Lt. Col. Dr. Mark Obrtel is a 48 year old officer of the army of the Czech Republic who has served with distinction in his country’s missions under NATO command in the former Yugoslavia and Afghanistan. We would never know of him were it not for the fact that on December 30 he returned all his medals awarded for this service, and justified his decision in a letter to the Czech minister of defense that could have been written by Paul Craig Roberts or Patrick Buchanan. 

Had a senior officer of an army unsubservient to the Empire (of a major player, such as China or Russia, or a minor one, such as Venezuela, Belarus or Armenia) done something similar, the Western media would have noted it with gusto. Obrtel is a non-person, however, because what he has done and said is equally uncomfortable to Washington and to its European minions. Before considering the implications, here is the text of Lt. Col. Obrtel’s letter to the Minister:

Dear Mr. Minister,

?Due to the reasons I elaborate upon on the attached three-page letter which is an attachment to this document, I urge you to deprive me of the badges of honor from the military operations of the Army of the Czech Republic performed under the NATO umbrella.??

I thank you for your understanding and assertively request your endorsement of my application.??

Reserve Lieutenant Colonel Marek Obrtel MD, with his own hand??

An open letter to the defense minister and the Czech government??

I am returning the war decorations because I am deeply ashamed of having served a criminal organization which the U.S.-led NATO is, and to its malformed interests across the world.

By this gesture, I also want to unambiguously express my complete disagreement with the U.S. policies towards Russia, the EU member states, and all free and sovereign countries in the present as well as the past and especially with the consequences of these policies.??

I also want to demonstrate my disapproval of the attitude of the Czech government and other competent institutions when it comes to the misinformation campaigns and the intentional information embargo on key events that are relevant for the current geopolitical and military situation in the world. In this context, I also blame all the responsible organs for the total inactivity in their task to prevent a global conflict (especially) between the U.S. and Russia on the European territory.??

Last but not least, my act is meant as a sign of my support for the Czech president Miloš Zeman and his effort to objectively analyze crucial internal and international political questions and his struggle “against everybody” to protect the sovereignty and identity of the Czech nation and its global security.

??I received a degree from the Military Medical Academy and I became a professional army physician with a diploma from the Charles University in Prague, I am a reserve lieutenant colonel of the Czech army, and during my tenure, I have spent years in some of the highest chairs of the army’s medical services, always in positions listed in tables with the track of becoming a colonel.

??The most important occupations included my job as the commanding officer of the Czech Army Contingent in Afghanistan, the superintendent of the 11th field hospital of the Czech Army in Afghanistan, the vice-commander of the operational commandership of the armed forces’ medical service, or important positions within the Section of army’s healthcare of the Military headquarters of the Czech Army.??

During my career within the military operations, I would get familiar with the Bosnian and Herzegovinian matters as well as issues of other successor states of former Yugoslavia, with Afghanistan, very shortly with the questions surrounding the Iraq conflict, and especially with Kosovo.??

I have always fulfilled my duties as well as I could and as my strengths allowed me, in agreement with my opinion that similar activities can’t be done at a “50% capacity”…??

But already at those places, and especially in Kosovo, I was growing suspicious that our path (actions in units of troops organized by NATO) isn’t right…

??Whenever I concluded with the feeling that “something isn’t right”, I was trying to comfort myself by the idea that I was working as a doctor and my mission was to help to the sick and injured ones and those members of the local populations that were affected by the activity of our troops. This comfort has prevented me from seeing the problem in its entirety for several years and to understand that what NATO, and especially the U.S., is doing in numerous countries of the whole world must be ranked as the highest degree of perversity and intoxication by power. But even more importantly, all these conflicts were intentionally fabricated while the excuses to launch such conflicts and the American imperialist policy in these conflicts doesn’t seem to have any limits. Everyone who opposes the imperial ambitions of the U.S. in any way, even if he were defending the identity, economy, and sovereignty of his nation, must be “erased off the map of the world”.??

I cannot identify myself with the international U.S. policies and once I began to be interested in the roots, essence, development, and consequences of the actions led by the organizations and structures of the U.S. after the war everywhere in the world, I turned into an unequivocal opponent of these policies. I must unambiguously classify it as ruthless, profit-seeking, and insatiable imperialism that won’t be stopped by anyone or anything. The consequences primarily include the “burned down lands” and millions of casualties in the whole world. The causes are the power interests of the world’s hegemony and – more recently – also the desperate attempt to prevent the ultimate collapse of the American empire.

?Wherever I served around the world, I have never avoided the contact with the local populaces – both contacts related to my healthcare services, or simple conversations sparked by random encounters with the people or mutual visits. That is why I never depended exclusively on the NATO-related information sources, but I could also analyze and evaluate the situation from all conceivable perspectives. On the former Yugoslav territory, I had the extra advantage of having quickly mastered the local language at a level that has allowed me basic communication. All these events (and others) have allowed me to understand (and convince myself about) the meaninglessness and monstrosity of the NATO and especially U.S. actions in the context of many artificially ignited conflicts whose goal was to destabilize all the countries that did not want to be satisfied with the roles of obedient puppets and vassals of the U.S. Unfortunately, I was becoming a component in this machinery myself.??

It has always been a problem for me to respect superiors who are incompetent, uneducated, inconsistent in their opinions, or incapable, if I had to use one word. On the contrary, I greatly respect the “bosses and commanders” who are the “right men on their places”. For the latter men, I would be able to work for them until being spent out, as Czechs figuratively say…??

During my professional career as a military and later civilian physician, I have also met a large number of incompetent politicians and superiors who have exchanged their personal profit and careerism, mixed with hypocrisy, ignorance, and populism, with honor, education, and desire to honestly work for the society.

??This replacement has always had important, and sometimes fatal, consequences at every level. Our top-tier politics is no exception – politicians hired as puppets of the global exponents have created a big debt, sold and stolen our country by parts, internally undermined it, and buried all the moral values and they threw us to the tentacles of power structures such as the U.S.-led NATO. The politicians are leading, or at least tolerating, a massive misinformation campaign, hide many critical facts that sometimes affect the future of our lives as well, kowtow to the American “bosses”, and silently tolerate their very strange bloody practices. In this way, they are bringing our country towards an abyss. They are also doing so by their inability to perceive the integrity of Europe including Russia as a counterbalance to the American efforts to enslave the world under its power influence in the times when the economic potential of the U.S. is eroding and it is a matter of when, not if, the whole American system collapses or the U.S. will provoke a fatal war conflict that will exploit Europe as the battleground (for the third time in the history).??

How diametrically different is then the attitude and phrases of our president, Miloš Zeman, who – despite a massive wave of outrage in the U.S. and Brussels, and indignation by the pro-American sold “fifth column” – formulates the things as they are, uses the right names to call things, and localizes the genuine culprits and causal relationships and who isn’t afraid that Europe also includes Russia but not the U.S… and other facts. I respect Zeman for those reasons and I encourage all those who care about the fate of our country and ourselves to loudly express their lasting support against “the American practices of CIA realized not only by the U.S. Ambassador Andrew Schapiro”, against the red cards of the traitors from the Prague cafés, and against the policies of the “sycophants in Brussels”. He is a directly elected president of ours, so we shouldn’t let anyone take him away from us…

??I am not brave enough to go to fight to the East of Ukraine in the new conflict created as a product of the desperate American imperialism – against the self-declared Ukrainian government. Not only do I lack the courage. Such a decision would be meaningless because this conflict is about something completely different than the search and application of the human rights and freedoms, i.e. the values “for which” the U.S. has already devastated so many countries in the world.??

But I am able to find enough courage to unambiguously say that in the new cold war and related matters, I am on the side of the current president Russia, a man whom I deeply respect for the detached view, restraint, and balance with which he is responding to the provocations by the West, and for his matter-of-fact, transparent reactions to all the accusations and lies surrounding all the recent events.

??One doesn’t have to be a great expert in political science, sociology, military matters, politics, or related issues to figure out who is the aggressor and why he is doing it and who is defending himself. Common sense, a modest amount of intelligence, and the ability to connect the dots is, along with hours of the research of available sources and materials from several sources, enough.

??I have reached my own conclusion a long time ago and I insist it is the right conclusion.??

And that is why I can’t and I don’t want to wear my medals from the NATO operations anymore because they have been given to me by a criminal organization led by the U.S. As long as the U.S. and similar countries will be leading NATO, there is no room for these medals on the left side of my uniform.??

Dear Mr. Defense Minister, I urge you to remove all the awarded NATO medals from me, and I thank you for this act in advance.??

Reserve Lieutenant Colonel Marek Obrtel MD

IT IS SIGNIFICANT that, since the publication of this letter, nobody has accused Lt. Col. Obrtel of being a stooge of Putin. Had he been an FSB/GRU asset, it would have been insane to let him blow his cover for no visible benefit. Had he been deemed suspicious or unreliable, Western security services would have produced the goods by now. But because his was a genuine cri de coeur, measured and articulate, the decision was made to ignore it.

The Czechs are right to feel uneasy about Western geopolitical machinations. They were spectacularly stabbed in the back by their “allies” in Munich in September 1938, and they know that NATO security guarantees are not worth much if it comes to risking New York in order to save Prague.