Bill to prolong death and destruction

I am speaking about a $95-billion foreign military aid package that included $61 billion for Ukraine. Speaker Mike Johnson's turnaround from opponent to supporter of the war in Ukraine raised many eyebrows. His meeting with Trump in advance of this announcement added intrigue and speculations about the reasons for this sudden change of heart.

Most likely both men decided that it would help Trump and the GOP to win votes in November, and how many more Ukrainians would die in the process was of no particular concern to them.  Instead, Johnson used the same Lindsey Graham and Co’s language that financing this war was the best investment ever made since no Americans were dying, and the only new element was that the Speaker added a personal touch by adding his son into the equation.  “To put it bluntly, I would rather send bullets to Ukraine than American boys,” Johnson told reporters last week. “My son is going to begin in the Naval Academy this fall. This is a live-fire exercise for me as it is for so many American families. This is not a game; this is not a joke.”

In the crusade against Russia, Western media have abandoned the core journalistic values of objectivity and neutrality

Well, nowadays it is useless to ask whether such statements correspond to moral, ethical, or any other values that US and EU politicians (there are exceptions, of course, but, so far, their numbers are not enough to change the course) claim to adhere to but Ukrainian President Zelensky surpasses their cynicism by thanking Congress saying “The vital US aid bill passed today by the House will keep the war from expanding, save thousands and thousands of lives.” He is talking, of course, about saving American, not Ukrainian lives.

Such statements and actions from Washington or Brussels, and from Zelensky confirm what was known anyway. The West found a foreign leader ready to serve its interests of weakening Russia by sacrificing the Ukrainian people and their country in exchange for money and glory.  In the Western media, he is now George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Winston Churchill together in one face.   I doubt all of them or their heirs would be thrilled by being compared to someone who converted his own country into a foreign mercenary legion.

As for the media Ashley Rindsberg in “The Spectator” called the anti-Russian hysteria the “media’s Vietnam.” She bitterly writes that the crusade against Russia has become “the raison d’etre of the mainstream, so important that it has forced some of the most famous publications in the country to openly renounce cherished journalistic values such as objectivity and neutrality.”

Historians might correct me but searching through the endless list of “United States War Crimes” from the 1889 – 1913 war in the Philippines to the 21st Century’s wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and Libya I couldn’t find a similar example. When it comes to the current U.S. proxy war in Ukraine, the crime reaches another level which denigrates not only the politics of the supposedly democratic country but contradicts the basic spirit and soul of America itself.

A single phone call from Biden to Putin before Feb. 24, 2022 with assurances of Russia’s security would have saved hundreds of thousands of lives

Provoking, funding, and prolonging the war between the two Christian nations who lived together for over three centuries and who were bounded by close historical, religious, economic, cultural, and family ties were never meant to promote democracy but rather to use Ukrainians as cannon fodder to preserve the geopolitical advantage of the hegemon. Of course, there was an additional incentive to make money for the military-industrial complex, and all those with whom it shares its huge profits, including many Members of Congress, think tanks, and lobbyists.

Despite constant use of the word “unprovoked” the current war was indeed provoked by the U.S. and NATO., while Russia was and is not planning to invade any other country. As with any other nation, it does want to take its security interests seriously. In this particular case to insist that the pledge given to Gorbachev “not to expand NATO one inch East” is honored.

One phone call from Biden to Putin before February 24, 2022, with a pledge to guarantee Ukraine’s neutral status would have ensured there would be no war. Russia’s other security concerns could be then negotiated in a calm working atmosphere.

Finally, this bill will not change the outcome of this war, which is now decisively turning in Russia’s favor. According to Richard Sakwa, Professor of Russian and European Politics at the University of Kent, “This decision will only prolong the agony of Ukraine and Europe,” adding that “It also raises the stakes, and pushes the world one step further towards a cataclysm the likes of which we have never seen. Now is the time to start de-escalating, and to outline what it would take to start a diplomatic process of some sort.”

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