Photo credit: nara.getarchive.net
Published at CounterPunch on October 4, 2024
A person develops thick skin as a leftist in the US. It’s a given. But while reading the New York Times on September 26th, I began to shake: “Zelensky Says Western Allies Must Allow Strikes Deep Into Russia,” (September 23, 2024). Here was an end of the world appeal. I turned to the comments section for this article and braced myself for the comments that had already been posted and was further struck by warmongering and Russia bashing contained in most of the “Reader Picks” comments. I wasn’t shocked by the fact the editors or editor of the comments section had closed discussion of the article after less than 200 comments. Thousands of people had to have read the article when the comments section was closed, but the nature and number of the comments allowed were telling. A few years ago I was what was labeled a “trusted commentator” of articles at the Times, but that so-called status was dropped. More often than not now an antiwar comment I make about either the Ukraine war, or the conflagration in the Middle East, is axed by the editors and never sees the light of day. “All the news that’s fit to print” in the newspaper of record is a bad joke!
Before unknown officials in the US government stopped, or slowed this insanity in the dance of death with a nuclear power, Zelensky had Keir Starmer, Britain’s prime minister, and Emmanuel Macron, president of France on board. The prime minister of Denmark was not far behind: “For today, they have to give, or say that they will not give.” Giving here means more weapons and the authorization to strike deep inside Russia with predictable consequences.
It seems that the doomsday trio of Biden, Starmer, and Macron, are all on the Armageddon bus together and resemble high-school cheerleaders more than international political figures. Be true to your school, just like you are to your nukes. Religious fundamentalists must be clapping and making burnt offerings to the god of doom.
Estimates are that about 500,000 (New York Times, April 18, 2023) soldiers have been lost in Ukraine (Russian and Ukrainian forces), while Sweden and Finland “have said Ukraine can do as it wishes with military aid from those countries.” The weapons are the Storm Shadow missiles from Britain and similar weapons from France “to strike deep into Russia.” “Mr. Biden agreed to let Ukraine use American weapons for short cross-border strikes against Russia but still banned long-range attacks.” Even casual observers must wonder who it is among the unelected here who are advising Biden? In a tangential matter, it is of passing interest that Kamala Harris, of the same militaristic bent as Biden, is going into the presidential election of 2024 without one single soul having voted for her in any primary election. Even the travesty of the curtain over the wizards of the empire doesn’t matter anymore in the farce of supposed democracy in the US. Compare the latter to the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 between the former Soviet Union and the US when there were many adults in the room and some of them actually worried about the end of the world. Also notice that it doesn’t matter if Russia has a communist or a capitalist economy, but rather that it is like the proverbial mountain that must be climbed because it’s there. The masters of war and masters of the world, read the power elite of the empire, don’t care about economics except when it comes to weapons manufacturing and greed. The Costs of War project at Brown University remains a reliable source for military outlays in the US.
“Both Mr. Zelensky and Ms. Frederiksen [of Denmark] also said the United States and European nations needed to increase their capacity to produce weapons, and that allied investment in the production of arms inside Ukraine would help alleviate the [weapons] shortage.”
The Ukraine war is a preemptive war proscribed by international law. Libraries could be filled with commentary about what happened at the time of the fall of the former Soviet Union and assertions made by President George H.W. Bush and what may or may not have been understood by Mikhail Gorbachev. The first premise of any agreement is to get the agreement in writing and Gorbachev did not do that. Most would have done that, writing, with a used car. NATO continued its march east after the fall of the Soviet Union. The internal politics of Ukraine aside, Ukraine would cement that march, and given Russia’s history of repeated invasions from the west, Vladimir Putin was not about to let that happen. The driving force of NATO is the US, and the US hardly holds the record for right behavior in war since World War II. Regime change, in fact, is a euphemism for preemptive war and the US and many of its allies can’t get enough of preemptive wars.
The reality on the ground is that the US State Department no longer dictates what is happening in Ukraine, but rather, leaders in the Pentagon delivered the message to Biden that the Ukraine war is no longer winnable (Dialogue Works, September 29, 2024). From the perspective of a lifelong antiwar protester, this revelation is fairly remarkable.
Meanwhile in the Middle East, we have front row seats to the first live genocide in human history (Dialogue Works, October 1, 2024). The US greelights all of Israel’s mayhem. Iran launched missiles into Israel, as the insanity of Netanyahu and his regime are the out-of-control bulls in the Middle East china shop (New York Times, October 1, 2024). The warmongers in the US led by the Biden administration are picking up the tab for Israel’s insanity.
Marching Down to Armageddon