You think that after
the inmates take over the asylum nothing more freakish can happen, and you are
proven wrong by the likes of James Fay who demonstrates how much more bizarre
things can get. He tells all about it in the article he wrote under the title:
“Crowdfunding for Freedom” and the subtitle: “Eastern
Europe needs more military help to deter Russian aggression. Let's
pitch in, since Western leaders won't.” The article was published on October
15, 2014 in the Wall Street Journal.
Basically, Fay's
idea is for NATO to turn itself from the alliance that it is now – one whose
mandate is to defend its members – into an organization that will be structured
after the street gangs of big American cities such as Chicago . But because the organization he has
in mind will be operating on a scale larger than a city, it will have to borrow
a few ideas from the street gangs operating internationally under such names as
IS, al-Qaeda, al-Shabab and Boko Haram – incorporating some of their techniques
into the NATO operations.
Fay says he wants to
do that because the Russians have proven themselves to be bad guys when they
teamed up with the Nazis and invaded their neighbors in the year 1939. He goes
on to say these people are just as bad now because their leader – the one who
goes by the name Vladimir Putin – has seized Crimea from Ukraine, and has
provided weapons to rebels that used them to shoot down a commercial aircraft.
This same Putin also launched a brutal stealth invasion of Ukraine , says
our author, without giving any detail.
And because the West
did precious little to defend Ukraine despite promises to this effect made 20
years ago, and because the West did not arm the Ukrainian people so that they
may defend themselves, James Fay is now suggesting that ordinary citizens from
around the world contribute money to buy weapons for shipment to the Ukrainians
and to the other Eastern Europeans who feel threatened by Russia.
For this to work,
says he, the contributions will have to be sent to NATO headquarter. Upon this,
the organization will transform itself into a center that will oversee the
worldwide operation. The way things will work is that the highly qualified
people of NATO will receive requests for assistance from recipients, assess the
needs of each, give advice and training where needed, and release the right
kind of weapons – to each according to the mission they intend to undertake.
And they will be let loose to go after the Russians anyway they see fit.
He justifies doing
all that because the sufficient reason in his view is that there is a popular
and successful online tool called crowdfunding. He explains that under ordinary
circumstances, people use that tool to fund charitable causes, but in the case
he is championing, the money will be used to defend freedom which – we must
presume – is the greatest charity of all in his opinion. And he proudly points
out that he has a name for it. He wants to call it The NATO Freedom Fund.
He also wants that
pride to extend to the contributors. To this end, he proposes to make the
giving, a private journey of the conscience for each contributor. He explains
how that will work: “Individuals and groups could pay for specific items … for
instance, a U.S. or Canadian descendant of Lithuanian grandparents might pay
for an M16 rifle ($586) and put it in the hands of a Lithuanian soldier. Polish
cultural clubs might buy a TOW antitank missile ($65,000) for the polish or
Latvian army. An association might provide a Stinger antiaircraft missile
($38,000) for the Estonian navy.”
He ends the
presentation by telling the media people and the leaders in NATO that the Fund
will mean assisting the Baltic States to
defend the integrity and sovereignty of their territory. The trouble is that our
man forgot one important detail. As it happens with every lunatic, he did not
take a moment to think how the other side might react or what other groups
around the world might copycat from an operation such as this.
NATO was set up to
be the cop that would go after the robbers. This man, James Fay, says it is
more fun to be a robber than a cop, so let's turn the cops into robbers, and
let them loose to go after the other robbers. He must be thinking there is
truth in the saying: It takes a thief to catch a thief.