Vlad Vexler’s 6 Russian Lies Are Asymmetric Warfare — And We’ve Seen It Before With George W. Bush
- john raymond
- Jul 27
- 4 min read
Vlad Vexler has once again done the hard work many won’t: calling lies lies. In his latest video, he walks us through six core falsehoods that define Russian propaganda around its invasion of Ukraine. Each one is deliberate, dangerous, and corrosive to the moral and cognitive clarity required to resist tyranny.
And while Vexler needs little supplement — his clarity is rare and sufficient — I want to offer what I do best: a structured framework that shows these lies not as isolated tactics, but as part of a broader system of asymmetric warfare. And I want to show how they’re not unique to Russia. We’ve seen this exact system of internal and external sabotage before. In America. Under George W. Bush.
1. Lie One: Russia didn’t invade Ukraine
Vexler opens with the most audacious denial of all: that no invasion occurred. Russian propaganda obscures the obvious, turning an unprovoked military assault into a vague “complicated situation.” But this isn’t merely absurd — it’s strategic. As I’ve written before, the goal of asymmetric actors isn’t to convince, but to confuse. The attack is successful not when people believe the lie, but when they stop knowing what to believe.
Bush’s Iraq War operated on the same axis. “We know they have weapons of mass destruction,” he said. They didn’t. The press repeated it anyway. Intelligence was cherry-picked. Doubt was erased. Anyone who questioned the narrative was cast as naïve or unpatriotic. Like Russia, the U.S. didn’t try to earn trust — it manufactured certainty through volume and repetition.
2. Lie Two: Destruction is happening, but who knows who’s doing it?
Russia encourages a depoliticized fog: yes, buildings are bombed, but the source is unknowable. This tactic fractures moral clarity. It leaves the average citizen confused, disempowered, and deferential to the regime’s interpretation.
This, too, has precedent in the Iraq War. As civilian casualties mounted and sectarian chaos unfolded, we were told the situation was complex. It was al-Qaeda. It was insurgents. It was Iran. Never us. Never the architects. The destruction was visible, but ownership of it was always just out of reach.
3. Lie Three: Russia is liberating Ukraine
This is classic Orwell. War is peace. Occupation is liberation. Putin claims moral authority by inverting morality itself.
Bush said something similar when he declared that we were bringing democracy to Iraq — even as we shock-and-awed our way through civilian neighborhoods, black-sited prisoners, and dissolved their state in chaos. The logic is identical: we destroy you to save you. And if you resist, it only proves your unworthiness.
4. Lie Four: Yes, it’s bad — but it was necessary
This is the autocrat’s fallback. Putin’s invasion may look cruel, but in his narrative, he had no choice. Ukraine was a Western puppet, an existential threat to Russian security. Vexler expertly dissects this, showing that Putin isn’t defending Russia — he’s defending his regime.
But again, we’ve heard this before. Bush and Cheney argued Iraq posed an imminent threat — through phantom weapons, fictional ties to al-Qaeda, and a vague “mushroom cloud” looming over America’s future. It was a necessary evil, they claimed. That it turned out to be unnecessary never slowed the war machine. Because necessity was never the point — fear was.
5. Lie Five: Russia and Ukraine are the same people
This erases Ukrainian identity, rendering sovereignty illegitimate. It’s a form of cultural gaslighting: “You’re not real, so we can do what we want.”
But again, look at Iraq. The U.S. pretended to understand the country — its tribal networks, its history, its politics — while utterly disregarding them. We thought we could remake the nation in our image, that liberalism would bloom under foreign fire. We did not respect Iraqis as Iraqis. Just as Russia refuses to respect Ukrainians as Ukrainians.
6. Lie Six: Everyone does it, so who cares?
Whataboutism — the final line of defense for every authoritarian. Yes, Russia invaded Ukraine. But what about the U.S.? What about Gaza? What about colonialism? Vexler dismantles this beautifully, noting that this is not moral comparison, it’s moral obliteration. It is designed to make moral clarity impossible by universalizing hypocrisy.
And this is where the parallel becomes most uncomfortable for American audiences. Because the success of Bush’s war — the fact that it happened, that it was sold with lies, and that almost no one paid a price — is exactly what gave Putin cover. He knows the West has done this too. He watched us. He studied us. And when we failed to hold our own leaders accountable, we licensed the next generation of autocrats to perfect the same tools.
This Is Asymmetric Warfare
These six lies aren’t just propaganda — they are the weapons of the 21st-century battlefield. They erode trust, confuse identity, and disable the civic immune system. The fact that they were pioneered — or at least normalized — by a U.S. president makes the fight harder, not easier. Because we can’t just point abroad and call it evil. We have to look inward and name the method.
What Vexler does so well is show the pattern. What I seek to do is explain the structure beneath it. In asymmetric warfare, the goal is not victory through force. It is survival through confusion. Deny the facts, reverse the meaning, flood the space, and paralyze the public. That is Putin’s model. But it was Bush’s first.
If we are to resist this globally, we must admit what we’ve done. Not to excuse Russia. Not to fall into moral relativism. But to reclaim the one tool we still have left: moral clarity. And that starts by calling every lie by its true name — whether it wears a Russian flag or an American lapel pin.
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