Israel has dropped more than 100,000 tons of bombs on Gaza. That’s 100+ kilotons. The Hiroshima bomb was roughly 15 kilotons. That means the small area of Gaza has been punished by bombing that is the equivalent in explosive force to seven Hiroshimas.
More than 60,000 Palestinians in Gaza are confirmed dead; the actual number of dead may be twice or three times that number. The number of wounded is likely more than 100,000. (Who can say, exactly, given the level of destruction and disruption in Gaza?)
How is this level of destruction in any way justifiable or defensible?
Gaza is already almost destroyed. The Israeli government’s intent is clear: after rendering Gaza uninhabitable, the Palestinians remaining there will be pushed out, displaced, removed. Or they will die, in place, from more bombing as well as starvation and disease.
The U.S. government has enabled this by supplying Israel all the bombs it needs to pulverize Gaza. The U.S. government has also provided diplomatic cover as well as military protection as Israel implements its final solution to the Gaza question.
Some claim this isn’t genocide because Israel isn’t marching Palestinians to gas chambers. But there are many forms of genocide, many ways to kill massive numbers of people.
In The History and Sociology on Genocide (1990), Frank Chalk and Kurt Jonassohn define genocide as “a form of one-sided mass killing in which a state or other authority intends to destroy a group, as that group and membership in it are defined by the perpetrator.”
One-sided mass killing: yes.
Intent to destroy a group: yes.
Gaza and its people are being destroyed before our very eyes. A large part of the effort is being funded directly or indirectly by U.S. taxpayers. Yet we are told it is all the fault of Hamas. That Hamas is making the Israeli government kill and wound hundreds of thousands of people.
One thing is certain: The Israeli government couldn’t perpetrate this genocide without massive military support from the United States.
Perhaps one day, as Omar El Akkad wrote, “everyone will have always been against this” [the ongoing genocide in Gaza]. The question remains: Why now are so many, especially in the Israeli and U.S. governments, still eagerly perpetrating and defending this?
Remember in February of 2021 when Democrats said they were going to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour? That raise would have lifted nearly a million workers out of poverty while placing Democrats firmly on the side of working-class Americans.
You may recall the “Senate Parliamentarian,” an obscure official, ruled that the pay raise couldn’t be included in the proposed bill, a decision that Democrats said they oh-so-reluctantly respected. And so the federal minimum wage still sits at $7.25 an hour (the last time it was raised was in 2009).
Vice President Kamala Harris, presiding over the Senate, could have simply overruled the Parliamentarian, but she and the Biden administration chose not to.
Think about that. Biden/Harris ran on a platform of raising that wage to $15. Biden himself promised it and promoted it. But when push came to shove, they didn’t shove, nor did they even push. They just caved to their corporate overlords.
A counterfactual: What if the Democrats had done what they’d promised? What if Harris had run in 2024 on a proven record of delivering higher wages to workers? What if she’d said she was going to raise it even higher, say to $20 an hour, when she became president? My guess is that she would have fared far better with workers and may in fact have won the election.
Elections have consequences, Democrats like to say. So too does a broken promise.
If one side is armed with cap guns and the other with bazookas, would we call that a “war” between roughly equal powers?
I thought of this as I turned to Antiwar.com to see that President Biden has approved yet another massive arms shipment to Israel, to the tune of $8 billion. Here’s the report:
The sale includes AIM-120C-8 AMRAAM air-to-air missiles, Hellfire AGM-114 missiles, 155 MM artillery rounds, small-diameter bombs, JDAM kits, and 500-pound bombs. Many of these munitions have been used by Israel during its campaign of extermination in Gaza, including in attacks on civilian targets.
In June, CNN reported that Israel used US small-diameter bombs in an attack on a school that killed 40 civilians. In October, The Washington Post noted, “The Biden administration has received nearly 500 reports alleging Israel used U.S.-supplied weapons for attacks that caused unnecessary harm to civilians in the Gaza Strip.”
Remember when human rights used to matter (just a little bit)? Remember when genocide was considered morally reprehensible—a murderous wrong? The U.S. government simply ignores human rights except when they advance a particular agenda. And genocide? It’s OK when it’s couched as Israel doing it in the cause of “defending” its “right to exist.”
If your “right to exist” involves denying millions of others their right to exist, have you not bought that “right” with blood money?
Of course, we’re all told by the “experts” that the situation in the Middle East is immensely complicated. Certainly, the history of the region is complex. But what’s happening there today to the Palestinians isn’t complex. In Israel, Zionism has run amuck as Israel grabs land, water, oil and gas rights, indeed everything it can, in the cause of creating a Greater Israel. It just doesn’t matter to most Israelis, and the U.S. government as well, that two million Palestinians will be killed, wounded, or displaced. Might makes right here, accentuated by media spin and government propaganda.
Speaking of the Middle East, I watched a superb documentary recently: “This Is Not a Movie: Robert Fisk and the Politics of Truth.” I highly recommend it. Fisk was a foreign affairs journalist for The Independent. When I lived in Britain from 1992 to 1995, I used to read his articles in that paper. He lived in Beirut and covered the Middle East, ultimately spending forty years living in and writing about the region. The documentary follows him on assignment, demonstrating what a principled and brave man he was. Fisk did journalism the old fashioned way: he got out among the people, he journeyed to the front lines, he saw the dead bodies from massacres (indeed, in one horrific moment, he was forced to climb over a “barricade” of dead bodies, a nightmarish moment for him, as one would expect).
There are very few journalists like Fisk left today. A truth-seeker, he was unafraid to criticize the powerful when they deserved it. He always sought to understand what was happening through knowledge gleaned at firsthand, carrying his trusty notebook and a pen or pencil.
Check out the documentary on Fisk. You’ll learn a lot and be inspired by a man of considerable courage and unimpeachable integrity
What is the point of playing Russian roulette—with Russia?
As the Biden administration fades into oblivion, among its last decisions has been to allow Ukraine to strike deep into Russia with U.S.-made ATACMS, a missile with a range of 300 kilometers (190 miles). Ukraine’s recent use of these missiles brought a worrisome response from Russia: hypersonic intermediate-range missiles. If Ukraine persists in striking deeper into Russia with U.S., British, and French missiles, the Russian response will be proportionately greater, and possibly escalatory against NATO.
Here’s the thing: These missiles are too few in number to have a decisive impact on the course of the war. Ukraine isn’t going to “win” by launching ATACMS and similar tactical missiles. Yes, they can inflict more pain on Russia, hitting targets like ammunition dumps, military bases, and the like. But nobody is pretending these are war-winning weapons. All they promise is more dead bodies on both sides.
In World War I, new weapons were often introduced because it was believed they would prove decisive on the battlefield, weapons such as poison gas (1915) and tanks (1916). Of course, the other side adapted fairly quickly and the war dragged on, but at least there was a sincere belief that new weapons might break the awful stalemate of trench warfare.
There is no such sincere belief today. The main objective seems to be to complicate matters for the incoming Trump administration and its stated goal to end the Russia-Ukraine War. To that end, the Biden administration is using all means at its disposal to send the remaining $6 billion or so in weapons and related aid to Ukraine before Trump’s inauguration in January. Even anti-personnel mines are included in the mix.
Here’s how Antony Blinken put it:
President Biden is committed to making sure that every dollar we have at our disposal will be pushed out the door between now and January 20.
We’re making sure that Ukraine has the air defenses it needs, that it has the artillery it needs, that it has the armored vehicles it needs.
If only the Biden administration had been so committed to helping Americans in need.
In playing Russian roulette with Russia, Biden and Blinken have demonstrated unconscionable levels of recklessness and stupidity.
Enabling a Genocide in Gaza Is Surely Unconstitutional as well as Morally Wrong
Is it legal for a U.S. president to order American troops to take action that enables a genocide? I should think not. The president takes essentially the same oath of office as military members do. Its essential thrust is supporting and defending the U.S. Constitution. As the civilian commander-in-chief, the President issues orders to the military that are of course authoritative, that must be obeyed, except when those orders are illegal. So, for example, U.S. presidents shouldn’t be able to order torture, nor should they be able to issue orders that contribute to genocide, and, if they do, service members are within their rights to refuse to obey such orders. Indeed, if they put “integrity first” (the leading Air Force core value) as well as the U.S. Constitution, one might argue that should feel compelled by conscience to disobey.
It’s not an easy issue for sure, because the Biden administration claims that Israel is not prosecuting a genocide in Gaza. In fact, the Biden administration sees Israel as a vital ally to America, fully deserving of near-total U.S. support, therefore any service member who objects to orders on legal or moral grounds runs up against the full authority and weight of the chain of command.
Honestly, I’m glad I was never put in this position when I was in the U.S. military. Yet I still think about it. How would I feel as an Air Force officer loading or flying 2000-pound bombs to Israel to be dropped on Palestinians in Gaza? How would I feel as a Navy officer covering the flanks of Israel so that the IDF can concentrate its forces in murderous assaults on Gaza? How would these and similar actions be in the cause of defending America and supporting the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic?
(In the video clip above, Matthew Hoh further discusses this issue. I highly recommend it.)
Judging by this article by Mike Prysner, more than a few service members within the U.S. military have their own doubts, with some seeking conscientious objector status and others going AWOL or simply refusing to consider reenlisting. I have to assume that a lot of Soldiers, Marines, sailors, and airmen are thinking, “This is not what I volunteered for. This is not serving the best interests of my country, most especially the rights enumerated in the U.S. Constitution, to which I swore an oath.”
So, it’s quite possible Joe Biden is issuing illegal or at the very least morally questionable orders to American troops. Shouldn’t this matter? Shouldn’t Americans be talking about this more?
I’m not picking on Biden here. I strongly condemned Donald Trump back in 2016 when he claimed U.S. troops would follow his orders no matter what, even if he ordered torture, assassinations, and other acts forbidden by law.
Either we follow the law or we don’t. Either we respect the Constitution or we don’t. Either we use our military wisely or we don’t.
Beware the military that has been used poorly by its leaders. Beware the military that feels betrayed. For that military will soon be hollow, or, even worse, estranged from the people and the nation, and perhaps angry enough to seek vengeance.
Finally a bit of truth from the New York Times, but for what reason, and why now?
Remember when Barack Obama claimed in 2007-09 the Afghan War was the right war, the good one, as opposed to the wrong and bad Iraq War prosecuted by Bush/Cheney? Of course, they were both disastrous wars, but until the Biden administration finally pulled out, chaotically so, in 2021, the mainstream media was still supporting the idea that America was doing good in Afghanistan.
I suppose enough time has passed for the New York Times to allow for a measure of honesty, if only to support Joe Biden’s reelection this year. See, Biden made the rightdecision to withdraw because now we finally can admit the war was a disaster. Naturally, it wasn’t entirely or even mainly the U.S. government’s fault …
Of course, plenty of people knew the Afghan War was a disaster; my colleague Matthew Hoh resigned from the State Department in 2009 in protest against Obama’s “surge” there and counterproductive U.S. policy decisions. Democrats in Congress listened to Hoh and a few wanted to change course, but they were brought to heel by Nancy Pelosi, who said no dissent on the Afghan War was permissible when Obama was fighting so hard for health care reform in America. Hoh heard those words straight from Pelosi’s mouth. So we got twelve more years of disastrous war and Obamacare.
Abdul Aziq in 2015 (Bryan Denton for the New York Times)
Anyhow, in my NYT news feed this AM, the “hidden history” of America’s “savage campaign” is finally being covered, though the savageness is largely ascribed to an Afghan ally of the U.S., General Abdul Aziq. As usual, American “advisers” tried to curb his worst instincts, apparently without success. Well, what can you do with such “savages”?
Here’s how the NYT puts it:
But his [Aziq’s] success, until his 2018 assassination, was built on torture, extrajudicial killing and abduction. In the name of security, he transformed the Kandahar police into a combat force without constraints. His officers, who were trained, armed and paid by the United States, took no note of human rights or due process, according to a New York Times investigation into thousands of cases that published this morning. Most of his victims were never seen again.
Washington’s strategy in Afghanistan aimed to beat the Taliban by winning the hearts and minds of the people it was supposedly fighting for. But Raziq embodied a flaw in that plan. The Americans empowered warlords, corrupt politicians and outright criminals in the name of military expediency. It picked proxies for whom the ends often justified the means.
The NYT is shocked, shocked!, that there was a “flaw” in the U.S. plan that “empowered warlords, corrupt politicians and outright criminals” in the cause of military “progress.” Hmm…sounds more like a feature of U.S. policy than a flaw.
What about all those U.S. generals testifying to Congress under oath about the progress we were allegedly making in Afghanistan? Are any of them going to be called to account? You can bet your sweet combat boots that they’re not.
After Aziq, matters grew even worse in Afghanistan, as the NYT puts it here: “What they [new warlords and supposed U.S. allies] brought under the name of democracy was a system in the hands of a few mafia groups,” said one resident of Kandahar who initially supported the government. “The people came to hate democracy.”
So, instead of Operation Enduring Freedom, America brought Operation Endemic Corruption to Afghanistan. That latter operation most definitely succeeded.
Here’s how the NYT summarizes its new study of the Afghan War:
Historians and scholars will spend years arguing whether the United States could have ever succeeded. The world’s wealthiest nation had invaded one of its poorest and attempted to remake it by installing a new government. Such efforts elsewhere have failed.
But U.S. mistakes — empowering ruthless killers, turning allies into enemies, enabling rampant corruption — made the loss of its longest war at least partly self-inflicted. This is a story Matthieu [Aikins] and I [Azam Ahmed] will spend the coming months telling, from across Afghanistan.
Echoes of the Vietnam War here. The world’s wealthiest nation invading a much poorer one in the name of “democracy,” then spreading corruption and devastation ending in a chaotic withdrawal. And now grudging admission that maybe, just maybe, the U.S. loss in Afghanistan was “at least partly self-inflicted.”
Ya think? Or maybe we can just blame the Afghan people, just as we blamed our “allies” in South Vietnam.
Nothing against Aikins and Ahmed here. I’m sure their “hidden history” of America’s war in Afghanistan will be revelatory. Yet why was it “hidden” for so long? And why are the “hiders” never called to account?
And was it really “hidden”? Matthew Hoh wasn’t the only truth-teller willing to blow a whistle. Why was his honest voice suppressed while worm-tongued generals like David Petraeus and Stanley McChrystal were celebrated?
I wonder when we’ll get the “hidden history” of America’s “savage” involvement in Gaza and Ukraine? Perhaps in 2030?
Out of control, indeed. The Biden administration claims it’s frustrated with the Netanyahu government, so how does it show its frustration? By approving the sale of more F-35 jets to Israel, together with more bombs to turn what’s left of Gaza into rubble. Just what Israel needs: 1,800 MK84 2,000-pound bombs. That’s 1.8 kilotons of bombs right there, added to a bomb tonnage against Gaza that has already reached Hiroshima and Nagasaki levels. But I guess it’s OK if you drop thousands of bombs rather than just two atomic bombs.
It’s OK: Israel used a lot of “Made in USA” bombs to do this, not just a couple of atomic bombs.
Meanwhile, I saw this morning that the Biden administration is pressing to sell up to 50 newly built F-15 jets to Israel, a sale that will require Congressional approval. Not to worry—that sale will be approved.
Way to punish Israel, Joe Biden!
Even Trump, who’s professed his love of Israel, is not as slavishly obedient to Netanyahu as Biden is.
And the Palestinians in Gaza? They simply don’t matter, else the Biden administration wouldn’t be providing all those bombs and warplanes to Israel.
We need regime change in Washington, D.C.
MAGA, however, isn’t the answer. We don’t need to make America great again. We need to make America moral, ethical, compassionate, and humane. MAMECH?
Israel Is the Tail Wagging the American Dog of War
The U.S. government is complicit in the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
Americans may think that “aid” to Israel is held up in Congress, more than $14 billion in death-dealing munitions and machinery of war, but in fact the U.S. has already provided massive amounts of bombs and targeting guidance to Israel, all with the tacit approval of Congress, and of course with the full-throated support of the Biden administration.
Israel is the tail wagging the American dog of war.
Guess who’s being invited to address (or, should I say, command) Congress again?
The best summary of this reality that I’ve seen came in a recent TomDispatch article written by Stan and Priti Gulati Cox. Here’s an extended excerpt:
Worse yet, the Biden administration has enabled that ongoing [Israeli] killing spree [in Gaza] by approving 100 separate military sales to Israel since the conflict began in October. As a former administration official told the Washington Post, “That’s an extraordinary number of sales over the course of a pretty short amount of time, which really strongly suggests that the Israeli campaign would not be sustainable without this level of U.S. support.”
In other words, the backbone of the war on Gaza comes with a label: “Made in USA.” In the decade leading up to October 7th, as the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute has reported, two-thirds of Israel’s arms imports came from the United States. (From 1950 to 2020, the U.S. share was a whopping 83%!)
In just the first couple of months of the war, the Biden administration sent 230 cargo planes and 20 ships full of military goods to Israel, a trove that included 100 BLU-109 bombs (2,000-pounders designed to penetrate hardened structures before exploding), 5,400 MK84 and 5,000 MK82 bunker-busters, 1,000 GBU-39 bombs, 3,000 JDAM bomb-guidance kits, and 200 “kamikaze drones.”
Such powerful bombs, reportedAl Jazeera, “have been used in some of the deadliest Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip, including a strike that leveled an apartment block in the Jabalia refugee camp, killing more than 100 people.” And yes, such bunker-busters were widely used in the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but not in places as densely populated as Gaza’s cities. Israeli sources tried to justify that particular death toll by insisting it was necessary to kill one of Hamas’s leaders. If so, we’re talking about a 100-to-1 ratio, or a kind of collective punishment being supported by our tax dollars.
Worse yet, our military seems to have been participating directly in the IDF’s operations. According to the Intercept’s Ken Klippenstein and Matthew Petti, the Defense Department has been providing satellite intelligence and software to help the IDF find and hit targets in Gaza. An “Air Defense Liaison Team,” they report, even traveled to Israel in November to offer targeting help, adding that “for the first time in U.S. history, the Biden administration has been flying surveillance drone missions over Gaza.”
And even then, some members of Netanyahu’s government felt it wasn’t enough. Far right-wing Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich put it this way when it came to President Biden’s warning not to send the IDF into the southern Gazan city of Rafah where hundreds of thousands of refugees were gathered: “American pressure or fear of harming civilians should not deter us from occupying Rafah and destroying Hamas.”
The Israeli hostages held by Hamas are the excuse for so much of this, but the way to free them would be to negotiate, as Israel did successfully last fall, not try to “wipe Hamas off the face of the earth.” The Israelis are mostly bombing civilian sites in that campaign, because they’re reluctant to fight their way through the vast fortified network of tunnels from which the military wing of Hamas, the Qassam Brigades, mounted a formidable resistance to the invasion, largely with weaponry they manufactured themselves, along with ammunition recycled from unexploded ordnance dropped in past Israeli attacks.
I sure wish the Biden administration and Congress could do something to stop the genocide in Gaza. Don’t you? But I guess they can’t control their own tails. Put differently, perhaps they simply can’t disobey their master’s commands.
Speaking of which, Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson is currently competing with Senate Leader Chuck Schumer to see which one of them can roll over and beg more quickly and obsequiously to their master, Bibi Netanyahu. Yes, Bibi is being invited once again to wag the Congressional dog and issue his commands to a slavishly obedient pack of Washington politicians.
There’s nothing like a foreign leader coming to Congress to bark out commands to make me proud to be an American.
I saw the following oped at the Boston Globe yesterday morning:
If Republicans won’t stand up to Putin, he won’t stand down in his threats to American interests
Helping Ukraine fight off Russia is not an act of charity. It is a vital investment in world security.
There’s so much to write about here. First, as Vice President Kamala Harris has already said, charity is now a bad or disreputable idea. Helping Ukraine is not about charity, apparently because that message doesn’t resonate strongly with Congress. So, what does resonate? The idea of war as “a vital investment.” Apparently, if the House approves $61 billion in more aid to Ukraine, the payoff will be “world security.” How can you argue against that, right?
Second, apparently Republicans who oppose another $61 billion in aid to Ukraine, on top of roughly $120 billion in aid already provided since the Russian invasion two years ago, are all Putin appeasers. They are weak, refusing to “stand up to Putin.” Apparently Democrats are strong because they are standing up to Putin.
In sum, if America wants to be smart and strong, it must “invest” in more war against Putin and Russia.
How about “investing” in more trench warfare? Such a “rich” history!
I’m sorry but I never see war as an “investment.” Perhaps I would if I were the CEO of Boeing or Raytheon, but I’m not. I see war as “all hell,” as Civil War general William T. Sherman famously said. It’s horrific, it’s wasteful, it’s the negation of humanity. Sorry: no “vital investments” in war for me.
The war isn’t going well for Ukraine. Russia currently has the edge, Ukraine is short on troops and ammunition, and now might be a propitious time for serious negotiations to end the killing, before Ukraine collapses. Yes, in seeking peace, Ukraine will probably have to cede territory. Yes, perhaps Putin will sell this as a Russian victory. But I very much doubt that Putin’s costly “victory” in Ukraine will embolden him to launch attacks on NATO countries. He knows he would risk total defeat and nuclear war if he did so, and Putin, whatever else he is, is no fool.
Meanwhile, the French are making noises about the possibility of European troops deploying to Ukraine to fight against Russia. This would be folly in the extreme, turning a regional Russia-Ukraine conflict into a more general European war on Russia, with echoes to World War II.
I love that term, “strategic ambiguity.” Is that a good idea, creating “strategic ambiguity” against Russia, a nuclear power with the ability to destroy the world? Macron was being recklessly idiotic here.
Forget about “investments” in more war and strategic ambiguity. Try charity and peace. It’s time to end the killing.
The Russia-Ukraine War Enters Its Third Year with No End in Sight
Russia launched its “special military operation” against Ukraine on February 24th, 2022. Russia and Ukraine had been feuding since 2014, with U.S. meddling in Ukraine exacerbating the tensions. NATO expansion to Russia and Ukraine’s borders, along with calls to incorporate Ukraine into NATO at some future date, also led to increased tensions with Russia. The result has been a costly and enduring war in which Ukraine has lost roughly 20% of its territory in the east; both sides have suffered high casualties in horrendous conditions that recall the trench warfare of World War I.
At the moment, Russia appears to have the edge. Ukraine recently lost the city of Avdiivka. Manpower in Ukraine is stretched thin. The average age of troops at the front for Ukraine is 43 even as I’ve seen stories touting the recruitment of young women for the front as well as 17-year-old teenagers. Artillery ammunition is in short supply; $60 billion in weapons, munitions, and other military aid from the United States is frozen in Congress. A path to military victory for Ukraine is unclear.
Nevertheless, the Biden/Harris administration is fully behind the Ukraine war effort. I take the title of this article from Vice President Kamala Harris and her recent vow that the U.S. will support Ukraine for “as long as it takes.” The word “it” apparently refers to a complete victory by Ukraine over Russia by force of arms, i.e. the expulsion or withdrawal of all Russian troops from Ukrainian territory. Since it is unlikely Vladimir Putin will withdraw his troops voluntarily, the U.S. government has signed up to support Ukraine until it is able to defeat Russian forces on the battlefield, whether that takes one year, five years, or forever and a day.
Zelensky and Harris recently in Munich, together for “as long as it takes”
Such an open-ended commitment by the U.S. requires some explanation. The conventional narrative goes something like this: Putin is a bully and a thug. He is the next Hitler, or even worse. If he’s allowed to win in Ukraine, he will be emboldened to strike at NATO countries in Europe. Meanwhile, other authoritarian dictators around the world will see Russia’s victory as permission to strike at U.S. interests globally, undermining democracy and the “rules-based order.” Supporting Ukraine with vast sums and amounts of weaponry and munitions, therefore, is necessary to stop worldwide aggression by Putin and those who would emulate him. This is, in essence, the narrative of the Biden administration.
I believe this narrative is wrong. I see no evidence that Putin has plans to invade NATO countries; indeed, his invasion of Ukraine has strengthened NATO and led to its expansion. Russia is bogged down in a costly war in Ukraine, and while its forces have generally performed better recently than they did two years ago when they first invaded, the outcome of this war remains unclear. The Russian economy isn’t strong; an enduring war in Ukraine isn’t beneficial to Putin or the Russian people.
So far, “diplomacy” seems to be the hardest word in this conflict. Negotiation seems to be seen as capitulation. There’s evidence to suggest the U.S. and Great Britain have discouraged—even sabotaged—talk of ceasefires and settlements. To my knowledge, there are no efforts by the U.S. to seek a truce or some kind of armistice or other agreement that would end the war with all its suffering and devastation. The war must go on, full stop.
More than a stated fear of Putin as the new Hitler is involved here. Domestic politics are critical. In the U.S., Democrats are using Republican opposition to $60 billion in more aid to Ukraine to accuse GOP members of favoring Russia and of sabotaging Ukraine’s noble and heroic war effort. If the Republican-controlled House doesn’t approve the $60 billion aid package and Ukraine suffers a serious setback this year, Democrats will accuse Republicans of having “lost” Ukraine, of having become Putin-appeasers. Facing this possibility, it’ll be interesting to see if Republicans eventually cave and provide the $60 billion in aid.
Meanwhile, the military-industrial-congressional complex continues to profit from this war. The U.S. State Department recently boasted of a 56% increase in foreign arms sales in 2023, much of that going to Ukraine. More and more, the State Department is simply a tiny branch of the Pentagon, “negotiating” through arms sales and shipments and boasting of profits from the same.
War may be the health of the state of the self-styled “arsenal of democracy,” but it’s very unhealthy for the people of Ukraine and Russia and indeed for the planet. The New York Times, consistently on the side of Ukraine and more war, recently referred to the heavy troop losses of both sides and the “relentless devastation” of a war being fought on Ukrainian territory. Recent articles in publications like Reuters and The New Yorker pose the question, “Can Ukraine Still Win?” Their conclusion seems to be “possibly,” but not in 2024, and not without massive aid from the U.S., and even then, “victory” by feat of arms is increasingly unlikely.
Meanwhile, I keep seeing articles that favor more offensive and destructive weaponry for Ukraine, most recently long-range missiles to strike at Russia. Recall that U.S./NATO aid to Ukraine first focused on defensive weapons such as Stinger and Javelin missiles. Very quickly, aid escalated to armored vehicles, including main battle tanks (Challenger, Leopard, and Abrams), heavy artillery, rockets, and now F-16 fighter jets. Tank ammunition included depleted uranium shells; artillery rounds included cluster munitions. All these weapons have increased the deadliness of the battlefield, ensuring a blasted, dangerous, and toxic environment for generations to come without delivering decision on the battlefield for Ukraine.
The outlook for 2024 seems dire. Ukraine, outgunned and outmanned, is facing another bleak year of war. Optimism about a decisive Ukrainian counteroffensive (that was supposed to come in 2023) is long gone, with U.S. advisors having pointed fingers at Ukrainian leaders for their alleged hesitancy in absorbing large casualties on the offensive. An increasing number of American voters are questioning whether a war costing them roughly $180 billion in two years (assuming the Biden aid package is approved) is truly in their national interest, even as Members of Congress tell them that much of that money provides good-paying jobs to Americans making bullets and bombs to kill Russians.
Is America an arsenal of democracy, or just an arsenal?
Having served in the U.S. military for 20 years during the end of the Cold War, I remember a time when U.S. leaders talked to their Soviet counterparts. Kennedy talked to Khrushchev, Nixon talked to Brezhnev, Reagan talked to Gorbachev. Agreements were reached; crises were deescalated; wars were avoided. Courage and resoluteness aren’t shown through more weapons and war; they’re shown by reducing weapons and putting an end to war. Why can’t Biden talk to Putin?
“Blessed are the peacemakers” is a sentiment that shouldn’t be limited to the New Testament. If only this nation’s leaders would work to pursue peace “for as long as it takes.” Sadly, war always finds a way, especially when it’s sold as stopping the next Hitler.
Bracing Views 