.

Neither side will blink. Unless the game board is overturned,
there will be a thermonuclear war.
A nuclear war may kill us all. Many who don’t die from the
blast will die in the massive firestorms that follow. The rest
will probably die from cold and starvation, as the clouds of
soot in the stratosphere spread around the world and obscure
the Sun for years—nuclear winter. See nuclear war and
nuclear winter in this short video:

and here:

Will the Real America Stand Up?
But now, at last, there is a possibility of something closer to
the real America returning to power, as the 2024 Presidential
election approaches. There are candidates who reject the
policy of permanent war and of escalating to the brink of
nuclear war. They oppose the concept of American dominance
at any price, and they reject the small clique that worships at
that altar.
My respectful proposal to you, Mr. Ambassador, is that you
revisit America’s history, to which you are no stranger, and
examine your conscience. Whether you remain at your post or
not, ‘go home’ to your heart. Take inspiration from I
Corinthians 13 in the Bible (verses 4–6 and 11):
‘Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does
not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely,
does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not
rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; … When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things’.

Yes, let us become men! You are on the stage of history: You
are not a spectator. Which America will you represent?

I wish you well.

Sincerely,
David Cherry
The Schiller Institute
USA