There is much hand wringing over whether or not AI will be used for good purposes or bad. The proprietors of AI are mostly concerned about making money, not about how to use their products for good. That's the capitalistic system. And one can rest assured that one of the most interested parties in AI is the defense establishment. They are always interested in using the most advanced technology in order to create even more sophisticated and destructive weapons in accordance with the theory that, if they don't create them, their enemies will create them first, and then they will be in a less advantageous position. Of course this is always premised on the consideration that we are the good guys and they are the bad guys. Our supposed enemies use the same rationale with the result that the world becomes ever more dangerous as both sides develop more and more destructive weapons. AI is just the latest chapter of this merry-go-round.The problem is that the tech companies creating AI are just in it for the money, and the military-industrial complex, in addition to just being in it for the money, is in it for the rationale that we better use AI to create advance weapons first so that our "enemies" don't get them first.
Has anybody considered that some entity, whether it be government or private enterprise, should adopt the position that AI or any other technology should be used not only for good but for the purpose of creating peace in the world? No, no entity is concerned about that. If government was concerned, they would be using some of the trillion dollar military-industrial complex budget to develop peaceful enterprises in the world. Instead while a trillion dollars yearly is spent on defense/offense, a paltry $400 million is spent on the Peace Corps. So that's where our values are. We value a strong defense, not strong efforts to make the world a more peaceful place, and we value financial competition to make as much money as we can off of any new technology. Those are the imperatives. Peace is thought to be the absence of war rather than building enterprises that would prevent war in the first place. The interstices between wars should be used to prevent the next war, but instead the only prevention is thought to be to have such a strong military apparatus that no one would think about stepping out of line with the line being defined by us or whoever is the most powerful empire at any point in time. Empires come and go over the long term, but the mental imperative of using all resources to create the most powerful military establishment never changes.
The result is that war is inevitable as it has been for millennia. In fact for thousands of years war has been a way of life. Empires have been created because someone came along who was in a position to create them whether that was Cyrus the Great, Alexander the Great, Catherine the Great or Napoleon. No one ever called Jesus "the Great" because he didn't create an empire. He just preached peace as the foremost value. Too bad no one in a position of power ever took him seriously. That was not realpolitik. Instead, religion was used to placate and sublimate the masses while the war machines of the various empires ground on until thy eventually were subdued or wore themselves out or went bankrupt. AI does not presage a new millennium. It's just more of the same. It will be used beneficially in medicine and a few other enterprises. But its main development will be in the art of war wherein battlefields are populated not by humans but by robots. The destruction however will remain the same or worse. Not the military but innocent civilians will bear the cost of death and destruction as already has been taking place in modern warfare. Not military assets but civilian real estate will be destroyed. Such a shame that technological advances have been deployed more in the service of war than in the service of peace.
We have several academies of war - the US Naval Academy, West Point, the US Coast Guard Academy, the US Air Force Academy. Is there a US academy of peace? We spend a trillion dollars a year on the military. How much do we spend on the peace industry? Congress has completed its work on a budget for fiscal year 2022, passing a $1.5 trillion spending package. ... Unfortunately, for a seventh consecutive year, instead of providing new resources to better meet the needs of a changed world, it keeps Peace Corps' baseline funding flat at $410.5 million. We spend a pittance on peace, a fortune on war. As the world's leading super power, we spend our money on what we value most - war. Do the big wigs in the American government even have an idea of what it would take to create a peaceful world? What would be the steps that should be taken to prevent war before it starts. One thing is to work toward eliminating poverty and disease in the world. We should have a world in which everyone has at least the basics for a decent life. That means adequate sanitation, adequate clean water supply, adequate shelter, adequate nutrition, adequate health care.
Fact: Over 1.5 billion people still do not have basic sanitation services, such as private toilets or latrines. Of these, 419 million still defecate in the open, for example in street gutters, behind bushes or into open bodies of water. There is much work to be done here. Does the US have anything in its budget to upgrade the sanitation level for the rest of the world? No, they are too much concerned with fighting the next war, spending billions on the most advanced military systems. Such a simple thing as improving sanitation in the world is something the US as a country is not really concerned about. Yet there is a connection between personal well being and peace. People that are at least basically well off are not inclined to go to war. War seems like a good alternative if the alternative is poverty. Throughout history the war making class has always been more prosperous than the peasantry. It's stlll true today.
So do our leaders have the faintest ideas about how to create peace ... or only how to win wars. There is never enough money to do the things that might result in a more peaceful world, but there is plenty of money for fighting wars. What would be some good ideas for creating a more peaceful world? Maybe citizen to citizen interchanges with countries who are deemed to be out "enemies." Maybe spending more money on creating diplomats and diplomacy. Maybe not characterizing any country as an "enemy"? Maybe creating the conditions for peace. Maybe two years of required national service in the Peace Corps as an alternative to the military with the same benefits? There's a song, "I'm not going to study war no more." Maybe creating more peace workers than soldiers, sailors and airmen. I think more results could be realized by spending less money on war. Peace should not really cost that much. What is costly is war. More money has been spent on it over the years than any other thing. It's the main thing that tax money has been spent on for millennia. It's what bankrupted France in the reign of Louis XIV. And after all the wars, France's boundaries remained the same as they were at the beginning of Louis' reign.
Biden Has One Job for the Rest of His Term: End the War in Gaza
by John Lawrence
IMHO Biden has been played by Netanyahu. Netanyahu's assertion that "there's no daylight between Israel and the US" seems to mean that Netanyahu can do whatever he wants to in Gaza, and the US will go along with it. Up to now this has been basically the case. Biden has pushed back a little against some of Netanyahu's more egregious operations in Gaza, but has essentially gone along with it on the theory that Netanyahu should do whatever he thinks is best. The US also has shipped Israel much weaponry without any conditions. Since October 7, the Biden administration has reportedly made more than one hundred military aid transfers to Israel, although only two—totalling about $250 million—have met the congressional review threshold and been made public. So Biden and the US are complicit in the destruction of Gaza and the killing of its people. By June 19, 2024, 37,396 people had been killed in the Gaza Strip since the attack by Hamas and the Israeli invasion in October, 2023, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, as reported by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Most of those killed have been women and children. Biden has been weakly trying to get Netanyahu to rein in his over zealousness, but his imprecations have lacked any real teeth. He would have to threaten to hold up weapons shipments to Israel to really get Netanyhu's attention. Other than that, Netanyahu thinks he has free rein to do whatever he wants in Gaza.
Netanyahu says his goal is to root out and totally defeat Hamas yet so far he has mainly destroyed about half of Gaza's real estate. If Hamas and the hostages are underground in the tunnels, why hasn't the fighting occurred down there? Why has most of the destruction been on the surface if the real goal is underground? Why have bombs been dropped on supposed "safe areas"? It seems as if Netanyahu's intention is to make Gaza unlivable and to turn Gazans into refugees. The atrocities that occurred on October 7 were horrendous, but the destruction in Gaza only compounds that tragedy. Two wrongs don't make a right. President Biden has been taken advantage of by Netanyahu. He has used the traditional alliance between the US and Israel as an excuse to exercise a free hand in Gaza. He has shown no restraint nor has he shown any interest in a long term solution to the situation other than total destruction of Gaza. A two state solution has no interest for Netanyahu. He is playing Biden and the US while pursuing the goal of making Gaza a waste land. For too long Biden has given Netanyahu the benefit of the doubt.
Biden has been involved in one way or another with both the war in Ukraine and the war in Gaza. He needs to bring at least the war in Gaza to an end before the end of his term if he doesn't do anything else. No doubt the war in Ukraine is intractable for Biden to end it. His ego is too involved in that war. However, he could have a decisive part in ending the war in Gaza. He would effectively have to stop being buddy buddy with Netanyahu and insist on a cease fire. He would have to terminate any financial or military support to Israel until the war in Gaza has been ended and a two state solution has been preliminarily been worked out. He would have to take decisive steps to bring those two things about. I know that is what Biden would like to see happen, but he would have to put his foot down with Netanyahu to achieve those goals. Biden has done a whole lot domestically to make the United States a better place. He will go down in history for accomplishing more domestically than any President since Lyndon Johnson. His legacy is secure in that regard, but he needs to wrap up at least one of the two wars or his legacy will be tarnished in terms of foreign policy.
Mud Slinging and Character Assassination: the Only Things Republicans Know How To Do
by John Lawrence
And then the pundits discuss the mud slinging by the hour. Calling people names. Making up stuff. What's this got to do with the future vision for the country? What I want to hear from Trump and Kamala is their vision for the future of our country. I could care less about what they seem to be all about - destroying their opponent. These are the ethics of a wrestling match - destroy your opponent. Kamala has to get specific about a few policies, namely, the border, taxation and abortion. She needs to co-opt Trump's issues. She needs to call for a tax cut for the middle class while raising taxes on the rich. On the border, she has to call for strengthening the border to the point that it is impregnable while calling for increased legal pathways for immigration and asylum. On the wars she has to demand a cease fire and hostage release in Gaza and a settlement in Ukraine that's basically a compromise instead of an all or nothing approach.
The overriding issue of our times is climate change. Nothing could be clearer than the differences between the two parties on this issue. The Democrats are very environmentally conscious. Republicans couldn't care less about the environment or climate change. All they care about is their plastic straws, gas guzzling vehicles, guns and meat. Don't ask them to change their way of life in order to save the planet for future generations. It's hard to imagine a worse ethical stance. They are against everything that is conducive to making the world a better place. It's the legacy of an ethic of selfishness as promulgated by Ronald Reagan, George W Bush and others including Ayn Rand who wrote The Virtue of Selfishness. The US has a very weak, to the point of nonexistence, communal ethic. Individualism and competition is the fabric of American character. There have been a few exceptions, namely, the Depression and World War II. Even in those cases there were many voices who called for not getting involved and just letting the chips fall where they may.
So Kamala, don't get caught up in the mudslinging, character assassination and name calling or responding to same. Express clearly where you are on the issues and where your policies will take America and the world. Vagueness is the enemy of clarity and decisiveness. Better to ignore Trump and his puerility. I want to see clarity about the border and clarity about taxation. As far as women's reproductive rights, Democrats own that issue. As for the rest, a continuation of Biden's policies in terms of infrastructure, the child tax credit, elder long term care and other aspects of Biden's Build Back Better program are important. Especially, the surge in mental awareness and acceptance of mutual responsibility for climate change and the environment is paramount regardless of Republican insistence on keeping their plastic straws, guns, meat and gas guzzlers. A change in the mentality of Americans has to occur or climate disasters will only get worse until many areas of the US, not to mention the world, will become uninhabitable in the very near future.
If all you have is a hammer every problem looks like it can be solved by pounding a nail. If all you have is a military-industrial complex, every problem looks as if it can be solved by the threat or application of military power. This has been true for thousands of years, most of which time war was just accepted as a given. Now more elaborate justifications seem to be necessary, but the results are the same. Resources are devoted to war while a pittance is devoted to peace. The US currently spends about a trillion dollars annually on its military-industrial complex while the Peace Corps is allocated next to nothing. Congress has completed its work on a budget for fiscal year 2022, passing a $1.5 trillion spending package. Unfortunately, for a seventh consecutive year, instead of providing new resources to better meet the needs of a changed world, it keeps Peace Corps' baseline funding flat at $410.5 million. Diplomacy and even common sense take a back seat to war. Take Ukraine, for example. The longer the war goes on, the predictable result is only more destruction of real estate and more lives ruined both physically and emotionally.
President Biden wants to continue the war until there is a "winner", and he is sure that with the provision of US military assets, that winner will be Ukraine. More level headed experts think that the war will only be settled with a partition of Ukraine. To settle the Russo-Ukraine war diplomatically, a number of analysts have suggested that the apparent military stalemate be accepted in a ceasefire agreement in which Ukraine would be partitioned along the current battle lines. If we look at the history of eastern Europe, we see that partitions are not a novelty. The Partitions of Poland were three partitions of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth that took place toward the end of the 18th century and ended the existence of the state, resulting in the elimination of sovereign Poland and Lithuania for 123 years. The partitions were conducted by the Habsburg monarchy, the Kingdom of Prussia, and the Russian Empire, which divided up the Commonwealth lands among themselves progressively in the process of territorial seizures and annexations. Hmmm. Partitions are nothing new and the redrawing of national boundaries is nothing new? So in 2024 the powers that be insist that there will be no redrawing of national boundaries even if it means that a war of attrition will go on indefinitely. I think President Biden has been a great President when it comes to domestic policy, but less so when it comes to perpetuating the wars both in Ukraine and Israel. Without going into detail about Israel, he has not been forceful enough in restraining Israel from destroying Gaza.
America does not need to defund the Department of Defense (War). It just needs to refund a Department of Peace. The United States accounts for nearly 40% of global military spending, and devotes a larger share of its GDP to defense than most other countries. U.S. military spending was greater than the next ten biggest spenders in 2023. Fruitless wars will only continue if revenge is the operative factor. Peace building needs to continue in other parts of the world in spite of wars currently being waged. However, there is always money to fight wars, hardly ever is there money to wage peace. The military and/or the national guard could be used in a more productive way to provide security in those areas where peace builders need protection and even along the border. This would be a productive use of the military. Instead, most military personnel sit idle in 800 military bases around the world only to be deployed in hot wars. Why not use them to provide security in areas where militias are running amok? So I feel that, while military resources are not intelligently utilized, peace building resources hardly exist. The two could be complementary if used wisely.
As an advocate for a Department of Peace, I do not advocate eliminating the Department of War (Defense Department) altogether. I think both are necessary but in a more balanced way. Most efforts toward peace in the world should take place outside the arena of war, that is as a preventative to war. This includes economic development in parts of the world that are liable to gang control. In fact I would advocate the use of the US military to go after the gangs that are controlling certain parts of the world, for example in Mexico where gangs are trafficking humans to the US border and controlling the inflow of drugs into the US. Haiti is another candidate for the use of the US military to eliminate the gangs while the Peace Corps is helping with economic development. In areas of the world that don't have mature institutions that can provide security for the populace, the US military could provide that while the Peace Corps is building infrastructure. The two should operate hand in hand. What China is doing with its Belt and Road Initiative is instructive. China is winning friends and influencing people by building infrastructure in many parts of the world. But much more needs to be done that China is not doing. Low level infrastructure such as clean water and sanitation needs to be built out. Approximately half the world does not have clean water or adequate sanitation facilities. 3.6 billion people are still living with poor-quality toilets that damage their health and pollute their environment. Inadequate sanitation systems spread human waste into rivers, lakes and soil, contaminating water resources.China is building high level infrastructure such as ports, railroads and trains. The US should complement their efforts.
There are around 750 U.S. military bases in at least 80 countries. Most of these bases are unnecessary and represent a waste of money. They are also sitting ducks for attacks by the likes of ISIS. They should be eliminated and the resources redirected elsewhere. With US sea borne and satellite military resources there is no need for land based resources. The efforts should instead be put into developing infrastructure both in terms of economics and in terms of political institutions. What is important is helping to create stable institutions in parts of the world where instability results in chaos e.g. Haiti. Also if life was good in countries where there is a lack of stability and economic development, people would not be flocking to the US and European borders and asking for asylum. So military assets as well as Peace Corps assets could work hand in hand. Once war breaks out these efforts at creating peace in the first place are useless. A Department of Peace needs to have a diplomatic aspect as well as the Peace Corps division. Also person to person exchanges help to build understanding. In fact the largest efforts need to be made with those who are considered our worst enemies.
As an anti-war protester in the 1960s, I am still one today. Peace efforts or efforts at creating peace in the world today do have both an economic and a military component. In some countries peace workers would be slaughtered by gangs if they weren't adequately protected by the US military while they go about doing their jobs. So while I am anti war, I am not anti military. I just think that the balance of human and financial resources is completely out of whack. Less money and manpower (womanpower?) needs to be devoted to the military and more money and womanpower needs to be devoted to the Department of Peace which should include the Peace Corps (economic development), the diplomatic corps (institutional development) and exchange corps ( person to person friendship). Less effort needs to be spent on proving to the rest of the world that the US way is the best way and more effort needs to be spent on creating stable societies with the economic and institutional resources so that people in all parts of the world can have comfortable and secure lives.
Bringing the rest of the world up to economic and institutional speed is of utmost importance today because, unless the whole world is operating cooperatively, it will be impossible to do much about our common enemy - global warming. In fact we have met the enemy and it is us. Economic development in the developed world has proceeded in such a way as to have created the global warming crisis. Now it must proceed in such a way as to eliminate it. Sustainable development and environmental responsibility should be the order of the day. Countries that have vast fossil fuel resources have no incentive to curtail the economic development of those resources if they are considered to be pariah nations by the rest of the world. Nations that are considered pariah nations have no incentive to convert from war time expenditures to peace time expenditures if they are not brought into the community of nations in a respectful way. Nations that are at war right now have no incentive to negotiate a peaceful resolution if their interests and concerns are not taken into account.
War is inevitable as long as the various parties do everything to build up their war machines and do nothing to undertake peace initiatives even when the parties are not actually at war. Many think that if there is no war nothing must be done to prevent the next war except perhaps building up their war machine. When there is no active war, that's the best time for preventing the next likely war. There was no reason for World War I other than the fact that the nations involved had built up their war machines in "peace time" and were spoiling for war. Nietzsche said, "A good war hallows any cause. War and courage have accomplished more great things than love of the neighbor." Really? Then perpetual war followed perhaps by short intervals of the absense of war also known as "peace" is the fate of the human race until the human race is extinguished in one great cataclysm. But there is more to peace than just the absense of war. Peace must be built one step at a time just like any edifice. Every nation should have a Department of Peace to counterbalance the ubiquitous Departments of War. If peace is systematically built, war may be preventable. If it is not, the Department of War will always stay ready to conduct war if all else fails. To advocate for peace is not the same as to advocate for disarmament. Realistically, a peaceful neighbor can always be attacked by a stronger unscrupulous neighbor. In fact that is what always has occurred throughout history. This led to the "balance of power" situation in Europe before World War I. It was believed that this was the only way to prevent war, that is, if each neighboring nation was equally matched in their military capabilities. So putting resources into a Department of Peace does not mean not putting resources into a Department of War. In fact they both should be concurrently developed just in case. One is a deterrent. The other is a preventative.
I would advocate a different approach to the peace process than has been pursued so far.. Each nation should put as much human and financial capital into a Department of Peace as they do into a Department of War. So what would a Department of Peace actually do? First of all, eliminate poverty in the world. When everyone has at least a minimally adequate living standard, it is less likely that they will organize for war. Secondly, the existential fact of climate change will create war if it is not solved. In fact it is an existential threat to all life on earth that will make World War III seem trivial in comparison. The ones that will suffer the most are the poor nations and the poor in the rich nations. A Department of Peace needs to be spending a lot both in human and financial capital on this problem. Third, a Department of Peace needs to build infrastructure both to adapt to global warming and to bring poorer nations up to speed. A good place to start is to have the goal of clean water and an adequate sewage system for all of the world's inhabitants. China has taken the lead on this with its Belt and Road initiative building infrastructure throughout the world. Fourth, all nations and all leaders of nations should be shown respect. When one nation's leaders describe another nation's leaders as evil or talk about their countries as "evil empires," this alienates them. Calling a nation's leader a pariah actually turns them into one. Alienation follows disrespect. Friendship entails respect and consideration for all nations even ones with different political and economic institutions. Diplomacy should be increased a thousand fold or more. Person to person exchange groups should be encouraged.
Inequality leads to war. Everyone on planet earth deserves to have an adequate amount of material possessions including good health care, education, food and housing. Those who have inadequate possessions or services or at least a minimal amount of those material things and services compared to others will always want to take from those who have all those things. Rich nations need to help poor nations get richer or else face the consequence of always having to defend what they've got from those who have little or nothing. Many wars have been fought over territory and material possessions. Also many wars have been fought over religion. Education needs to pave the way for people to understand that a person's belief system is up to that person and need not be a threat to another's belief system. The religious wars in Europe between Catholicism and Protestantism went on for hundreds of years proved nothing. The same could be said for the wars between Islam and Christianity or between Hindus and Muslims. The secularization of the world's societies is necessary at least to the point that someone's religion is nobody else's business. The separation of church and state was one of the hallmarks of the US Constitution that has been very successful.
To sum up planet earth will never attain world peace unless that becomes a goal in such a way that peace is not just defined as the absense of war. Like the development of all good things peace must be worked at and for. An effort must be put into it. Resources must be devoted to it. Else the outcome will be the same as the outcome of any venture for which nothing much was done about it. The natural outcome for a world not working every day for peace and not devoting adequate resources towards it will be war. The Law of Entropy will prevail. Everything will disintegrate unless energy is put into the system.
1) Rights taken away from women. The Arizona Supreme Court’s decision to outlaw nearly all abortions in Arizona will likely lead to an influx of patients fleeing the state to find care in California, abortion rights activists said.
2) The world's policeman can't police its own borders. The asylum law lets anyone setting foot on American soil ask for asylum. Court dates for asylum cases are, on average, more than four years out in the future, and even longer for final decisions. Over 3 million cases were pending before immigration courts near the end of 2023, with the backlog growing by 1 million since 2022.
3) The archaic electoral college has never been replaced by a direct popular vote for President. The result is that the winner of the popular vote has not been elected President. Gore won the popular vote in 2000, but Bush was elected President. The Florida Supreme Court sided with Gore, but Bush appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ultimately voted 5 to 4 to reverse the Florida court’s decision and halt the recount. With Florida in hand, Bush won the Electoral College 271 to 266, while Gore ended up getting 500,000 more votes in the popular vote. As a result Gore's push for limits on global warming was lost as Bush promoted fossil fuels. Also Bush lied the US into a disastrous war in Iraq that resulted in Iraq becoming an ally of Iran.
4) 750 military bases in 80 countries are sitting ducks for an attack by Iran or its proxies. The largest U.S. base in the Middle East is located in Qatar, known as Al Udeid Air Base and built in 1996. Other countries where the U.S. has a presence include Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The US spends more on its military than the next 10 countries combined. Three American service members were killed and dozens more were injured in an unmanned aerial drone attack on a base known as Tower 22 in Jordan on January 28, 2024. Now that the US is expecting an attack by Iran, which sitting duck will be next?
6) Futile wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Bush lied us into war in Iraq. Osama bin Laden eventually killed in Obama administration by small Seal team, proving futility of invading Afghanistan
8) Housing unaffordability. San Diego families need an income of nearly $275,000 a year to afford a mortgage on a home, which is nearly double what it was before the pandemic, according to a new report from the real estate website Zillow.
9) Homelessness is an intractable problem. On any given night in the United States, more than half a million people experience homelessness.
10) The filibuster rule and the bicameral legislature. Nothing much can get done unless one party controls both Houses of Congress and the Presidency. President Biden looks stupid since he can't even keep his commitments to NATO because the Republican controlled House won't vote the funds Biden has promised. This means Ukraine will lose the war with Russia, and other countries cannot trust the US to keep its commitments.
11) The Second Amendment. No other country allows the uncontrolled proliferation of guns. More Americans died of gun-related injuries in 2021 than in any other year on record, according to the latest available statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). That included record numbers of both gun murders and gun suicides.
The two biggest issues are the economy and the border. Biden has to address these two issues effectively if he hopes to win the election. The way to neutralize Trump's appeal on these issues is essentially to co-opt Trump's positions. On the economy, Biden must come out for tax breaks for the middles class. He has already been talking about taxing the rich. Good, but this does nothing for tax relief for the middle class unless he explicitly comes out and say so. Americans are at least subconsciously accustomed to the fact that, f they elect a Republican President, they will get a tax cut. Problem is Republican tax cuts go mainly to the rich as they did during Trump's administration when he added $7 trillion to the national debt with his tax cuts. The fact that Biden wants to tax the rich should enable him to responsibly give tax cuts to the middle class without adding to the debt. He needs to simplify his messaging to the bare essentials as Trump does without getting down into the policy weeds.
Secondly, on the border, Biden's position is not strong enough. This vaunted "bi-partisan legislation" that Trump doesn't want passed is not strong enough. The correct position is that the goal should be not one illegal entry over the US border. This is the position of most countries after all. The US is spending too much money on 750 military bases in 80 countries being the world's policeman yet it can't control its own border! This is the height of ridiculousness. I hasten to point out that with effective border control the laws regarding amnesty would not have to be changed. Immigrants could still apply for amnesty albeit through legal channels. The ridiculous situation that anyone who sets foot on American soil illegally can apply for amnesty will have been effectively curtailed. This presupposes that enormous resources in terms of infrastructure and manpower will have to be redirected to the border. Well, how about closing some of those foreign military bases and using that money to beef up the border? The goal should be not one illegal entry, rather than hiring more judges. The bill entails: "The bipartisan Senate bill would add more than 1,500 new Customs and Border Protection personnel. Asylum Officers and Asylum Reform: Similarly, Asylum Officer staffing has remained stagnant over the last four years and there is an insufficient number of asylum officers to do initial screenings." This bill presupposes that immigrants will continue to enter the US illegally. It's the wrong approach, it's too complicated, the American people will not understand it. Trump will make that clear. Trump will state his case simply and directly in a way that a 12 year old can understand which is about the mentality of a lot of the American people. Biden has to out Trump Trump on this issue, but do it in a responsible way. If the goal is "not one illegal entry," then that can be coupled with increasing LEGAL immigration.
Thirdly, Biden has to end the two wars: Ukraine and Gaza. He is letting Netanyahu run all over him making him look weak. He has to demand an end to that war and impose a two state solution if necessary. He dos not need to state a lot of ifs, buts, whereases and wherefores. Simply state his position and what he intends to accomplish with all the might of US prestige and power. Trump will state his positions as if they will be fait accomplis no matter how impractical or unlikely they actually are in reality. Biden has to get a lot tougher and use the withdrawal of US resources from Israel if necessary. He is treating Israel with kid gloves. He has to be more evenhanded in his support for Gaza and Palestine. In Ukraine, the handwriting is on the wall. Biden's cold war mentality set up this proxy war between the US and Russia. He has to demand a cease fire with the lines being drawn between the areas that Russia and Ukraine now control. To be specific Russia would control Crimea, which they've controlled since 2014 without a peep from the Obama administration, and the Donbas region while Ukraine controls the rest. A plebiscite could later determine the eventual fate of the boundaries between the two countries. If Biden doesn't do something about a cease fire in each of these two wars, it could doom his Presidency for a second term. Americans are tired of these meaningless wars and the inability of the all powerful US, the world's policeman, to do anything about them.
In short Biden has to get tough. He needs to simplify his positions. It's not enough to criticize Trump as being too extreme. Obviously, the American people aren't buying it. He needs to finesse the main issues - economy, border and 2 wars - by saying that he will 1) give tax breaks to the middle class, 2) prevent even one illegal entry to the US and 3) end the 2 wars. If he does all three things, he will co-opt Trump on these issues and win the election. If he continues to advocate for the Senate border bill, let Netanyahu make a patsy out of him and call for taxing the rich without a concomitant tax break for the middle class, he will lose.
Democracy presupposes that rational actors with different interests can peacefully resolve their differences by means of some rules based system which includes, for example, voting. The rule of law represents the congealed rationality of bygone days. However, when major actors in a political system are irrational and when their followers become fanatics, democracy is probably imperiled. Today we have one of the candidates for the highest office in the land who is irrational and his followers are fanatically devoted to him. It's hard to conceive why any rational society much less a democracy would let someone who arguably tried to overthrow that democracy run again for the highest office in the land. Take Richard Nixon for example. What if after he resigned he had decided to run for President in the next election cycle? Unthinkable, you say. Maybe so, but Richard Nixon's offenses were minuscule compared to Trump's. It seems that nothing in the American Constitution or rule of law is preventing someone who tried to overthrow that Constitution from taking power again. It should be cut and dried as the situation evidently was in Richard Nixon's case. Nixon was the only President who resigned from the Presidency, but nothing in the Constitution would have prevented him from running again. Why didn't he?
The leaders of autocratic societies are laughing up their sleeves at this American dilemma. Are Americans so tolerant of free speech that they entertain not only the speech but the candidacy of a person who tried to overthrow the Constitution of that society? Any society can be measured on a scale the end points of which are total freedom and total stability. Some societies, notably more autocratic ones, value stability more than freedom. Others value freedom more than stability. Obviously the US belongs to the latter variety. However, there is a point at which too much freedom threatens the viability of that society itself. Has the US gone beyond that point? Arguably, yes, when its allies cannot even rely on the President's word and policies involving war and peace. President Biden has committed himself to supporting the Ukrainians in their war with Russia. America's allies in Europe are all on the same page with this policy. Who's not? The American House of Representatives who must vote on the expenditure of money for this cause. Obviously, Biden looks weak if he cannot even deliver what he has promised as the leader of the Free World. European democracies are looking askance.
Other societies have no such problems. For example, the Chinese society values stability much more than they value freedom. It would be very unlikely that the Chinese would countermand a policy expounded by Xi Jinping. President Biden is in the position that a carefully thought out policy involving the preservation of democracy in Ukraine is being countermanded by a man who not only tried to overthrow democracy in the US, but is running for President again and is telling Congress not to vote the money for the continuance of Biden's policy in Ukraine. It's the tail wagging the dog. Despite 91 criminal indictments, the US system is so free that it cannot prevent this from happening. It goes to show that the American Presidency is weaker than the Presidencies of almost every European country. At least in Europe, for the most part, their societies are going along with supporting Ukraine financially. They also in the past looked up to the American President for leadership. Now they are finding that hard to do.
Trump has broke all the rules and created a followership of cult like fanatics who relish this fact. Trump and his followers are not rational actors willing to resolve their differences with the rest of the American population in a civilized manner following the traditional rule of law. Despite the fact that Biden has done more for the US than very few other Presidents, Trump is ahead in the polls to become the next President of the US. Rational actors and their followers should have favored a President in his reelection bid over a person who attempted to overthrow the American Constitution, but they're not. Hence, a good percentage of Americans are not rational actors to whom the rules of law of a 235 old Republic mean nothing. American politics has become a politics of fanaticism and American freedom is tolerating it. Too much freedom and too little stability in a political system does not bode well for the long range viability of that system. In addition the upcoming election for President will come down to very narrow margins in a handful of battleground states. Has the archaic American system finally hamstrung itself to the extent that the popular vote will mean nothing ... again?
There's Never Enough Money for Peace; There's Always Money for War ... Until There Wasn't
by John Lawrence
President Biden wants $106 billion for wars in Ukraine and Israel and to strengthen the border after spending $112 billion on war in Ukraine alone since 2022. Of this $61.4 billion would be for the war in Ukraine. Biden thinks it's outrageous that the American Congress won't just fork over the money to continue this war. While he thinks it's unconscionable that the Republican House won't fork over the money, it's completely conscionable that they should fight tooth and nail over any money allocated for peace in the world. After all we're the United States of America. We can't just go back on our - or is it Biden's - word about war. We can be wishy washy about peace or about helping people either inside or outside the US, but a President's word must be Golden about war. After all democracy is at stake ... or is it? Well, in a democracy, it's possible, although unlikely, that money won't be voted for war. After all, Biden is not an autocrat. He just can't continue a war if Congress doesn't vote the money for it.
One phrase unlikely to be heard regarding the war in Ukraine is "sphere of influence." Why? Because it's taken for granted that a large country's sphere of influence extends outward over smaller, surrounding countries. Take the US for example. The US' sphere of influence extends over the whole western hemisphere. When a socialist leader was chosen in Argentina in a democratic election, the US undermined his regime. Salvadore Allende was elected President of Argentina in 1970, He had pledged to nationalize the mostly U.S.-owned copper companies, a large industry in Chile. Allende threatened US interests in Argentina, and this would not be tolerated, democratic election or not. The U.S. spent $8 million on covert actions between 1970 and the 1973 coup which ushered in the repressive Pinochet regime, according to a 1975 Senate report. So the US is all for democracy until its interests are threatened. In fact there is a long history of US intervention in Latin America. But according to western thinking, Russia, a super power with nuclear weapons, should have a sphere of interest of zero.
The United States participated, directly or indirectly, in Latin American regime change more than 40 times in the last century, according to historian John Coatsworth. That figure doesn't include a number of failed missions like the 1961 Bay of Pigs assault in Cuba. Some of the more stinging U.S. moves included the ouster of democratically elected governments in Guatemala in 1954, in Brazil a decade later and in Chile in 1973. If the US' sphere of influence includes all of Latin America, one might consider or even be as bold as to ask the question, what is Russia's sphere of influence? Would it include a country on its border that arguably had once been a part of Russia? Most of Ukraine fell to the Russian Empire under the reign of Catherine the Great; the Crimean Khanate was annexed by Russia in 1783, following the Emigration of Christians from Crimea in 1778, and in 1793 right-bank Ukraine was annexed by Russia in the Second Partition of Poland. So much for history.
The question must also be asked does the fate of Ukraine in the current war affect one way or another US interests? What are US interests in Ukraine? According to Joe Biden it's all about the idea that any country should be free to join NATO if it so desires. Is this something that the US should be spending hundreds of billions of dollars to achieve? Might the money be spent in some other way that might better promote peace in the world? Russia obviously considers Ukraine to be in its "sphere of influence." The architecture of the war as designed by Joe Biden is that the US would supply weaponry to Ukraine to fight a defensive war to push Russia out of its territory. At the same time the war was not meant to expand to a larger conflagration that would imperil a world war. The consequence of that is that all the dying and property destruction would be by Ukrainians and in Ukraine. This is a formula for disaster if the war should become a war of attrition which it has. A whole generation of Ukrainian men mostly are being wiped out. Of course a lot of Russians are dying too, but property destruction is taking place mainly in Ukraine.
Joe Biden has personalized the war in Ukraine as a vendetta between himself and Vladimir Putin. This does not bode well for a future peace settlement, and a peace settlement must come at some point or Ukraine will essentially be destroyed by an ongoing war of attrition. Ukraine obviously wants to expand the war to Russian territory with the help of more advanced US weaponry, something that Biden has resisted giving to them because he wants the war contained within Ukrainian territory. He doesn't want an expanded war which could develop into a World War. This is to his credit, but it leaves Ukraine in the position of being totally dependent on US weaponry, and, since the US is a democracy and not an autocracy, ironically if the House of Representatives will not allocate the money for the continuance of the war in Ukraine, Ukraine will lose the war. Is there any kind of back channel communication going on about a peace settlement?
At this point a good hard look should be taken at trying to have a peace settlement of the war in Ukraine. The alternative is either a war of attrition which will grind Ukraine down to the point that, whether or not it becomes a member of NATO, it will be a defeated nation. Or Ukraine could lose even more territory to Russia if the war grinds on especially if it grinds on without advanced US weaponry. It has become a proxy war of the US with Russia and a personalized vendetta between Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin. This dos not bode well for the future of a peaceful world which needs to cooperate in the war that really needs to be fought - a war which threatens the whole human and animal world - the war against climate change. For that war all nations including the US and its erstwhile enemies - Russia, China, Iran and North Korea - need to cooperate. The whole human race needs to be on the same page. But if history is any guide, the human race much prefers the drama of war than it does the quotidian banality of peace.
Biden Needs to Step Down But Not Because of His Age
by John Lawrence
In a nutshell his ego is too involved in the Ukraine war, and his stance on the Israel-Hamas war is ineffective and feckless. Trump is about to hand Biden a defeat, not at the ballot box, but by virtue of his control over the House of Representatives. The House will do what Trump tells them to do, and what he is telling Speaker Mike Johnson is to not hold a vote on military aid to Ukraine which is something Biden so desperately wants. So it's easy to see why Trump would use his influence over the House to hand Biden a major defeat here just like he handed Biden a defeat over solution of the border issue. So where would that leave Biden who has set this major US policy in motion? The flaw (or fly if you prefer) in Biden's ointment is that he has never given even lip service to a negotiated settlement of the war in Ukraine. A peaceful solution would be a loss to Biden since his ego is so entrenched in the idea of Ukraine winning that war with the help of US weaponry. Biden also has a deep vendetta against Vladimir Putin. It's personal with Biden although I at least have not seen any demonization aimed by Putin at Biden. So Biden has a dilemma. He cannot tolerate the idea that he will not be able to sell Ukraine weapons which just means a transfer of funds from US taxpayers to US weapon makers i.e. the US military-industrial complex, with Ukraine the beneficiary of the actual hardware. Some pundits have gone as far as to urge Americans to support the war on the grounds that it benefits American GDP!
As far as the Israel-Hamas war is concerned, Biden doesn't seem capable of tamping down Netanyahu's hawkish determination to do "whatever the hell he wants," to quote another actor, in Gaza. Netanyahu is playing Biden for a sucker. Biden's unmitigated support for Israel is falling on Netanyahu's deaf ears making him oblivious to Biden's entreaties to go slow in Gaza. In short Biden has no control over Netanyahu, and the IDF is certainly committing their share of atrocities there mainly on women and children. Revenge is no justification. Instead of one horrific and unjustified act, namely, the October 7 attack on Israel, we are treated to two horrific and and one partially justified act, namely Israel's war on Gaza. In his book, The End of Race Politics, Coleman Hughes writes, "[Ibram X.] Kendi explicitly endorses the logic of taking an eye for an eye. He supposes that the way to remedy a harm is by imposing an equal and opposite harm - that the way to remedy one kind of injustice is by replacing it with another kind of injustice. If I strike you, you strike me; if I steal from you, you steal from me; if I kill your child, you kill mine.
"Human history shows us how wrongheaded the neoracist [substitute war mongering] conception of justice is. It shows us that taking an eye for an eye doesn't stop injustice; it instead participates in it. It creates new injustices in a misguided effort to remedy the old ones. It then demands that those new injustices be remedied by yet newer injustices in the future. The neoracist [substitute war mongering] logic of retaliation will lead inevitably to a cycle of wrongful discrimination that never ends."
Netanyahi is strictly an "eye for an eye" kind of guy. Although Coleman Hughes is writing about racism, the same logic applies to war. Biden does not seem amenable to this logic. He is stuck in a wishy washy stance that says, yes Israel has a right to respond to the Hamas attack by devastating Gaza, but Israel should use restraint so that it doesn't do any more harm than is necessary [whatever that is]. Netanyahu makes no bones about the fact that he wants to wipe Hamas [and Gaza] off the map, and Biden seems incapable of restraining him all the time giving him more money. If I fight with my neighbor and say to my father, "Hey Dad, I need you to give me more money, so I can more effectively fight my neighbor," and my Dad says, "Well, here's the money son, but don't harm your neighbor too much," what is going on here? The son is controlling the father, not vice versa, and Netanyahu is controlling Biden. This is not a good position for the President of the United States to be in.
We need a fresh approach to the US' role in both of these wars. Biden is too entrenched in Old Thinking. His ego is too involved. Therefore, he should step down and allow other leadership to step forward who, hopefully, can have a more enlightened and creative approach to the solution of the problems created by these two wars. Both of these wars are stalemates in a sense. Both of them perpetuate the cycle of violence. Both of them do nothing to prevent an ongoing loss of innocent life as well as non innocent life as if there were such a thing. Where are the peacemakers? Blessed are the peacemakers. We are stuck in the Old Testament when what is needed is New Testament thinking. Biden should stop while he's ahead. Think of the example of Lyndon Johnson who was a President who did a lot of good before he was brought down by his quotidian involvement in war. Biden has done much good for the economy, but it is time to hang up his old thinking about war. We need new leadership; we need a new approach; we need new thinking. We need those who think, "How do we create peace, not how do we win this war."
Whether Biden wins or loses the next election, he still has a chance to bring two wars to an end. This will not only benefit the world situation, it will enhance his chances for reelection. First the war in Ukraine has ground to a stalemate, a war of attrition. This is not salubrious or propitious. The human race can ill afford the kind of enmity that war and the killing of innocents portends. The human race has to be most concerned about climate change, adaptation and mitigation. Instead, we are frittering away our chances to prevent a catastrophic outcome. But for Biden and others peace is not on the agenda, winning is. Taking sides in which we are the good guys and the other side are the bad guys is not helping the situation. Demonizing the heads of government in countries and creating enemies out of them is not productive for combating our common enemy - climate change - nor is it productive for creating world peace. Is world peace even a consideration here? We all have to get along; the world is too small a place. Notwithstanding the war in Ukraine, Russia is a petrochemical producer which is contributing to climate change. We must get away from the production and usage of fossil fuels. Warring countries have no incentive to do that. Only cooperation among major countries has a chance at tamping down the production of fossil fuels.
Biden needs to create a peace conference, a peace initiative, for finding a compromise and solution to the war in Ukraine. Instead he wants to keep pouring money and weapons down the drain to support a war of attrition. This is totally a Cold War mentality with regard to Russia. Instead, there needs to be peace and compromise in that part of the world. Russia seems at least to be amenable to that. So should Ukraine be, but Ukraine will never be amenable to peace as long as the US keeps pouring money and weapons into it. Instead the war will only expand as attacks are starting to take place in a wider arena, something Biden did not contemplate at the outset. Instead of pouring gas on the fires of war, Biden needs to take a different attitude, an attitude of peace and reconciliation. He needs to get his dander down, and instead of insisting on winning, insist instead on creating peace in the world. Use the might of the US military to enforce the peace instead of promoting the war. The US military could be used to enforce the peace instead of winning the war.
The war in Gaza also needs to be brought to an end. Netanyahu is playing Biden for a sucker. Israel is the recipient of billions of dollars from the US. That gives Biden the right not just to suggest a solution, but to insist on a solution. The solution, which most knowledgeable people agree on, is the two state solution. So lets get on with creating it! Instead Biden is an enabler for Israel's war to turn Gaza into a refugee camp. This accomplishes nothing. Biden needs to take Netanyahu and Israel down a peg or two. The Palestinians have every right to a decent and peaceful life as do the Israelis. This needs to be created, and it can't be created as long as Netanyahu has a free hand to continue the war. Revenge is no solution; the two state solution is. Let's get on with it. It has to be an all out effort, one in which Israel cannot be allowed to have the controlling hand or the last word. On the world stage Israel and Ukraine are after all only bit players. Instead they are consuming the world's attention and resources when peaceful solutions of these two wars are not impossible to figure out. It's only hubris which is preventing those peaceful solutions from being manifested and implemented. The principals at least should be trying.
The prevailing mentality of us versus them is self defeating. It's a luxury which the world at large can no longer afford. We are destroying resources and innocent lives when we need to be pulling together to combat our common enemy - climate change. There are enough refugees in the world. There are too many children growing up without the resources necessary for happy and productive lives. Instead they will be candidates for future resentments and hatreds of those responsible for their predicaments. It is a vicious circle. Retribution, resentment and revenge is being created in the younger generation as we speak because war, hatred and recrimination is being allowed to continue. The world's collective foot must be brought down against the continuation of these two wars. Instead each side seems to think that, since they are in the right, the wars must continue. Their hubris and egotism must prevail over the other side's hubris and egotism. They are too dug in. Outsiders must discourage this. Instead the US and the west is encouraging it or at least taking a hands off attitude. They are saying in effect "you guys solve the problem," but they never will as long as each side insists on winning and not compromising.The protagonists of war must not be given a hands off attitude by the noncombatants. Instead, they must be reigned in in such a way that those who are not obsessed with retribution have the last word.
Biden should snatch victory from the jaws of defeat in Ukraine by calling for a cease fire and a peace process. It doesn't look like he's going to get Congress to allocate the money that Ukraine needs to continue the war which has degenerated into a grinding war of attrition. The lines seem to have been drawn mainly as they existed in 2014 when Russia took over Crimea and large portions of the Donbas, a process which Obama didn't raise a hue and a cry about. Biden, on the other hand, has burnished his Cold War credentials and got his ego involved in expressing outrage over what Obama considered a fait accompli. Meanwhile, people are being killed and real estate is being destroyed mainly in Ukraine. Those seemed to be the ground rules which Biden predetermined: (1) the fighting would take place only in Ukraine, not in Russia and (2) American weapons but no American boots on the ground or in the air would be used. The war was supposed to be a defensive war in which Russia was to be pushed out of Ukraine which would maintain the territorial integrity of Ukraine. It seems that this objective can no longer be obtained in light of the fact that the US Congress is vaccilating over sending more money to Ukraine so it can continue a pointless war of attrition. There must be a better way. Yes, there is and that is to envision a peace process as an alternative to more killing and real estate asset destruction.
Last year’s Ukrainian counteroffensive was a failure. Russia’s defenses in the territory it has captured look impenetrable. Republicans in Washington are blocking further Ukraine aid. President Volodymyr Zelensky is on the precipice of firing his top general — who may well become his chief political rival.
It’s a difficult moment for Ukraine. And another year of frontal assaults on the trench lines could make 2024 look like 1916, a year in World War I that brought harrowing loss of life but few battlefield gains.
...
But the situation is grim. The country has lost nearly one-fifth of its territory. In 2014, Russia took Crimea and orchestrated a separatist rebellion in parts of the Donbas. It grabbed the rest since the current phase of the war began in 2022.
Ukraine has lost a generation of young men — killed and wounded — to the war. It is also running out of ammunition, supplies and equipment. While Europe just approved $54 billion in economic assistance, it is American money that delivers Kyiv’s military might. But most House Republicans now oppose further Ukraine aid. And even pro-Ukraine Republicans are asking Biden administration officials what strategy can break the current battlefield stalemate. Meanwhile, the funding is ensnared in a border policy debate.
If Ukraine can’t get what it needs to beat Russia, what kind of deal could it make?
The author goes on to say
Vladimir Putin may accept a peace deal that gives him the territory he occupies now and that forces Ukraine to stay neutral, halting its integration with Europe. Ukrainians call this bargain a capitulation. But without additional American aid, they may be forced to take it.
A better deal for Ukraine would give it back at least some of its land, plus a promise that the United States and Europe would help defend it against Russia. Perhaps then Putin would think twice about further attacks. In this scenario, Ukraine might not join NATO or the European Union immediately, the prospect of which helped drive Russia’s invasion in the first place.
So with the prospect that Biden will not be able to successfully prosecute a proxy war in Ukraine against Vladimir Putin and the fact that the American people have either lost interest or don't want to fund this war any longer, he might better initiate a peace process there instead of continuing a futile, bellicose operation just as America is about to vote in November on whether Biden should get another four years. The continuation of the war in Ukraine does not enhance his prospects. More money for military operations in Ukraine might be better spent in rebuilding Ukraine after a cease fire has taken effect. A peaceful settlement might recognize the lines of control where the front lines exist now. Down the line a plebiscite could determine which side should control the disputed territory. Russian is the most common first language in the Donbas and Crimea regions of Ukraine and the city of Kharkiv, and the predominant language in large cities in the eastern and southern portions of the country. People in this area might prefer to be aligned with Russia rather than Ukraine. If so, it makes sense to stop the fighting, institute a cease fire and start a more orderly and civil process to determine the future of this part of the world. One less war in the world is always a good thing. The principals need to get their egos and recriminations out of the way first before this can happen.
Competition Leads to the Proliferation of Redundant Commodities. Cooperation is Necessary to Deal with Global Warming
by John Lawrence
Private enterprise fueled by competition is a great mechanism for creating products which can be sold in the market place to consumers. This has worked wonders for economies both in the western world and in China where private enterprise brought 800 million people out of poverty in 40 years, the largest reduction in poverty in world history. This was accomplished by private enterprise at the local level not by communism at the national level. However, private enterprise, while good at creating products to be sold in the market place, is not good at global cooperation which is what is needed to solve the problem of climate change let along create world peace. The problem of cooperation on a multi state level has not been solved let alone hardly addressed with the result that human society is hastening down the path to its own destruction, meanwhile trying to proliferate the sale of gadgets and the making of money and the regaling of competition as the solution to the world's problems. It's not. Unless national societies can learn to cooperate, the destruction of the earth's ecosystems necessary for human and animal well being is assured. While giving lip service to reducing the effects of climate change, no politician anywhere in the world wants to contemplate the fact that national GDPs might actually have to be reduced in order to reorient human energy and natural resources to the most important job of saving the planetary environment so that humans can safely live in it. Last year, 2023, was the hottest year on record and the year in which the most carbon dioxide was released into the atmosphere, just the opposite of the necessary conditions to save the planet for human habitation on a long term basis.
Meanwhile, advertising is supercharging the hawking of relatively worthless redundant products to individual consumers. Bolstered by the upcoming presidential election and attention-grabbing sporting events such as the Olympics, the U.S. will account for almost a third of the total ad spend, rising 2.2% to $303.6 billion in 2023 and 7.6% to $326.7 billion in 2024. Lingering macroeconomic concerns are not expected to hold back ad spending in 2024 amid a confluence of attention-grabbing events. Global ad spending is on track to top $1T for the first time, WARC (the World Advertising Research Center) says. Five companies — Alibaba, Alphabet, Amazon, ByteDance and Meta — will attract 50.7% of global spending in 2023 and 51.9% in 2024. Their ad revenues are expected to increase by 9.1% in 2023 and by 10.7% in 2024, while the rest of the industry remains stagnant. “High interest rates, spiralling inflation, military conflict and natural disasters have made for a bitter cocktail over the preceding 12 months, but the latest earnings season shows that the ad market has withstood this turbulence and has now turned a corner,” said James McDonald, director of data, intelligence and forecasting for WARC, in a release. “With the establishment of retail media as an effective advertising channel, the advent of connected TV as the next evolution of conventional video consumption, and the continued growth of social media and search, we are seeing once again the value advertisers place in leveraging first-party data to target the right message to the right person at the right time,” McDonald continued. WARC’s forecast suggests social media will account for $227.2 billion of ad spending in 2024, more than a fifth (21.8%) of the total spend. Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp and controls almost two-thirds of the social media market, can expect to see more than $146 billion in ad revenue, followed by TikTok owner ByteDance, which will see just under $40 billion in ad revenue (equating to a 17.6% share). It is to be noted that Meta does not produce one product necessary for human survival.
The force feeding of products to individual consumers is reminiscent of the force feeding of ducks to produce foie gras. It's relentless. United States Private Consumption accounted for 67.5 % of its Nominal GDP in Sep 2023. In other words without private consumption of individual consumer oriented products, the US GDP would hardly exist. Yet for the world to get climate change under control, it must reduce private consumption and individual competion for sales to consumers and redirect these resources to combating climate change. Instead human beings prefer actual combat and competition among nations to the global cooperation and cooperation between nations and the national efforts required to get climate change under control. It's a different mindset than the mindset that competition to sell products in the market place in order to get rich engenders. 2023 was the hottest on record by a long shot. Europe’s top climate agency released data showing 2023 global temperatures averaged 1.48 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Record-high temperatures are expected to continue this year. The planet didn't just set a new global annual heat record. It shattered previous records.
Greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels are projected to reach a record 36.8 billion metric tons in 2023, an increase of 1.1% over 2022, according to an annual report by the Global Carbon Project. While emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) are declining in some regions including Europe and the United States, they continue to rise overall, the authors said, adding that global action to reduce fossil fuel consumption is not happening fast enough to prevent dangerous impacts from climate change. The steep reductions that are urgently needed to meet global climate targets have yet to emerge, said Professor Pierre Friedlingstein of Exeter’s Global Systems Institute, who led the study. Atmospheric CO2 in 2023 will likely reach 419.2 ppm, 51% above pre-industrial levels. Remember when countless scientists, climate experts, and governments officials agreed that 350 ppm was the “safe” level of carbon dioxide?
So the handwriting is on the wall. Far from an all hands on deck effort to prevent climate change so that future generations can live in peace and comfort on planet earth, global competition in both the commercial and military realms is the preferred and ongoing mode of human behavior, climate change and global warming be damned. Hey, humans seemingly say, we'll get around to preventing climate change just as soon as we win this war. Human greed and the competition among greedy individual participants is a far greater force than altruistic human cooperation to do what's right by future generations. Greed has outpaced morality in the competition for individual accumulation of economic and financial resources. The cooperation and sacrifice that the world saw in the 1930s and 40s to win the Second World War is nowhere to be found today. The US is still preoccupied with individual consumption and especially in entertainment venues which contribute nothing to the effort to make the world safe in terms of climate change. Instead of making the world safe for democracy we must change the paradigm to making the world safe and habitable for future generations by an all hands on deck effort to prevent global warming, an effort, objectively speaking, that seems doomed for failure unless our collective mindsets somehow find a way to change. By the way, U.S. oil production reached a record high of over 13 million barrels per day in September 2023, surpassing all other countries.
Pope Francis delivers the Urbi et Orbi Message to World from the loggia of St. Peter's Basilica, on December 25, 2023 in Vatican City, Vatican.
Pope Francis delivers the Urbi et Orbi Message to World from the loggia of St. Peter's Basilica, on December 25, 2023 in Vatican City, Vatican. Looking at parts of the world where peace is distant, the Pope prayed for an end to the war devastating the lives of people in Israel and Palestine. He offered his consolation to the people of Gaza and the entire region and in particular the Christian communities. He also named other nations struggling to arrive at peace and stability, mentioning war-torn Syria, Yemen, and struggling Lebanon, assuring all the people of his prayers for their well-being and implored peace for Ukraine. (Photo by Alessandra Benedetti - Corbis/Corbis via Getty Images)
"The human heart is weak and impulsive; if we find instruments of death in our hands, sooner or later we will use them," said the Pope in his Christmas Day blessing. "And how can we even speak of peace, when arms production, sales and trade are on the rise?"
Pope Francis condemned the global arms industry for its role in the ongoing slaughter in the Gaza Strip and called for peace worldwide during his Christmas blessing from Vatican City on Monday, mourning the children killed and displaced by war, which he called the "little Jesuses of today," in occupied Palestine and elsewhere.
Citing conflicts across the globe in his annual Urbi et Orbi ("To the City and World") message, the Pope told his Catholic followers that war is "an aimless voyage, a defeat without victors, an inexcusable folly" and that "saying 'no' to war means saying 'no' to weaponry" provided to humanity by the global arms industry.
"The human heart is weak and impulsive; if we find instruments of death in our hands, sooner or later we will use them," he warned. "And how can we even speak of peace, when arms production, sales, and trade are on the rise?"
Francis compared the global expenditures on weapons—which according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute reached upwards of $2.2 trillion last year—with the failure of governments to fund social goods like efforts to fight hunger, homelessness, and poverty.
"People, who desire not weapons but bread, who struggle to make ends meet and desire only peace, have no idea how many public funds are being spent on arms," the Pope said. "Yet that is something they ought to know! It should be talked about and written about, so as to bring to light the interests and the profits that move the puppet strings of war."
December 25 2023 Christmas Message and “Urbi et Orbi” Blessing Pope Franciswww.youtube.com
Last week, Common Dreamsreported on a new analysis by the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) that highlighted the numerous companies, including large weapons makers, reaping massive profits from Israel's ongoing assault on Gaza.
In his blessing on Monday, Pope Francis said his "heart grieves for the victims of the abominable attack of 7 October" as he called for the remaining hostages held by Hamas and other militants in Gaza to be released. He also backed the global call for a cease-fire and urged immediate humanitarian assistance for the people of Gaza.
"I plead for an end to the military operations with their appalling harvest of innocent civilian victims, and call for a solution to the desperate humanitarian situation by an opening to the provision of humanitarian aid," said the Pope. "May there be an end to the fueling of violence and hatred. And may the Palestinian question come to be resolved through sincere and persevering dialogue between the parties, sustained by strong political will and the support of the international community."
"Brothers and sisters," he said, "let us pray for peace in Palestine and in Israel."
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Why Not Issue an ID Card to Every Member of the Human Race?
by John Lawrence
Every member of the human race should be issued an ID card at birth which qualifies them for all the rights and privileges of being a human without respect to nationality, ethnicity or religion. Every member of the human race deserves a certain status, dignity and respect given to them as their birthright, and it's the duty of every other member to respect those rights and privileges. Human beings need to deethnicize, dereligicize and denationicize. In short we need to secularize. No one's religion, ethnicity or national origin should take priority over one's rights as a human being. Most of the problems of humanity have come about because of rivalries having to do with religion, ethnicity or nationalistic hubris. People have hubris about their political and economic systems thinking that their system is better than someone else's system. Why not respect whatever system some other country chooses to enact? The bottom line is everyone regardless of where they live or where they came from or what religion they choose to be a part of deserves certain basic human rights as a function of being a human being. Wars have been fought over religion for thousands of years. Muslims and Christians fought for hundreds of years during the Crusades era. Protestants and Catholics fought wars in Europe for hundreds of years. Hindus and Muslims fought for years until the partition of India in 1947.
The Partition of India in 1947 was the change of political borders and the division of other assets that accompanied the dissolution of the British Raj in the Indian subcontinent and the creation of two independent dominions in South Asia: India and Pakistan. The Dominion of India is today the Republic of India, and the Dominion of Pakistan—which at the time comprised two regions lying on either side of India—is now the Islamic Republic of Pakistan and the People's Republic of Bangladesh. The partition was outlined in the Indian Independence Act 1947. The change of political borders notably included the division of two provinces of British India, Bengal and Punjab. The majority Muslim districts in these provinces were awarded to Pakistan and the majority non-Muslim to India. The other assets that were divided included the British Indian Army, the Royal Indian Navy, the Royal Indian Air Force, the Indian Civil Service, the railways, and the central treasury. Provisions for self-governing independent Pakistan and India legally came into existence at midnight on 14 and 15 August 1947 respectively.
Perhaps the partition of India could be a template for a cease fire and political settlement of the wars in Ukraine and Israel/Palestine. Borders have been moved for millennia and imposed from the outside. Borders were moved after the First World War and after the Second World War. Since the end of World War II, the international community has been committed to the preservation of territorial borders as they existed at that time. Is this realistic or even desirable when the movement of borders could resolve wars and create peaceful solutions? Borders have been changing for millennia. Saying that the world is outraged by a violation of international norms regarding territorial integrity disregards the fact that wars and disputes might be better ended by readjusting international borders. In both wars the two parties are contesting international boundaries when a redrawing of those boundaries might yield a better solution than the obliteration of one people by another, leaving the warring parties to either win or lose the war while civilian lives are being destroyed. What is more important - the retention of current borders with the concomitant destruction of civilian lives and property or the redrawing of borders while acknowledging the rights of human beings as people to exist?
In Ukraine a partition drawn where the front lines are now located might bring the bloodshed to an end. Is it right that the people of Ukraine should suffer and die over where the borders between the two adjacent countries should be drawn. After all eastern Ukraine and Crimea have been part of the Russian empire since the time of Catherine the Great. Most of Ukraine fell to the Russian Empire under the reign of Catherine the Great; the Crimean Khanate was annexed by Russia in 1783, following the Emigration of Christians from Crimea in 1778, and in 1793 right-bank Ukraine was annexed by Russia in the Second Partition of Poland. In Israel/Palestine IMHO the borders should be redrawn so that both Israel and Palestine have roughly the same amount of contiguous territory. That means that the West Bank should be expanded and Gaza eliminated as Palestinian territory. Does it make sense for the Palestinians to have two discontiguous pieces of real estate as a national entity? There should be international recognition of two separate contiguous states. Leaving it up to Israel and the Palestinians to work this out is a mistake. They will never do it voluntarily; they will fight on in perpetuity. A two state solution must be imposed from the outside with a powerful coalition probably involving the US guaranteeing the peace. What good is the military might of the US if it can't be used to impose and guarantee a peaceful solution to hostilities whether or not the hostile parties agree to it. Once the territorial boundaries are equalized, the two countries should be treated and resourced equally again whether they like it or not. One country should not be favored over the other.
War is about winning or losing irregardless of human suffering. As modern warfare has developed, the ones doing the suffering and dying are primarily civilians not soldiers as was the case in the old days, and now in Gaza the civilians doing the dying are mostly children. This is a pathetic indictment of the modern world and the human race. Humans have fought wars and committed atrocities for hundreds of thousands of years and yet we have, as a race, learned absolutely nothing. The situation has only gotten worse. Condemning the other side and insisting that our side win the war is only causing continued human - mainly civilian - mainly women and children - suffering death and destruction because (mainly men) have their egos involved and are just moving military pieces around on a chess board. Insisting on the respect and dignity given to every human qua human as being more important than who wins and who loses a war would be an advance in human civilization. The secularization of the human world with respect to religion, ethnicity and national boundaries needs to happen or humans will continue to destroy each other in the name of religion, ethnicity and national boundaries.
The US proxy war in Ukraine is teetering on the brink. If the US does not provide more money and weapons, Russia could march right past the lines as they now exist and take over all of Ukraine which, of course, was Putin's original goal. However, if there were to be a peace deal now with the front lines becoming a de facto border, Russia would have much of what it wants which is eastern Ukraine, which is mainly Russian speaking, plus a land bridge to Crimea where Russia has its deep sea fleet anchored in Sevastopol. Besides that there would be no more death and destruction which is something not even taken into account by the powers that be. So now while Biden is gung ho for continuing the war, the demands of democracy are such that he alone does not control foreign policy. I like President Biden. I think he has done more on domestic policy then any President since FDR. But on foreign policy I don't agree. He has a Cold War mentality about Russia. He has demonized Putin and not given him what Russia most wants - respect as a great power. This was evident on the lead up to the war when the US would not even consider Russia's main demand - that Ukraine not become a member of NATO. Of course the history of Russia and Ukraine was not considered either.
During the reign of Catherine the Great, she extended the borders of the Russian Empire southward and westward to absorb New Russia, Crimea, Northern Caucasus, Right-bank Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, and Courland at the expense, mainly, of two powers – the Ottoman Empire and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. Under her rule, some 200,000 square miles (520,000 km2) were added to Russian territory. Catherine made Russia the dominant power in south-eastern Europe after her first Russo-Turkish War against the Ottoman Empire (1768–74), which saw some of the heaviest defeats in Ottoman history. In 1786, Catherine conducted a triumphal procession in the Crimea, which helped provoke the next Russo–Turkish War. This war, catastrophic for the Ottomans, legitimized the Russian claim to the Crimea.
Of course this is nothing new. Americans are notoriously ignorant of other people's history. Biden is no exception. His ideas were forged during the Cold War. They do not take into account much more than the idea that America is good, Russia is bad. The fact is that there is more or less a stalemate in the war in Ukraine. If the fighting continues, it just means that more Ukrainian civilians will die and have their lives destroyed as well as their real estate. So far no or very few Russian civilians have died and very little Russian real estate has been destroyed. What's wrong with this picture? Pretty much everything. It doesn't make sense that US money is fueling actually not the winning of a war against Russia but the destruction of Ukraine. This is stupid. If US foreign policy gave a hoot about Ukrainian lives, not to mention real estate, it would pursue a peace deal based on a cease fire and a de facto recognition of the lines as they exist at present. This would mean that Russia would control eastern Ukraine - Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhia, Kherson and Crimea - which are the historical borders, and the rest of Ukraine would remain under Ukrainian control and possibly become a member of NATO. UN peacekeepers could patrol and guarantee the border with a plebiscite at a later date to determine the final situation. Ending the war now would accomplish the most important thing - not one more Ukrainian would be killed or wounded. But that does not even seem to be a consideration either for Biden or Zelensky.
Most "Aid" to Ukraine is Spent in the US Thus Benefiting US Defense Contractors and Adding to Inflation
by John Lawrence
Financial aid to Ukraine mostly benefits the US military-industrial complex from which Ukraine buys most of its weapons. This money, therefore, floods into the US economy thus increasing inflation because it's well known that money injected into the US economy by the government has an inflationary impact. In an article entitled "Most ‘aid to Ukraine’ is spent in the US. A total shutdown would be irresponsible" we find the following: "A lot of money considered to be "aid to Ukraine" is actually spent in the US. In this op ed, Mark Cancian argues that eliminating that funding would be bad business for both Ukraine and American interests." And the following: "As the discussion above shows, a large part of the aid is spent in the United States. Funding of US agencies, most of the funding for US military forces, most of the military equipment backfill and Ukrainian equipment purchases, and a part of the humanitarian assistance stay in the United States. In all, about $68 billion of the $113 billion enacted (60 percent) would be spent in the United States, benefiting the armed forces and US industry." So advocates for the military-industrial complex itself are arguing that, since the war in Ukraine benefits US business interests, taxpayers should continue to fund it.
Of course no one wants to talk about or connect the facts that when the government spends too much money into the US economy, it tends to have an inflationary impact. I support President Biden with the historic $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, the $1 trillion Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the $53 billion CHIPS and Science Act, the $740 billion Inflation Reduction Act. Biden has accomplished more than any President since Franklin Roosevelt. Nevertheless, critics of the war in Ukraine are correct when they say that supporting a US proxy war in Ukraine is having an inflationary effect on the US economy. Probably all the previous government spending, although beneficial, had a lot to do with causing inflation in the first place. More government spending is pouring even more money into the US economy at a time when the government should be using its authority to decrease the US money supply thereby helping to bring inflation down. Thy could do this, for example, by taxing the rich. Too much money sloshing around in the economy causes inflation. Too little money in the US money supply has the opposite effect - deflation.
The possibility arises that the US has gotten itself into a forever proxy war of attrition in Ukraine based on the noble premise that Ukraine has a right to join NATO. The alternative to that forever war, which will only result in the loss of many more Ukrainian lives, the destruction of Ukrainian families and the loss of billions of dollars of Ukrainian real estate and infrastructure, is a peaceful solution to the war along the lines of a ceasefire and Russian control of the portion of eastern Ukraine that it has controlled since 2014 including Crimea with western Ukraine becoming a member of NATO. Additionally UN peace keepers could patrol the border between those two entities to maintain a peaceful, stable border. Historically, Ukraine had been a part of Russia since the era of Catherine the Great in the eighteenth century, but only gained full autonomy by virtue of the fact that Premier Nikita Khrushchev granted it independence in 1954. So the history is complex. What is important now is to settle the conflict by a ceasefire and recognition of the current de facto borders. This is important not only from the point of view of Ukraine in light of a continued loss of life and real estate, but in view of the continued drain on the US economy. The money going to fund the war in Ukraine by the US could be better spent at home or not spent at all in light of the continuing, albeit reduced, inflation.
A Spokesman from the Department of Peace Was Interviewed by CNN
by John Lawrence
Hostilities in the world have died down significantly after the US established a Department of Peace. Now in addition to interviewing a military expert every time a war or a potential war threatens to break out, a spokesman from the Department of Peace, a so called peace expert is also interviewed. Recently peace expert Roshina Macerdinot responded to questions from CNN anchor Emily Sohodinat. Question: "How do you interact with the parties involved in a potential conflagration that threatens peace in the world?" Answer: "Well, first we don't take sides. We try to understand the issues from the points of view of both sides. We never denigrate either side or refer to one side as "the enemy." We try to work out a compromise that is acceptable to both sides, and we work hard with both parties to implement it given our substantial resources to do so. Fortunately, the Department of Peace now has a budget commensurate with the Defense Department which signifies our commitment to peace and not just to defending ourselves. We are proactive knowing that, if we can prevent war, we can save the destruction of life and real estate. In that sense we are pro life. One of our principles is to get the parties to understand that it is not productive to seek revenge no matter how outlandish was the behavior of one of the parties that instigated the conflict. Revenge just leads to a cycle of violence, sometimes never ending."
Sohodinat: "So you advocate just eliminating the Department of Defense? In other words you don't see the need to defend ourselves in a hostile world?
Macerdinot: "On the contrary. If all of our efforts at creating peace and resolving hostilities break down, our Defense Department stands ready to defend ourselves. It's just that we put an enormous amount of effort into creating peace and resolving hostility in the first place so that the resources of our Defense Department never have to be brought to bear hopefully. One of the ways we do that is to show respect to both parties. But if all else fails, we stand ready, with the largest military in the world to defend ourselves. However, our military budget is commensurate with out peace budget. We put as much effort into implementing peace as we do in creating and sustaining the weapons of war. A lot of our efforts are put into alleviating poverty in the world and mitigating the effects of climate change which affects the poorer countries more than it does the advanced countries although the advanced countries such as the US have been more responsible for putting most of the carbon dioxide into the atmosphere."
Sohodinat: "Well that's all well and good, but it seems a little bit pollyanish. Wars have taken place since the dawn of recorded history and probably long before that. So now we have a Department of Peace, a Division of which is the Peacebuilders such as the Peace Corps and another Division is the Peacemakers which is an augmented and upgraded diplomatic corps. Still even with all these initiatives, do you think you can change what has been a universal and ubiquitous human behavior such as war?"
Macerdinot: "Certainly it's worth a humongous effort. We know we are succeeding when the Peace Corps, which is one of our Divisions, is being given the same ritualistic recognition and honors as is the military. In fact we have created a Peace Industrial Complex which rivals the Military Industrial Complex. We are partnering with China to build infrastructure all around the world. We know we are succeeding when CNN interviews representatives who are both Military Generals and Peace Generals. We know we are succeeding when the perks and incentives for entering the Peace Corps are substantially equal to the perks and incentives for entering the military. We know we are succeeding when the Peace Academies rival West Point and Annapolis. We are turning out graduates committed to the arts of peace as fast or faster than we are turning out graduates proficient in the arts of war."
Sohodinat: "So what is peace? Is it just cessation of hostility or is it more than that?"
Macerdinot: "It's actually much more than that. It's when every person in the world has a shot at what used to be called "the American Dream." It's when no child goes hungry anywhere in the world. It's when there is clean water, nutritious food, adequate health care, a good sewage system and all the elements of a civilized life are available to everyone wherever they might live. It goes without saying that a stable and clean environment with climate change under control must be brought to fruition. Everyone, no matter where they might live, should have the tools available to live a healthy life and live up to their potential."
Sohodinat: Well, we are running out of time for this interview, but as I understand it, the Department of Peace is now on a par with the Department of Defense in terms of its funding level and the proficiency of its personnel. You all are committed to understanding and interoperating with other countries offering them friendship and respect regardless of their internal problems and political systems different from our own rather than criticising or bullying them."
Macerdinot: "That's correct. Finally, the world has learned from the Ukraine and Israeli-Hamas wars that the human suffering and destruction of real estate that war entails is not worth it, and that maximum efforts need to be made to create and maintain peace and understanding before hostilities reach the breaking point. It's important that at least as much funding and effort goes into the creation of peace as goes into the preparation for war. Jesus said "Turn the other cheek" if someone strikes you. We advocate that as well, but not in a purely defenseless manner. It's never too late to resolve the situation peacefully even if you're struck, but if worse comes to worse we still have the ability to defend ourselves. Revenge never works because it leads to a cycle of violence"
The Two State Solution Must Be Created, Implemented and Enforced ... Now
by John Lawrence
So now they are having a 5 day peace after which time they will resume the killing? They should be using the time to come up with a permanent solution, not just pausing the killing for humanitarian reasons. That's a contradiction in terms. The US has the power to impose a Two State solution on Israel and the Palestinians instead of leaving it up to them. Leaving it up to them means that it will never happen. They will go on killing each other till the end of time. What good is unlimited military power unless it is used to impose peace? What is the principal here - that every "free" state is free to make peace or war as they so choose. I say that peace needs to be imposed, and in this case it can be imposed because neither state is big enough to resist it if that is what the world community wants to do. Israel and the Palestinians should not be free to kill each other till the end of time. Mose Allison has a song with the lyric, "Everyone's crying peace on earth just as soon as we win this war." Now even that lyric has been corrupted to, "Everyone's crying peace on earth (temporarily) until we can get on with this war." But squandering a pause in the fighting for humanitarian reasons seems a travesty knowing that in a few days, once those humanitarian reasons have been accomplished, we will get on with what we really want to do - continue the war!
We know what a Two State solution would look like. Even all the details have been worked out. It's just that Israel and the Palestinians won't agree to it. Therefore, it must be imposed on them ... both. They should not be free to continue their mutual madness forever. What a bizarre notion of "freedom:" this portends. Why, sir, your freedom includes a right to hate and attack your neighbor in perpetuity. Free and sovereign states should not be impeded from protecting themselves even if in the long run they are not protecting themselves but just involving themselves in endless rounds of attacks and counter attacks. The world's most powerful nation just stands back and says in effect "we don't want to impose ourselves on your freedom and sovereignty. You have a sovereign right to go on with endless rounds of revenge, hatred and war."
UN peacekeepers should separate the two sides and impose peace on Israel and Palestine by imposing a two state solution backed by the power of the US. The world should say to them, "Enough." You guys are totally incapable of solving your problems, and, left to your own devices, you will go on killing each other indefinitely. By virtue of your incompetence at creating peace among yourselves, you have both lost your right to come up with a workable solution, and, therefore, one must be imposed on you, like it or not. You have both lost your right to be completely free and sovereign nations. You are both making the world a worse place. Therefore, the world community has lost its patience and tolerance for your local squabbles which are forcing the whole world to stop what it is doing and deal with your seemingly overwhelming problems. We'd like to get on with solving the problem of climate change instead of devoting our attention to interminably, intermittent wars.
The Worldwide Need For Energy Grows as World Population Grows
by John Lawrence
One factor not taken into account as the world grapples with replacing fossil fuel energy with renewable energy is that the population, and, therefore, the need for energy is growing exponentially with a billion human beings being added to world population approximately every decade. This makes it less likely that we will hit our targets for fossil fuel emissions. One could quantify the number of gigatons of carbon dioxide emitted per year per person on the planet. Obviously, every person has needs that require either fossil fuel or renewable energy although people in more advanced countries are more responsible for the emission of greater quantities of CO2 than others. Let's look at world population growth over the years. It took most of human history for our population to reach 1 billion—and just over 200 years to reach 8 billion. It is estimated that earth reached one billion in population for the first time in 1804; two billion in 1927, 123 years later; three billion in 1960, 33 years later; four billion in 1974, 14 years later; five billion in 1987, 13 years later; six billion in 1999, 12 years later; seven billion in 2011, 12 years later; and eight billion in 2022, 11 years later. Notice that 7/8 of the world's population have been added to the planet after the advent of the industrial revolution, after the advent of the widespread use of fossil fuels. If the world's population had not increased so rapidly, planet earth would probably not be facing the dire consequences of climate change at this point in time. Notice also that the addition of a billion people to planet earth is happening over shorter and shorter time spans, the last billion in just eleven years!
Can the defossil fuelization of planet earth proceed at a rapid enough pace to keep up with world population growth? That is a critical question. What is the average energy consumption per capita for planet earth? The U.S. average residential energy consumption per capita in 2021 was about 63 MMBtu. MMBtu is the abbreviation for one million British thermal units. It is the common unit used to measure heating content and the value of a fuel.The world average per capita consumption of primary energy in 2021 was about 76 MMBtu. Total world energy consumption then would be 8 billion times 76 MMBtu. So by 2032 or so add in another billion times 76 MMBtu. Will renewables be able to supply that much energy by 2032? Major changes have to take place in agriculture and building materials in addition to power generation and transportation. The manufacture of steel and cement contribute large amounts of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. These building materials need to be replaced but by what? You can't have high rises built out of adobe. In agriculture we have to get away from eating farm animals. Cows burp and fart methane. Pigs contribute a lot of waste products which leech into rivers and streams. Problem is people don't want to give up eating cows and pigs. Consumers won't stand for a mandatory vegetarian diet.
Consumers want their consumption habits not to change. This means that efforts to rid the planet of fossil fuels, carbon dioxide generation by building materials and agriculture are apt to fail. As the earth warms, humanity is going too slow in its efforts to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide going into the atmosphere. Also the amount of dangerous chemicals going into the environment is threatening civilization. The need for cooperation and collaboration among nations to ameliorate climate change is also being held back by the incessant human penchant for war and violence. The profit motive seems to trump all efforts to build a healthier planet. Sellers want to sell things that are inherently destructive to the planet whether they be food products or other consumer items. If a food contains fat, salt or sugar, it is more palatable, and, therefore, there is a greater demand for it even though it contributes to ill health. There is also an insatiable demand for alcohol and drugs even though they are detrimental to human health. A paradigm change would be necessary to get the plant on the right track in terms of human health and a healthy environment devoid of carbon dioxide production.
Let's face it. The US Department of Defense is really a misnomer. It's true name is the Department of War. Why not call it what it really is. That's its mission. That's its raison d'etre. In fact the United States Department of War, also called the War Department (and occasionally War Office in the early years), was the United States Cabinet department originally responsible for the operation and maintenance of the United States Army, also bearing responsibility for naval affairs until the establishment of the Navy Department in 1798, and for most land-based air forces until the creation of the Department of the Air Force on September 18, 1947. The Secretary of War, a civilian with such responsibilities as finance and purchases and a minor role in directing military affairs, headed the War Department throughout its existence. The War Department existed from August 7, 1789 until September 18, 1947, when it split into the Department of the Army and the Department of the Air Force. The Department of the Army and Department of the Air Force later joined the Department of the Navy under the United States Department of Defense in 1949.
But there is no countervailing Department of Peace! I'm proposing one. Furthermore, the trillion dollar annual budget for the Department of War should be divided in two with half going to the Department of Peace. So $500 billion for war; $500 billion for peace. Please note that I'm not advocating doing away with the war department. I'm just advocating balancing it with a Department of Peace. Halving the Defense Department budget will still leave it with a larger military budget than any other country in the world. So when will it be a good idea to actively pursue peace if not now? Can the human mind even visualize what a Department of Peace would encompass or be involved in? Part of its mission would be to do just that - imagine what peace would look like. How do you spend the allotted resources in such a way as to bring about peace in the world? Dare I say that eliminating poverty and disease in the world, assuring educational opportunities and building infrastructure would be a good place to start. The Peace Corps would be incorporated into a Department of Peace, and its budget made commensurate with the budgets of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Space Force. Instead of extracting resources from what used to be called the Third World, the Department of Peace should be in the business of providing resources to the Third World. Instead of being totally focused on US interests, how about focusing on the interests of others particularly those who have been exploited by more technically advanced nations.
Bear in mind I'm not proposing defunding the Defense Department, just halving its budget and spending the rest on peace. The Defense Department would always stand ready to fight and win any war if all efforts for peace fail. But efforts at peace should take place preemptively and proactively long before tensions fester. Part of creating peace just consists of showing respect for all parties. That costs nothing. As an example of what not to do consider Israel's relationship with the Palestinians. They let it fester until the horrible recent events resulting in much destruction, death and suffering on both sides. Israel, the US and other interested parties had years to come up with a solution that was fair to both sides. But, admittedly, there was some trying especially by President Clinton, who almost got Israel and the Palestinian Authority to agree to peace. Yasser Arafat just refused at the last minute to say yes. But wars have been fought by human beings for millennia. Homo Sapiens probably wiped out the Neanderthals and other humanoid species. Why should we believe anything else given the history of human warfare in most cases based on religion and/or ethnicity?
China, at least, is building infrastructure throughout the world, and in particular in Africa with its Belt and Road initiative. This is a peace building exercise which is not recognized or given credit by the US. The US is a Johnny-come-lately to the idea of building infrastructure in the Third World. It can hardly accomplish this at home. If it wasn't for Biden's excellent diplomatic skills, nothing in that regard would be happening in the US itself. The US can barely keep its government open. It's not a good prognosis for the leader of the free world especially in light of the fact that a multiply indicted authoritarian who tried to overthrow the government is favored to win the next election straight out of the German playbook circa 1932.
Human beings do not use the absence of war to create peace. They use the absence of war to prepare for the next war. The time between wars could be used in a more constructive way and that is to do everything possible to prevent the next war. Instead what we do is to build up our offensive and defensive capacities so that whatever side we are on prevails in the next war. The US military-industrial complex is allotted almost a trillion dollars a year whether or not there is war or absence of war. There is never ever really peacetime. It's sole purpose is to prepare for the next war. Meanwhile the Peace Corps is allotted next to nothing in order to create the conditions that might prevent the next war. What are those conditions you might ask? They are very simple: creating educational opportunities for the undereducated, creating economic opportunities for those in poverty, creating hospitals and clinics for those whose health is at risk, building infrastructure for those lacking access to modern infrastructure. In other words building more successful societies from the ground up for those lacking what the most advanced societies already have. Above all poverty and lack of healthful conditions must be alleviated all over the world including in the advanced nations themselves before anything approaching world peace can be achieved.
So what is the lesson of the Israeli-Gaza war? It is that in the time period before the war, nobody did nothing to create the conditions for a lasting peace which would have been the two state solution. Instead people just stood back content to have the Palestinians live miserable lives without political or economic rights. Nobody cared. Nobody worked hard to correct or ameliorate the situation. People were content just to let the situation fester until the next violence broke out, and then it did with very dramatic and horrific results. When there was an absence of war, people just said ho hum, there's no urgency to create the conditions for a lasting peace. Then when war breaks out everyone gets very excited and upset, horrible things happen to children and old people. People want revenge. Hate proliferates. War is exciting. Peace is dull and undramatic. People get bored with the absence of war. People's senses come alive during war. During the absence of war in which there is no real peace, people pursue their self interest or in other words lining their purses. During war they get all excited. There is nonstop news coverage. People get upset by (wo)man's inhumanity to (wo)man as if people doing horrible things to other people is unimaginable. It's not. People's senses come alive and they come out of their collective stupors.
If the US just spent half its defense budget on war and the other half on peace, it would still have a larger defense budget than any other country in the world, and just think what the Peace Corps could do with a $500 billion budget. Why it could even compete with China's Belt and Road initiative which is building infrastructure in parts of the world where inadequate infrastructure exists. The two largest world economies could compete creating peace in the world instead of trying to out compete each other with larger and better weapons and more vitriolic and challenging rhetoric. However, this is not OK with conservatives who feel very threatened by the Chinese COMMUNIST Party although the Chinese system brought 800 million people out of poverty in 40 years primarily by adopting a free enterprise capitalistic system. Oh but it is still authoritarian politically, you say. That is subject to interpretation as the Chinese political system is based on Confucianism which promotes a meritocracy unlike the US where any bozo can become President.
So where is the American Department of Peace? We have the Department of Defense(Offense). We have the Department of Homeland Security. We have the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), National Security Agency (NSA), Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), and National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA). What agencies of the Federal government are devoted to creating a more peaceful world? Basically, none, and so is it any wonder that, while the human race continues to invent a plethora of gadgets, it can do hardly anything to create world peace? Peace depends on mutual respect among the leaders of the various nations of the world. Instead US authorities criticize and lord it over the leaders of other nations because they are not exactly like us. Instead of walking a mile in their shoes, they insist that every other nation walks a mile in our shoes.
When you consider all the wars that have been fought in the name of religion, it is not too farfetched to propose that the main hope for human civilization is secularization. Some of the commandments would be
No war is worth being fought over someone's religion.
There is no sacred ground, land, location, site or artifact.
Only the earth as a whole is holy.
Remember the body, to keep it holy. Thou shall not kill.
Do not despoil or pollute the environment.
Only extract resources as needed.
Replace, regenerate, replant or renew extracted resources.
All life on earth is to be respected.
All humans are equal and have the same rights including economic rights.
No religion is more important or more holy than any other religion.
Humans have slaughtered each other from the beginning of time. Many times the slaughter has been carried out in the name of religion. The slaughterers have maintained that God was on their side. The other side were infidels who needed to be converted to the correct religion or be killed. We, as a species, have not made any progress in the elimination of war. We have only made progress in the invention of gadgets, many of which have been destructive to the environment: namely, fossil fuel based gadgets and advanced weapons. Chemistry has led to the invention of plastics which have accumulated in the oceans. Pesticides and herbicides have accumulated in the ecosystem creating conditions conducive to cancer.
Islam, Christianity and Judaism trace back the founding of their religions to Abraham. The descendants of Abraham's two sons, Isaac or Israel and Ishmael, became the Jewish and Arab tribes respectively. Muslims are the descendants of Ishmael; Jews are the descendants of Israel. Christians also trace their lineage back to Abraham since Jesus was a Jew. There are schisms in Christianity (Protestants and Catholics) which led to centuries of European wars. Schisms in Islam (Sunnis and Shiites) led to wars between them. For hundreds of years Christian crusaders killed Muslims and vice versa. Jews have been persecuted and killed for millennia right up to the present day. So what good has religion done for the human race? In terms of world peace we would have been better off without it. It has led to the justification of war and killing and the belief of the killers that their religion was the only correct religion. PreChristian religions have been labeled with the pejorative word - pagan. NonChristians have been labeled as heathen, another pejorative word. Eastern religions have led to conflict between Hindus and Muslims. Pakistan was created by partitioning India so Muslims could live in one place, Hindus in another. China seems to be the only place where there was religious tolerance. In Chinese philosophy, the three teachings are Confucianism, Taoism, and Chinese Buddhism. All of these three teachings are considered a harmonious aggregate.
Meanwhile, while religious people were not killing each other, they were despoiling the environment under the Biblical edict of dominion: "And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth." So man is free to use the environment in any way that profits him regardless of the harm to the ecosystem. Animals can be slaughtered to extinction with no Biblical or religious consequences just as humans who are not of the correct religion can be killed without consequence. The earth can be polluted by corporations for whom externalities do not impose a cost so that pollution of the environment without consequence increases profits to shareholders. Earth is plundered; shareholders profit.
There will never be world peace until religion has no bearing on respect for the human rights of all people, and until respect for the environment predominates over the extraction of the earth's resources. There is always a rationale for war. There is never enough work done to create peace and understanding. Human rationality has led to war which is undertaken in a very rational way, but the rational human mind seems incapable of working out a rationality and a followup for a peaceful world especially when creating a peaceful world costs money.
What To Do About Religious Intolerance Leading to War
by John Lawrence
The current situation in the Middle East is a reminder that throughout history war has been religious based. Think of the wars in Europe between Protestants and Catholics or the Crusades which were wars between Christians and Muslims or the persecution of Jews throughout history. If we are ever to have peace in this world, religious tolerance is paramount. So there should be religious studies in schools at all levels, but not studies about one religion. Students should be required to study all the major religions which are Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism. Not only that, but students should be required to attend religious services in all these religions. Only by understanding the different religions can one develop a tolerance for them all. Only when we come to a time when it doesn't matter what religion a person espouses will we be able to all get along. It shouldn't matter what one's religion is. They shouldn't be perceived as "the other." All human beings need to get to the point where they are human beings first and their religion is a matter of indifference.
I think this can only be accomplished by an educational system in which a student becomes familiar with all the different religions, has friends who are members of different religions and comes to see that, regardless of one's religion, human beings are all basically the same. In other words all societies should become secularized. It would help greatly if all students were required to attend religious services of all the five great religions mentioned earlier. What is more important than peace on earth, and to accomplish this tolerance of all religions must be inculcated in students everywhere. Tolerance of other religions is more important than the beliefs of any particular religion. As long as one perceives that someone is a member of a different religion than their own and is perceived as "the other," there will be suspicion, fear, tension, hatred and war. World peace is something that needs to be worked at to be accomplished and understanding and tolerance of religion is a good place to start.
In addition to tolerance of different religious views, an uplifting of the economic circumstances of the world's poorest citizens will do more to create peace than anything else. War is often the result of the perceived superiority of living conditions of one group of people by another group. One group is the downtrodden and one group has all the advantages and is living the good life. Everyone in the world needs to be brought up to at least a decent standard of living before there will be peace in the world. So religious tolerance brought about by education regarding all the world's religions and attendance at all religious services combined with an all out effort to bring all the world's peoples up to a decent standard of living will do much to bring about world peace. These efforts have to be done at the same time that the earth itself must be protected from environmental degradation especially with regard to climate change. The old paradigm in which earth's resources were to be exploited without consequence, in which humans were told that they had "dominion" over earth's resources, must go to be replaced with an ethic not of exploitation but of respect for the planet and all its resources including its human resources.
We have to learn to value and connect with one another, even, or especially, when it’s the last thing we can imagine doing.
Humanity’s cancer shows up in Israel and Palestine. Missiles fly, hell makes global headlines, thousands of people die, many of them (oh God, of course) children.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant declares: “We are fighting human animals and we act accordingly. . . . We are imposing a complete siege on Gaza. There will be no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel. Everything will be closed.”
That’ll show ’em! Revenge rules. Kill the human animals, even if they’re toddlers.
Here’s the vicious cycle of war: One side commits a heinous crime against humanity — e.g, Hamas fires missiles into Israel, killing more than 700 people. This justifies an even more heinous response from Israel, firing its own (far more sophisticated) missiles into Gaza, declaring war on a trapped population of people in the “open air prison” of Gaza. Both sides feel justified as they continue to commit crimes against humanity — you know, look what they did! The essence of war is dehumanization.
I write these words not to try to “equalize” the wrongs of this conflict or to shrug off its history: the colonization of Palestine in the wake of World War I, the savage destruction of hundreds of its villages in the creation of the state of Israel. As Chris Hedges writes:
“Israel has spoken this blood-soaked language of violence to the Palestinians since Zionist militias seized more than 78 percent of historic Palestine, destroyed some 530 Palestinian villages and cities, and killed about 15,000 Palestinians in more than 70 massacres. Some 750,000 Palestinians were ethnically cleansed between 1947 and 1949 to create the state of Israel in 1948.”
In other words, he asks: What did Israel expect? This latest war is just one more upsurge of retaliation by a suppressed segment of humanity. Hamas, Gaza’s current governing organization, is deemed a terrorist organization — certainly by much of the U.S. media — but here’s the thing: Almost every national government with a military is a terrorist organization, or at least potentially so. The United States certainly is. Terrorism is just another word for war.
We live in a world that remains trapped in the consciousness of war. The only way to deal with harm and danger is to inflict it yourself. They just killed our children, so we’re gonna kill theirs. Whoever kills the most children wins, or so it seems.
Is a different way of thinking possible at the level of geopolitics? Is a world without war possible?
Orly Noy, who is Israeli (editor of the Hebrew-language news magazine Local Call), describes how terrifying it got when Hamas fired its missiles into Israel. Writing in The Guardian, she notes: “The public desire for revenge is both understandable and terrifying, but the erasure of any moral red line is always a frightening thing.
“It is important not to minimize or condone the heinous crimes committed by Hamas. But it is also important to remind ourselves that everything it is inflicting on us now, we have been inflicting on the Palestinians for years. . . . I keep reminding myself that ignoring this context is giving up a piece of my own humanity. Because violence devoid of any context leads to only one possible response: revenge.
And revenge, she writes, “is the opposite of security, it is the opposite of peace, it is also the opposite of justice. It is nothing but more violence.
“. . . we have not only brought Gaza to the brink of starvation, we have brought it to a state of collapse. Always in the name of security. How much security did we get? Where will another round of revenge take us?
“Terrible crimes were committed against Israelis this Saturday, crimes that the mind cannot fathom — and in this time of dark grief, I cling to the one thing I have left to hold on to: my humanity. The absolute belief that this hell is not predestined. Not for us, nor for them.”
How can her understanding of this terrifying moment be multiplied by, oh, let us say, seven billion human minds? Revenge and war don’t work. Even our enemy acts in a context. And conflict can only be understood — and transcended — in the context of all parties that are part of it. This is the creation of peace.
Yes, alas, this is more complicated than simply kicking someone’s ass — winning the game. It’s almost as though there’s a global commercial interest in keeping conflict alive — not just among political hawks and the arms dealers, but . . . well, as a lifelong journalist, I can certainly add my profession to the list: If it bleeds, it leads, as they say. How many headlines do you see that read: “Israel and Palestine (or Russia and Ukraine) Engage in Empathic Dialogue, Find Understanding”?
My God, making connection, even with the enemy? This is not what governments fund. This is not how we understand ourselves. At best, ending war — transcending war — is an unfathomably long, seemingly impossible process, and our understanding of what it will take is minimal, compared to how much we understand, let us say, about the structure of the atom.
Or is it so minimal? Perhaps we know more than we think we do. As the late Marion Woodman, author and Jungian psychologist, wrote: “Power in the sense of controlling somebody else is different from personal presence. That kind of power — patriarchal power — does not value other people. What I strive for instead is empowerment.”
We have to push on. We have to learn to value and connect with one another, even, or especially, when it’s the last thing we can imagine doing. This may well be the primary task of being human. If we don’t end war, it will certainly end us.
Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
Robert Koehler is an award-winning, Chicago-based journalist and nationally syndicated writer. Koehler has been the recipient of multiple awards for writing and journalism from organizations including the National Newspaper Association, Suburban Newspapers of America, and the Chicago Headline Club. He's a regular contributor to such high-profile websites as Common Dreams and the Huffington Post. Eschewing political labels, Koehler considers himself a "peace journalist. He has been an editor at Tribune Media Services and a reporter, columnist and copy desk chief at Lerner Newspapers, a chain of neighborhood and suburban newspapers in the Chicago area. Koehler launched his column in 1999. Born in Detroit and raised in suburban Dearborn, Koehler has lived in Chicago since 1976. He earned a master's degree in creative writing from Columbia College and has taught writing at both the college and high school levels. Koehler is a widower and single parent. He explores both conditions at great depth in his writing. His book, "Courage Grows Strong at the Wound" (2016). Contact him or visit his website at commonwonders.com.
500,000 Killed in Ukraine War. Is It Worth It Just To Insure That Ukraine Can Join NATO?
by John Lawrence
Putin's bottom line is that Ukraine should not join NATO. Biden insisted that it should be able to. That was the impasse that led to the Ukraine war. All that Biden had to do was to negotiate a time period during which Ukraine would not be considered for NATO membership. He would not do that. He could have called Putin's bluff if indeed it was a bluff that Putin would not invade if Ukraine were not allowed to join NATO. If Putin had still invaded after prohibiting Ukraine from joining NATO for a period of time, then the US and the EU could have gone ahead with their current strategy of supplying Ukraine with arms to defend itself. The New York Time reported:
The total number of Ukrainian and Russian troops killed or wounded since the war in Ukraine began 18 months ago is nearing 500,000, U.S. officials said, a staggering toll as Russia assaults its next-door neighbor and tries to seize more territory.
The officials cautioned that casualty figures remained difficult to estimate because Moscow is believed to routinely undercount its war dead and injured, and Kyiv does not disclose official figures. But they said the slaughter intensified this year in eastern Ukraine and has continued at a steady clip as a nearly three-month-old counteroffensive drags on.
Russia’s military casualties, the officials said, are approaching 300,000. The number includes as many as 120,000 deaths and 170,000 to 180,000 injured troops. The Russian numbers dwarf the Ukrainian figures, which the officials put at close to 70,000 killed and 100,000 to 120,000 wounded.
But Russians outnumber Ukrainians on the battlefield almost three to one, and Russia has a larger population from which to replenish its ranks.
Is it worth it? I repeat IS IT WORTH IT? For the principal that any country can join NATO? IMHO war is never worth it. Why is there not a peace movement? If it was so important that Russia keep its hands off Ukraine, why didn't Obama protest in 2014 as Russia seized territory in Eastern Ukraine? To be clear Obama did not want to commit the US to stopping Russian aggression in Ukraine according to Brookings:
As regards the two-year-old conflict between Ukraine and Russia, the president [Obama] said Ukraine is a core interest for Moscow, in a way that it is not for the United States. He noted that, since Ukraine does not belong to NATO, it is vulnerable to Russian military domination, and that “we have to be very clear about what our core interests are and what we are willing to go to war for.”" Obama was hesitant to get involved militarily in Ukraine. "But the president [Obama] has signaled privately that despite all the pressure, he remains reluctant to send arms. In part, he has told aides and visitors that arming the Ukrainians would encourage the notion that they could actually defeat the far more powerful Russians, and so it would potentially draw a more forceful response from Moscow. He also wants to give a shaky cease-fire a chance to take hold, despite a reported 1,000 violations so far, and seems determined to stay aligned with European allies that oppose arms for Ukraine.
“If you’re playing on the military terrain in Ukraine, you’re playing to Russia’s strength, because Russia is right next door,” Antony J. Blinken, the deputy secretary of state, told an audience in Berlin last week. “It has a huge amount of military equipment and military force right on the border. Anything we did as countries in terms of military support for Ukraine is likely to be matched and then doubled and tripled and quadrupled by Russia.”
In February 2014 Obama even threatened Ukraine, not Russia, with sanctions, putting the onus on Ukraine. "TOLUCA, Mexico (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama called on Ukraine’s armed forces on Wednesday to stay out of the country’s political crisis and warned that there would be consequences for those who “step over the line.” Using his toughest language so far in response to a Ukrainian conflict that has drawn threats of U.S. and European Union sanctions, Obama denounced the violence and put the onus on Ukraine’s government to reach a peaceful resolution."
George W Bush, the perpetrator of lying us into the Iraq war, agreed with Obama: "There are good reasons why even George W. Bush backed off (or at least stopped short of pursuing) a pledge to consider Ukraine for NATO membership. First, calmer minds weighed the level of Western interests in Ukrainian independence against the cost of defending it in a pinch, and found the former coming up short." Calmer minds did not prevail, however, when Joe Biden became President. Despite all the good Biden has done domestically, his Ukraine policy has committed the US to what amounts to perpetual war.
Some advisors advocated for a moratorium on Ukraine's joining NATO as a way to stave off war. "Before the Russian invasion, Quincy Institute senior research fellow on Russia and Europe Anatol Lieven wrote that as part of a broader package to stave off war, the United States should propose “the declaration of a moratorium on Ukrainian membership of NATO for a period of 20 years, allowing time for negotiations on a new security architecture for Europe as a whole, including Russia.”"
“It’s already clear now ... that fundamental Russian concerns were ignored,” Putin said at a press conference Tuesday, according to a Reuters translation.
Putin said that the U.S. wanted to “contain Russia” and that it was using Ukraine to do that, as he reiterated Russia’s position that any possible membership of Ukraine in NATO would “undermine Russia’s security.”
“Let’s imagine that Ukraine is a NATO member, it is fully packed of weapons, it gets advanced attack means like those in Poland and Romania and it starts an operation in Crimea,” Putin said, describing Crimea, a part of Ukraine annexed by Russia in 2014, as a “sovereign Russian territory.”
“Let’s imagine that Ukraine is a NATO member state and it initiates a military operation. What should we do then, [should we] fight against the NATO bloc? Did anyone think at least something about that? Apparently not.”
Nonetheless, Putin said he hoped dialog over Ukraine would continue and that a way needed to be found to, as he put it, “protect everyone’s security.”
Biden could have acknowledged Putin's concerns regarding Russia's security interests and argued for a moratorium on Ukraine's bid for NATO membership. This may or may not have forestalled Russia's 2022 invasion. If it had, the US and its allies had nothing to lose except the principal that any country should be free to join NATO. If it hadn't, Russia's invasion could be countered with the policy the US has pursued since Russia invaded which is to send weapons to arm Ukraine without putting "boots on the round." Subsequently, Russia secured Ukraine's non-membership in NATO by starting and pursuing what amounts to a perpetual war with the result of 500,000 people killed so far and billions of dollars in destroyed real estate. Has it been worth it to uphold the principal that Ukraine should be free to join NATO. I don't think so. A new security arrangement is needed for Europe including Russia sans NATO.
Traditional masculine traits are dominance, aggression, emotional repression, violence. These traits have been historically mostly expressed in terms of the military. In the First World War, many of the participants were more than eager to cover themselves in glory by proving their manhood in combat. Instead many of them ended up dying miserable deaths in muddy trenches or hung from barbed wire. The persistence of war in the human experience can be laid squarely at the feet of men and their interpretation of what is manly in my opinion. In fact peace or even world peace is seen as a feminine idea. Most traditional men would not consider peace in the form of world wide understanding and compassion even possible because it would be based on feminine values. The only peace even possible in the traditional male mind is "peace through strength." Traditional male values prevent even an acknowledgment of what peace would really consist of because it would consist of emotional values that are traditionally feminine. The predominant attitude is that joining the military will "make a man out of you." A real man is only supposed to express a limited and actually stunted set of emotions and certainly is not supposed to express any vulnerabilities. Physical force or the threat of force is acceptable in a man's world. Understanding, cooperation and diplomacy are not.
Traditional male activities are beer drinking (a man can hold his liquor), fast car racing or pickup driving (showing dominance by means of a powerful machine), participation in or spectating at competitive sports, participation in or admiration of the military. Dominance, competitiveness, the use or threat of violence, pugnaciousness, toughness, looking down on men who don't conform to this stereotype - these are all traditional male traits. None of these traits are physically or mentally healthy. For instance, holding your liquor can lead to cirrhosis of the liver. Emotional repressiveness can lead to an inability to relate to women even though some women are attracted to the traditional male type. In fact it can be argued that Trump's popularity is a result of his expression of traditional male values. In an article in FiveThirtyEight entitled With His Version of Masculinity, we find this:
But the quest to seem masculine is particularly complicated in this year’s GOP primary because Trump has been so successful at projecting a macho image that Republican voters have responded to. This masculine identity isn’t about demonstrations of physical prowess — nobody talks about how far Trump can run or whether he can bench-press a certain weight. His version of manliness is fueled by other kinds of behavior — including his belittling of other candidates, aggression toward women, “tell it like it is and don’t apologize” affect — that are associated with traditional ideas about how a man should behave. The other GOP candidates largely aren’t trying to imitate those aspects of Trump’s macho identity — but experts told us that without Trump’s signature belligerence, his version of masculinity might not resonate as much. And that means his rivals may have an especially difficult time convincing the GOP primary electorate that they’re as strong a leader as Trump.
“In this view of masculinity, men are supposed to be dominant, powerful, aggressive,” said Theresa Vescio, a professor of psychology at Penn State University who studies masculinity. “And the more that people — both men and women — think that good men should be high in power, status, dominance and toughness, the more they say that’s what a man is, the more they support Trump.”
It might seem strange to some that a man who is not particularly physically fit or athletic, never served in the military and eats junk food is an exemplary manifestation of manhood. It seems ridiculous that Trump's penchant for belittling his opponents is seen by some as "manly." That his getting away with stiffing contractors, creditors and not paying taxes are manly traits. But somehow Trump's unwillingness to apologize about anything or ever admit he did anything wrong is seen by some Republicans as the counter to "liberal values" like having compassion and respect for people who disagree with you. Instead Trump calls his detractors and competitors names, assails them as weaklings and asserts his macho masculinity while he hides behind a bevy of lawyers and uses his money to shield himself from any negative consequences. His seeming ability to get away with stuff is seen as quintessentially masculine. The article continues:
These are the voters who are especially likely to find Trump’s version of masculinity appealing. Trump is particularly effective at drawing on his supporters’ fears about threats to traditional masculinity, while simultaneously building himself up as a paragon of that version of manliness, according to the experts we spoke with. His image as president was aggressively militant, threatening other world leaders and avoiding compromise. And his refusal to apologize for a well-documented track record of sexual harassment and assault makes him seem authentically masculine and powerful to some voters, according to Dan Cassino, a political scientist at Fairleigh Dickinson University who studies male gender identity. “It’s as much about tearing others down as it is about building others up,” Cassino says. “The insults, the misogynistic behavior — these are very negative masculine traits but he’s willing to assert them in a way others aren’t, and that means nobody thinks he’s lying about who he is.”
By projecting an image of himself as a powerful, strong, dominant man who’s willing to shrug away modern conventions around how men and women should behave, Trump has reached people who support traditional gender hierarchies. “There are a lot of conservatives — men but some women too — in this country who increasingly feel like they’re on the outside looking in, while liberals run things,” said Paul Elliott Johnson, a professor of communication at the University of Pittsburgh who studies gender and politics. “Trump invites those people to feel victimized and then says, ‘I will fix the problem.’”
As detrimental to society in general as these toxic traditional masculine values are, they will even probably contribute to the annihilation of the human race altogether either through war or the ignoring of climate change. There is not even any talk of world peace any more. It's not even on anyone's radar. The militarization of the American psyche is complete. The Peace Corps is never even mentioned in the media. Most people would not even know that it exists. The Peace Corps represents the feminine values of help and caring for those less fortunate. The traditional male simply looks upon them as losers in the game of life, probably because of their inferiority to white males. As traditional white males, they believe that they have simply outcompeted those who come from as Trump has termed them, "shithole countries." Let people with feminine values agonize over them and their claims that rich white men should help them out with their situations due to climate change. Macho men would scoff at their suggestions that the rich nations should bear the cost of ameliorating the effects of global warming or as U.N. chief António Guterres declared, "global boiling." As Trump and other macho men might say, "suck it up." There will probably never be world peace until women run the world. And where would that leave the traditional man and his toxic values? Healthy manhood, in my humble opinion, should be nothing more nor less than loving, supporting and cherishing the girls and women in our lives whether they be girlfriends, lovers, wives, daughters, mothers or grandmothers. All the rest of the positive values a man can manifest are simply personhood values which can be exemplified by both sexes.
In the First World War, Britain relied on supplies from the US the same way that Ukraine is relying on supplies from the US. The only difference is that Britain first had to borrow the money from the US and then use that money to buy weapons from US defense contractors. As a result Britain went into debt and US defense contractors got rich. Now the US is just giving the weapons to Ukraine with the result that US tax payers are basically picking up the tab. I like Joe Biden and what he's accomplished with respect to the economy, but I think his open ended policy towards Ukraine is a big mistake leading to the continued escalation of the war. The war in Ukraine has become a war of attrition just like the First World War. US sanctions against Russia are having the same effect as the British blockade of German ports in the First World War. In both cases the wars of attrition slogged on. In WW 1 16.5 million people died. The winners lost more people than the losers. The war in Ukraine also slogs on with no end in sight. Both sides have too much to lose, and both have their sights set on winning. This is a formula for disaster in terms of loss of life and billions of dollars of real estate destroyed. At that point it does not matter much who is the eventual winner.
So what's the off ramp other than total victory by one side or the other? In the First World War there was a nominal winner - Britain - although both sides were losers. Both sides were destroyed and in debt. Will this be the same in Ukraine? While the war in Ukraine rages on fueled by the egos of Biden, Zelensky and Putin, more and more Ukrainians and Russians are dying. So far only Ukrainian property is being destroyed, but I think we are on the brink of seeing a further escalation in which Russian property will also start to be destroyed. Biden's war rules were that the fighting should take place only in Ukraine and not on Russian soil, a proposition which was inherently flawed as far as the Ukrainians were concerned. According to Biden's rules, Ukraine could only fight a defensive war against Russia while Russia was totally on the offense in Ukraine. Of course this does not result in a fair fight. So Zelensky will almost inevitably take the war onto Russian territory and then beg Biden for more offensive weapons with which to destroy Moscow and other Russian cities the way that Russia has attempted to destroy Ukrainian cities.
The war will become a war on civilians on both sides as the war of attrition on the battlefield stagnates since both sides will have weapons capable of causing major destruction to major cities occupied by civilians. As both sides dig in, the thought or consideration of a peace plan gets further and further out of sight. As the war escalates, the probability that Russia will use tactical nukes to end it increases just as the US used nukes in World War II to destroy the civilian populations of two Japanese cities. Putin will use the same logic, and, while the US accuses Putin of war crimes, Putin will accuse Harry Truman of war crimes since he used nukes to wipe out the civilian populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki under the rationale that it would save American lives if the US had to actually invade Japan. Putin could use much the same logic. In any event the longer the war goes on without any serious discussions of a peaceful settlement involving compromise, the more dangerous and heartbreaking will be the eventual outcome. All sides need to stop fighting and put their energy into fighting our common enemy - climate change.
"Everyone's Crying Peace on Earth Just as Soon as We Win This War" - Mose Allison
by John Lawrence
Note from the future: One of the last humans evacuating planet earth, Elon Musk, writing the last chapter of the human race from his space hut on the moon: "Well, I guess it's up to me to write the last chapter of human history. I personally was able to escape planet earth as temperatures soared into the 150s. People had been forced into caves deep in earth to escape the heat. However, the war in Ukraine still raged on. Each side was intent on winning that war. More and more resources were poured into weapons. The US defense budget soared into the trillions of dollars. Some of us more enlightened ones said, 'Wait, wouldn't it be more important to take that money and put it toward fighting climate change, our common enemy. Climate change is the enemy of both NATO and Russia. No, the power structure said, it's more important to win this war. As the fighters in that war were dying of heat exhaustion rather than enemy bullets, they were some of the last humans to hold out on the surface of earth. Air temperatures were buckling roads and railroads. Even tanks and drones were melting in front of their eyes. It came down to hand to hand combat as guns were useless in the severe heat. Soldiers got second degree burns just from touching anything metal. But the war raged on. Ukraine was promised a path to NATO membership at the end of the war, but the brush along that path was burning furiously. It's doubtful if Ukraine would have made it all the way along that path to NATO without burning up first."
Musk continued: "You know the human saga reminds me of the fairy tale about the frogs in a pan of water. The water temperature was gradually increasing, but frog A insisted on staying in the water until his frog army was able to defeat Frog B's army. He reassured baby frog that as soon as his side won, they would all jump out of the water and be safe. But first they had to win this war. But baby frog said, 'Aren't you devoting all your time and energy to winning the war when, if both sides cooperated instead, you could devote your resources to lowering the temperature of the water.' No, said Frog A. Frog B is despicable We want all this land. We're not going to cede any of it to Frog B's tribe. But baby frog insisted, 'Who cares who owns what land if the whole pan of water which is our collective habitat burns up while you guys are still fighting? Your budget for cooling the water is miniscule compared to your defense (offense?) budget. If you just got along with other frogs you wouldn't need such a large defense budget. You could devote that money to global water cooling. This is the only pan of water we've got!.' I assure you, Frog A said, that as soon as we win this war, we will devote all our resources to cooling this pan of water."
Musk continued, "Well the moral of the story is that the human race was not able to get its act together even when they faced a common enemy. Each year even after global temperatures reached 140 degrees in some parts of the world for 100 days at a time, neither side in the Ukraine war would stop fighting. In fact that war would have gone on for the next hundred years, but, unfortunately, earth would not have been inhabitable by humans for another hundred years. It was not more than a decade later when temperatures reached 150 degrees for days at a time in most parts of the world. All the glaciers had melted in Antarctica so sea levels had risen more than 10 feet inundating Miami, London, New York City, Tokyo and New Orleans not to mention many other less noteworthy cities. No one could get property insurance any more; the insurance companies all went bankrupt. FEMA had run out of money. Flash floods left hundreds of thousands homeless. Those who had bought those old missile silos in Montana were lucky. They were safely ensconced underground where the temperatures were cooler. People crowded into Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico and Mammoth Cave in Kentucky. After these caves reached capacity a detachment of former marines stationed at the entrance shot anyone trying to gain entrance. Survivalist skills were highly in demand."
"As the last fighter on the battlefield in Ukraine died of heat stroke, NATO and Russia declared the war was over. It was undetermined who actually won. The path to membership in NATO for Ukraine was littered with dead bodies, many of whom had died from heat exhaustion. Ukraine itself was littered with tanks and other metallic weapons of war which seared the flesh of anyone foolish enough to touch them."
"I don't think [Ukraine] is ready for membership in NATO, but here's the deal. ... I don't think there's unanimity in NATO about whether or not to bring Ukraine into the NATO family now at this moment in the middle of a war. ... The very first time I met with Putin two years ago in Geneva, and he said I want commitments on no Ukraine in NATO, I said we're not going to do that because it's an open door policy. We're not going to shut anybody out. NATO is a process that takes some time to meet all of the qualifications and from democratization to a whole range of other issues so in the meantime though I've spoken with Zelensky at great length about, at length about this and uh one of the things I indicated is the United States would be ready to provide while the process is going on - and it's going to take a while - while that process is going on, to provide security ala the security we provide for Israel providing the weaponry they need, the capacity to defend themselves if there is an agreement, if there is a cease fire, if there is a peace agreement and so I think we can work it out but I think it's premature to say, to call for a vote you know in now because there's other qualifications that need to be met including democratization and some of those issues."
So since Ukraine was not ready for NATO membership when Biden met Putin two years ago, why wouldn't Biden give Putin assurances that Ukraine would not be admitted to NATO at least for some period of years? That in and of itself might have forestalled the war so that Putin would not have invaded Ukraine in February 2022. Or Biden could have persuaded NATO to admit Ukraine to NATO two years ago and that in and of itself might have deterred Putin from invaded Ukraine. Clearly, Putin invaded Ukraine because it was not a member of NATO, and so his invasion would not have amounted to a full scale confrontation with all of NATO's forces. Also clearly, since Ukraine was not in Biden's mind ready to join NATO, Biden could have given Putin assurances that Ukraine would not become a member of NATO. Then at such time as Ukraine was deemed fit to become a member of NATO the US could have gone back on its assurances. It wouldn't have been the first time the US had made a commitment and then broken it. In fact when the Soviet Union dissolved itself in 1989, Gorbachev was given assurances that NATO wouldn't move "one inch eastward," an assurance that was clearly broken during the Clinton and George W Bush administrations when NATO moved aggressively eastward.
So was the war in Ukraine in which there have been as of June 2023 25,170 civilian casualties, with 9,177 killed and 15,993 injured, really worth not givving Putin assurances? By the end of 2022, an estimated 5.9 million people were internally displaced by the war, while nearly 5.7 million refugees and asylum-seekers from Ukraine were recorded across Europe. The damage to housing facilities from the Russian invasion of Ukraine was estimated at 50 billion U.S. dollars between February 24, 2022, and February 24, 2023. Further 36 billion U.S. dollars were recorded in losses from damages to infrastructure. Was the war in Ukraine worth Biden's refusal to give Putin "assurances?" The United States has appropriated approximately $115 billion in emergency funding to support Ukraine since February 24, 2022. Could that money have been better spent? Since Russia’s invasion in February of that year, Ukraine has become far and away the top recipient of U.S. foreign aid. It’s the first time that a European country has held the top spot since the Harry S. Truman administration directed vast sums into rebuilding the continent through the Marshall Plan after World War II. All of this does not even count the inflation caused the world by the sanctions against Russian oil and the disruption of Ukraine's grain crops. And even now the war grinds on with the possibility of Russian tactical nuclear bombs being used in Ukraine or the largest nuclear power plant in Europe being destroyed.
Biden's opening the door for the war in Ukraine was based on the principle that he couldn't give Putin assurances that Ukraine would never join NATO. War based on principles, my friends, is never worth it. He should have given Putin assurances even if he was crossing his fingers behind his back.
Actually, this is a good question. If meat eaters could be trained to eat plant based meat, they would no longer be predators. If lions can lie down with lambs, then maybe there is even hope for the human race. In fact some animals that would attack each other in the wild, when raised together as babies, become the best of friends. Anthony, the lion, was brought to “Keepers of the Wild” animal sanctuary as a sick cub after being auctioned off in Virginia, and Riley, the coyote, was rescued by Arizona game and fish. Both were just over one month old when they met. Coyotes and lions are social animals, and Riley and Anthony grew quite fond of one another almost immediately. So they grew up, not to eat each other, but to be friends. Does this portend some hope for the human race? If babies of all races, religions and nationalities grew up together, maybe they would continue to have mutually constructive relationships as adults. Perhaps this would be a way that world peace could be attained. No more predator and prey relationships. No more friend and enemy relationships. It's worth a try. It would be a great sociological experiment, and there is nothing weird about it. It would only entail play dates for children of all races, nationalities and religions as they grew up. As they grew older, they would grow into an age appropriate understanding of their friends' backgrounds. If animals can form these kind of relationships, probably so could humans.
After photographer Isobel Springett, took in an abandoned fawn, it was almost immediately adopted by Springett’s Great Dane, Kate. Pip clearly feels very strongly for her canine caretaker, and even though Pip joined a herd, she still finds time to spend with Kate. Perhaps animals can lead the way. Perhaps they can be the prime movers towards a more mutually beneficial society. Perhaps there would no more be predators and prey. What would this portend for the human race? One thing it portends is that, in order to end war and conflict, everyone would have to be adequately fed with a plant based diet. As long as some people have nothing and others have seemingly everything, there will always be war as the underdogs try to redress the balance. If everyone is relatively well off, the incentive for altering the status quo by violence and force is greatly diminished.
In a hidden realm at the end of the world, amidst the massive ice mountains of Chile’s Torres del Paine National Park, condors soar, colorful caracaras keep a sharp eye out for prey and vivid pink flamingos make a theatrical appearance. This kingdom is the stronghold of the puma, a large mountain lion that hunts for guanacos – cousins of llamas – as they roam from the valleys to the hillsides. Follow the fate of Solitaria, a female puma in her prime. The mother of four cubs, she hunts and teaches her young how to live in this extraordinary landscape. Narrated by Uma Thurman. This is a beautiful story about a successful huntress who is so tender and loving with her four kittens, but is relentless when it comes to the life and death struggle with guanacos. The guanacos must be eternally vigilant for any sign that there might be a puma lurking and stalking them. It's an athletic contest that occurs on a daily basis. Both kinds of animals must use their entire skill set to stay alive and to eat. Guanacos eat a plant based diet, and pumas eat guanacos. Could pumas raised from babyhood with baby guanacos grow up to see each other as friends instead of as rivals and enemies? Could pumas be trained to a plant based diet? The implications for human survival and the survival of the human species might be significant.
President Biden's original policy in the Ukraine war included the notion that the war would be confined to Ukraine's physical territory and not lead to a wider war. The west would supply Ukraine with weapons, and Ukraine would have a fighting chance of pushing Russia out of their territory. The whole strategy was predicated on the goal of preventing World War III. Now that policy is failing due to the fact that the west has gradually increased the firepower and sophistication of the weapons supplied to Ukraine, and also the fact that Ukraine is starting to attack inside Russia. The war is widening and intensifying. Ukraine, meanwhile, is in no mood to try and negotiate a settlement to the war, and NATO doesn't seem to be in any mood to force them to negotiate. So the war is escalating. Zelensky never misses a chance to demand more and more sophisticated weapons from the west. Biden and other western leaders continue to support his rhetoric that Ukraine can win the war. It's all about winning or losing, not about a negotiated peace.
So what went wrong, and how could this war get so out of hand? First, it is undisputed that Russia invaded Ukraine unprovokedly. However, there were negotiations and events leading up to the invasion which might have resolved issues which would have prevented the invasion in the first place. On Dec. 17 2021, Russia presented security demands including that NATO pull back troops and weapons from eastern Europe and bar Ukraine from ever joining. Russia had been upset for years due to the fact that, after the fall of the Soviet Union, NATO had marched resolutely eastward despite assurances to the contrary. I had written earlier:
"NATO expanded during the 1990s largely due to the imprecations of President Bill Clinton's Secretary of State Madeleine Albright even though President Gorbachev had been promised that NATO would not expand "one inch eastward" as part of a deal to reunify Germany after the Cold War.
After explaining why the U.S. wanted the reunited Germany to stay within the framework of NATO, Baker told Gorbachev that "if we maintain a presence in a Germany that is a part of NATO, there would be no extension of NATO's jurisdiction for forces of NATO 1 inch to the east."
"I put the following question to (Gorbachev)," Baker recounted in a letter to German Chancellor Helmut Kohl. "‘Would you prefer to see a united Germany outside of NATO, independent and with no U.S. forces, or would you prefer a unified Germany to be tied to NATO, with assurances that NATO’s jurisdiction would not shift 1 inch eastward from its present position?’"
Those comments, along with similar remarks from Baker’s European allies, like Genscher and Kohl, were part of what researchers at George Washington University’s National Security Archive called a "cascade of assurances" offered to the Soviets.
But Baker and otherofficials involved in the events have denied that the conversation ever turned on expanding NATO to other countries.
So basically Gorbachev was sold a bill of goods that, if he consented to the reunification of Germany and with Germany as a NATO member, that NATO would not expand eastwards. However, "given assurances" is not the same as "legal and binding". Therefore, in July 1997, Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic (where Albright was born) were formally invited to join NATO."
Ever since Russian Czar Peter the Great attempted to "westernize" Russia, there has been a dicey relationship between Russia and Europe, each eyeing the other warily. Culturally, in terms of literature, dance, music and athletics, Russia is a western nation. Even Putin expressed interest in being part of the west. George Robertson, a former Labour defence secretary who led Nato between 1999 and 2003, said Putin made it clear at their first meeting that he wanted Russia to be part of western Europe. “They wanted to be part of that secure, stable prosperous west that Russia was out of at the time,” he said.
The Labour peer recalled an early meeting with Putin, who became Russian president in 2000. “Putin said: ‘When are you going to invite us to join NATO?’ And [Robertson] said: ‘Well, we don’t invite people to join NATO, they apply to join NATO.’ And he said: ‘Well, we’re not standing in line with a lot of countries that don’t matter.’”
The account chimes with what Putin told the late David Frost in a BBC interview shortly before he was first inaugurated as Russian president more than 21 years ago. Putin told Frost he would not rule out joining NATO “if and when Russia’s views are taken into account as those of an equal partner”.
He told Frost it was hard for him to visualise NATO as an enemy. “Russia is part of the European culture. And I cannot imagine my own country in isolation from Europe and what we often call the civilised world.”
However, Putin was rebuffed. He was further slighted when his demands that Ukraine not be considered for NATO membership before the war were, probably in his mind, disrespected. The whole Ukraine war could have been prevented perhaps by massaging sufficiently Putin's bruised ego - in other words intelligent diplomacy. In his mind it seems he and Russia were not properly respected nor were their interests properly taken into account. With two individuals, one of whom looks down on the other, more often than not a fight can ensue. It's the same between two nations. Mutual respect is important in any negotiation. Clearly, Putin did not feel that that was the case in negotiations before the war.
So now there is cross border fighting between Ukraine and Russia. This is clearly an escalation of the war and diminishes Biden's attempts of containing the war to Ukraine and preventing a larger conflict including perhaps World War III. The introductin of more sophisticated western weapons into Ukraine including offensive capabilities and more bellicose rhetoric on the part of Ukraine, no matter how justified, does not presage a good outcome for this complex situation. Putin and Russia could have perhaps been assuaged before the war by placing Ukraine's NATO membership on hold for a period of years, but Biden's insistence that any nation can apply and get NATO membership clearly was a non-starter for Putin. At this point the only alternative to escalation of the war and possibly a nuclear Armageddon, is a negotiated peace, something that Zelensky is disinclined to do and something that Biden is disinclined from telling him to do.
Just as George W Bush characterized himself as 'the Decider', Donald Bush might well characterize himself as The Dominator. He dominates the other candidates or would be candidates in the Republican party. They are all afraid to criticize him. In the 2016 debates Jeb Bush, a decent guy, was destroyed by him.
“Jeb is having some kind of a breakdown,” he told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer. ”He’s an embarrassment to his family. He has to bring his mother out and walk his mother around at 90 years old. I think it’s a very sad situation that’s taking place.”
“Frankly, he’s a stiff,” Trump said. “He’s not a guy who can be president. He doesn’t have what it takes to be president.”
Ron DeSantis is walking on egg shells and is hesitant even to declare his candidacy. The Republican base, many of whom have a military background, want a Dominator as their candidate. That is indeed the military tradition. Recruits are dominated by their drill sergeant who gets in their face and barks orders. Ironic then that, although Trump never served in the military, he exemplifies the military mind set. Most active duty military as well as most people in the military industrial complex vote Republican because Republicans. especially Donald Trump, exemplify their values. These are the same values that are part and parcel of the animal world where the dominant male gets to mate with all the females. So Trump characterizes himself as so dominant that he can act like a dominant male and grab 'em by the pussy or shoot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue and get away with it. Just as other species do, a certain percentage of the Republican base respects and admires a Dominator like Trump. When Trump says this kind of domination has been going on for "millions of years, unfortunately or fortunately," he is referring to the fact that this kind of behavior is the norm in the animal world, and we humans are, after all, not really all that different.
The Denominators of history are of course Fascists. In 1922 Benito Mussolini led a coalition of fascist leaders to Rome and forced the king to yield the government. Mussolini was appointed prime minister. By 1925 he had dismantled Italy's democratic government and, acting as a dictator, declared himself Il Duce ("The Leader"). Hitler dominated the tired old men of the Weimar Republic who were cajoled into appointing him Chancellor. Fascism is a top down political structure similar to the military's top down rank structure. No wonder then that Republican voters, many of whom have a military background, are quite comfortable with a top down structure of political dominance with Trump at the apex. No wonder that Trump is leading all the polls even though he is under several criminal indictments. Friedrich Nietsche was the philosopher of fascism, one who argued for a repudiation of Christian values to be replaced with the values of domination. "A good war hallowith every cause". Just as the dominant male in the animal kingdom passes on his superior DNA to his harem of females, Fascist values insist that dominant men are the ones to eugenically pass on superioor genes to their offspring, and they should be valued and looked up to. All other men should be submissive to them. There is no separation form the animal world. Homo Sapiens represents a continuation of the values that assert that the best and strongest genes of the Dominators should take priority.
Trump's followers in fact give him a pass on Christian values for the very reason that, as Nietzsche asserts, Christian values are the values of the weak. The values of the strong and vital are the values of top down authoritarianism for which the strong man or the dominator should rule the day. As Trump said, this has been going on for millions of years, fortunately or unfortunately. This gives a pass to misogyny as Nietzsche also stated, "The family is the smallest unit of domination." The father is dominant; the wife and children should be submissive. The ethos of dominance and submission should prevail. Christian morals, the morals of tolerance and equality, according to Nietsche, are the exact opposite of the morals that lead to the betterment of the species. Let the cream rise to the top, and, unfortunately or fortunately, the weak must inevitably fall by the wayside. "Devil take the hindermost" is an imprecation that everyone should look after their own interests, leaving those who cannot cope to whatever fate befalls them. The leader of the most dominant nation on the face of the earth should be the most dominant male, i.e. Donald Trump, the Dominator. Utter selfishness should prevail. Cooperation is a feminine value. Love is a feminine value. Getting along is a feminine value. Diplomacy is a feminine value. Male dominance is what the US populace wants in a leader.
Mr. Leaf is a retired U.S. Air Force lieutenant general and a former deputy commander of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command
A rally for unification of the Korean Peninsula in Paju, South Korea, near the border with North Korea, last year.Credit...Ahn Young-joon/Associated Press
Not many people know how to wage nuclear war. I’m one of them.
As a young U.S. Air Force fighter pilot in the late 1970s, I was trained to carry out nuclear strikes in a rigorous process designed to ensure that no contingencies — mechanical or ethical — deter your mission. Certain things remain burned into my memory: maps and photos of my target and the realization of the Armageddon I would leave in my wake. Training culminated with a sworn pledge to vaporize that target without hesitation.
Much of my 33-year career was spent as a nuclear warrior — I later oversaw the U.S. intercontinental ballistic missile fleet and served as deputy commander of American military forces in the Pacific — experience that informs my deep alarm over the growing risk of nuclear conflict with North Korea.
The United States has tried for decades to prevent the country from becoming a nuclear threat, veering from diplomacy to pressure to patience. None of these approaches have worked.
Here’s something that might: End the Korean War.
On July 27, 1953, an armistice was signed that halted combat, but the United States and South Korea technically remain at war with the North. This is no longer acceptable.
North Korea has nuclear weapons. It has conducted missile tests at a record pace since last year, including powerful ICBMs believed to be capable of delivering a warhead anywhere in the continental United States. In January, Kim Jong-un, North Korea’s leader, ordered an “exponential” expansion of the country’s nuclear arsenal, and last year his government passed a law authorizing a pre-emptive nuclear strike. In response, President Yoon Suk Yeol of South Korea has said his country may consider developing nuclear weapons.
In this hair-trigger environment, one bad decision or misunderstanding could kill millions.
I spent four years in South Korea, including in high-level positions at the headquarters of combined U.S., South Korean and U.N. forces, overseeing the vast destructive forces amassed for a war that was no longer being fought. In my time in the region, I went from scratching my head to pulling my hair out. The standoff is one of the great absurdities in global geopolitics.
You must be aggressive to win wars but assertive to make peace. No matter how challenging the negotiations and politics of securing peace on the Korean Peninsula may prove, they are nothing compared with nuclear war.
A permanent peace agreement would undermine Mr. Kim’s portrayal of the United States as an existential threat and his justification for building up his conventional and nuclear arsenal. It could also short-circuit the siege mentality underlying his repressive regime. Sanctions relief and economic development could follow, leading to long-hoped-for improvements in the quality of life and human rights for North Korea’s 25 million people.
The United States, North Korea and South Korea have all pledged in recent years to pursue a lasting peace agreement. Separate meetings that President Donald Trump and then-President Moon Jae-in of South Korea held with Mr. Kim in 2018 committed to that goal. It brought an immediate easing of tensions. Land mines were removed from portions of the Korean Demilitarized Zone, Korean families held reunions, Mr. Kim declared a moratorium on long-range missile and nuclear tests, the North returned remains of U.S. servicemen and released three detained Americans. Even after Mr. Trump’s outreach to Mr. Kim collapsed in 2019, Mr. Kim indicated he was still open to diplomacy.
There is currently a bill in the House of Representatives calling for a peace deal. The Peace on the Korean Peninsula Act would require the secretary of state to submit a “clear road map for achieving a permanent peace agreement”; pursue “serious, urgent” diplomacy in pursuit of a binding agreement; and begin to address America’s lack of diplomatic relations with North Korea by establishing liaison offices on each other’s soil.
The bill is imperfect. Much of it focuses on creating the conditions for Korean Americans to visit relatives in the North. (U.S. law currently bars travel by Americans to North Korea unless it serves an ill-defined “national interest.”) It also lacks other steps necessary to entrench peace, such as a process for U.S.-North Korean reconciliation, normalization of disputed maritime boundaries and a framework for talks between the opposing military forces.
There is an urgent need for progress. After the diplomatic overtures of recent years fell apart, Mr. Kim has only become more belligerent and the risk of conflict is more acute. Passage of a strengthened Peace on the Korean Peninsula Act is essential to securing a lasting solution, yet the current bill has not advanced since it was introduced in 2021.
Critics argue that a peace agreement may actually increase the risk of war by undermining safeguards put in place by the armistice nearly 70 years ago. These include specific demarcation lines and protocols for communications, movement and other actions within the DMZ. But there is nothing foolproof about the armistice. President Bill Clinton considered bombing North Korea in 1994, and Mr. Trump reportedly discussed using nuclear weapons in 2017. North Korea occasionally carries out provocations, and the North and South have exchanged artillery fire on several occasions.
There are other risks: Pyongyang may use a peace agreement as a pretext to demand the removal of U.S. troops from South Korea, which is a matter between Seoul and Washington.
But the hardest part of ending the war might be building the political will for it in Washington. Accommodating North Korea would inevitably lead to accusations that we are rewarding bad behavior and legitimizing a totalitarian regime. But the Kim family has ruled for 75 years; it’s time to accept that this is unlikely to change anytime soon.
At this moment, the next generation of men and women north and south of the DMZ are preparing for nuclear war. May they never have to put their training to use.
Lt. Gen. Dan Leaf (@figleaf31) is a retired three-star general, a former Air Force fighter pilot, a former deputy commander of the U.S. Pacific Command and a former director of the Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Honolulu. He is the managing director of Phase Minus 1, a security and conflict resolution consultancy.
Compare the two situations. Vietnam is a unified country, and after a horrific war, is on good terms with the US. Korea is a divided country with the north being still at war with the United States. A peace treaty was never signed after the Korean war and the country was never pacified and unified with the result that North Korea is a major threat to the western world. To boot, there is an axis forming with China, Russia, Iran and North Korea. It didn't have to be this way. One hint is that former President Trump, albeit in a publicity stunt, momentarily eased tensions by becoming friendly with Kim Jong Un. If this had been a sincere gesture and had been followed up on, North Korea could have been unified with the south and the situation there normalized much as it has been in Vietnam. CNN reported on October 24, 2019:
"Seoul, South KoreaCNN —
"Kim Jong Un has praised his “special” relationship with US President Donald Trump, with one of North Korea’s most respected diplomats telling state media the two leaders maintain “trust in each other.”
"Kim Kye Gwan, a former nuclear negotiator who now serves as an adviser to the North Korean leader, said Kim Jong Un and Trump enjoy “close relations” – a statement that appeared to pin the future of diplomatic talks between Washington and Pyongyang on the two leaders’ unique connection.
“I sincerely hope that a motive force to overcome all the obstacles between the DPRK and the US and to advance the bilateral relations in the better direction will be provided on the basis of the close relationship,” the longtime diplomat said in a statement published in the country’s state-run news agency KCNA, using the acronym for North Korea’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea."
"Never again will we provide the U.S. chief executive with another package to be used for achievements without receiving any returns," North Korea's Foreign Minister Ri Son Gwon said on state-run KCNA. Nothing is more hypocritical than an empty promise."
There was the possibility of movement toward normalization and peace in Korea, and this wasn't the first time. But does the US even know or care about achieving peace in Korea and officially ending the Korean war? I don't think so. But the Trump publicity stunt at least demonstrates that, in order to achieve peace, an effort must be made to achieve friendship between leaders of the concerned countries. In contrast current American leaders have gone out of their way to demonize and disrespect certain national leaders which makes it even less likely that peace will ever be achieved. Friendship, respect and diplomacy are the means by which to attain peace in the world. Otherwise, military standoffs and confrontation are likely to ensue, and they have. The US invests immense amounts of money in its military while investing paltry insignificant amounts in peace building efforts. The result is an alignment of western nations confronting an alignment of mostly everyone else.
"A large majority of Americans support talks aimed at reducing tensions with North Korea and China, according to a survey released Friday by The Harris Poll. The results are at odds with the state of opinion in Washington, where policy elites continue to one-up each other over how to respond to an incident in which an apparent Chinese surveillance balloon flew over the U.S. in recent days.
"Two-thirds of respondents agreed that the U.S. should “engage in dialogue as much as possible to reduce tensions” with China, while 20 percent said Washington should “not restart official dialogue and instead spend more money on military build-up.” Support for talks focused on deescalation went up by five points since 2021, when Harris last asked the question.
"Meanwhile, 68 percent of Americans polled told Harris that President Joe Biden should offer to hold direct talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un, and 58 percent said the United States should offer diplomatic or economic incentives “in exchange for steps toward denuclearization.” "
Wikipedia reported: "In 2017, a majority of the American public also had a positive view of Moon Jae-in, the South Korean President, who in 2018 supported a formal declaration to end the U.S.-North Korean war." So if leaders on both sides in Korea want the war ended and negotiations to proceed towards that end, why is the US not on board with that? Could it be that the US doesn't want to lose an "ally" in South Korea and also lose its military bases there? Does the US not want to lose influence in Asia by helping to create peace there?
"On May 24, 2015, International Women's Day for Disarmament, thirty women—including US feminist leader Gloria Steinem, two Nobel Peace laureates and retired U.S. Colonel Ann Wright—from 15 countries linked arms with 10,000 Korean women, stationing themselves on both sides of the DMZ to urge a formal end to the Korean War (1950-1953), the reunification of families divided during the war, and a peace building process with women in leadership positions to resolve decades of hostility.
"In the weeks leading up to crossing the DMZ, Steinem told the press, “It's hard to imagine any more physical symbol of the insanity of dividing human beings."
"On the day of the crossing, South Korea refused to give the women permission to walk through Panmunjom, a border town where the 1953 truce was signed, so the women had to eventually cross the border by bus. Nevertheless, Steinem labeled the crossing a success. "“We have accomplished what no one said can be done, which is to be a trip for peace, for reconciliation, for human rights and a trip to which both governments agreed.”
"U.S.–North Korea talks began in June 1993 but with lack of progress in developing and implementing an agreement, North Koreans unloaded the core of a major nuclear reactor, which could have provided enough raw material for several nuclear weapons. With tensions high, Kim Il Sung invited former U.S. President Jimmy Carter to act as an intermediary. Carter accepted the invitation, but could only act as a private citizen not a government representative. Carter managed to bring the two states to the negotiating table, with Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs Robert Gallucci representing the United States and North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Kang Sok-ju representing his country.
"The negotiators successfully reached the U.S.-North Korea Agreed Framework in October 1994:
North Korea agreed to freeze its existing plutonium enrichment program, to be monitored by the IAEA;
Both sides agreed to cooperate to replace North Korea's graphite-moderated reactors with light water reactor (LWR) power plants, to be financed and supplied by an international consortium (later identified as the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization or KEDO) by a target date of 2003;
The United States and North Korea agreed to work together to store safely the spent fuel from the five-megawatt reactor and dispose of it in a safe manner that does not involve reprocessing in North Korea;
The United States agreed to provide shipments of heavy fuel oil to provide energy in the meantime;
The two sides agreed to move toward full normalization of political and economic relations;
Both sides agreed to work together for peace and security on a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula; and
Both sides agreed to work together to strengthen the international nuclear non-proliferation regime.
Soon after the agreement was signed, U.S. Congress control changed to the Republican Party, who did not support the agreement. Some Republican Senators were strongly against the agreement, regarding it as appeasement.
Looked at from an historical perspective, it's clear that, although attempts have been made to bring about peace by some well meaning Americans like Jimmy Carter, other Americans have thought it in the US' best interests to continue a state of war on the Korean peninsula. It has been a complete and catastrophic failure to create peace there. Sometimes risks have to be taken to create peace. You can't be 100% sure that the other side will adhere to an agreement. However, as they used to say, "Give peace a chance." You can go all out for peace while remaining vigilant and militarily strong at the same time.
When the hijacked planes hit the twin towers of the World Trade Center, pierced the Pentagon and buried into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, most of our thoughts were about the cruel, horrific shattering of family bonds, the forever severing of deep friendships, the senseless destruction of human life. More than that America was under threat and fear prevailed.
The never-ending heartache of loss was on display in photos with messages that ringed the fence of a church near ground zero in New York: “Have you seen him?” “Please, any information, call…” “Please help us find our wife and mother.”
Hundreds of messages. No responses.
I was in New York a few days after 9/11 and witnessed the devastation. I traveled to the site where Flight 93 impacted. And I had heard the plane hit the Pentagon, as I joined hundreds evacuating the Congressional House Office Buildings in Washington, D.C.
The personalization of immense loss compounded our anger and despair. We identified with the victims. We identified with the families. We mourned with them. We united in our grief.
The day after 9/11, with the nation frozen in fear and trauma, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld speculated to the Bush inner circle that the attacks presented an “opportunity” to strike Iraq, according to Bob Woodward, author of ‘Plan of Attack’.
Except Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11.
In my previous Substack post I detailed the carefully practiced lies, that were disseminated to ignite the war on Iraq. What enabled the execution of such a plan was the skillful manipulation of the fears of Americans.
The US military attack on Iraq commenced on March 20, 2003, after a highly structured domestic and international media campaign of misinformation and disinformation, by the Bush Administration, which succeeded in getting major media and Congressional support.
We were introduced to “Shock and Awe,” a military sword of Damocles flashing again and again in the starlight, against the bright yellow-orange glow of U.S. missiles hitting targets in Baghdad, all streamed live into our homes via network television. This is when an extraordinary disconnect occurred.
We were attacking Iraq!
No, wait. We were attacking the Iraqi people.
We were blowing up innocent people’s homes, businesses, places of worship, marketplaces, schools, nurseries. We killed Iraqis en masse. And neither the Bush Administration nor Congress, nor the embedded media showed the remotest interest in the casualties which the US attack on Iraq inflicted on its people.
This was, by all definitions an illegal war of aggression against a country that had little or no ability to defend itself against the mighty U.S. war machine. The media coverage was state-sponsored war porn. The words of the poet Yeats well described the U.S. presence in Iraq: “Everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned.”
After 9/11, I lamented the people on the hijacked flights, those victims who worked in the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and their families. When the U.S. unleashed “Shock and Awe” upon the people of Iraq, my thoughts turned to Iraqi families shattered, to social structures lovingly knit together over generations, destroyed.
Wiped from the earth were ceremonies of birth and marriage, music, dance, literature, the stories handed down through word of mouth, the exchanges among friends and even strangers, woven into a beautiful fabric of life that informed an ancient, rich culture, in some places pulverized, vaporized, as if it never existed.
In October of 2006, an article in Lancet stated that 654,965 had already died as a result of the war. In January 2008, Reuters reported that one of Britain’s leading polling groups set the total of Iraqi deaths attributable to the war at slightly over a million people.
Numbers do not adequately communicate the depth of human suffering, but scale is instructive. Iraq, then a nation of 27 million people, suffered a million dead, millions injured and at least one million children orphaned and 4 million people displaced.
The war against the Iraqis was a criminal act of immense proportions. U.S. political leaders, and their complicit media counterparts, have been shielded from domestic and international courts for their actions that resulted in the mass deaths of innocent people.
In a just world, President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and a long list of US government officials and their propagandists would be held accountable to both national and international law.
Think about this: If a comparable disaster had been visited upon the United States, then a nation of 290 million, we would have proportionally recorded 11 million dead, tens of millions injured, at least 11 million orphans, 44 million displaced. Would we have demanded justice?
The Bush Administration, their ideological retainers and supporters in the media, sent nearly 5,000 America soldiers to their deaths, and left tens of thousands permanently injured. Their service was honorable, but those who sent them were not. We owe their families continued appreciation and full support. We also owe them the truth.
The war’s dark legacy continues. The Iraq High Commission for Human Rights reported in December 2021 that there were 5 million orphaned children in Iraq and 4.5 million children in families living below the poverty line, with a million child laborers.
Consider the extraordinary level of deprivation experienced by the Iraqi people, without clean water, access to food, health care, their homes and places of work destroyed, schools laid waste, the wholesale destruction of infrastructure. Iraqis were, in a turn of a phrase from Winston Churchill, ‘stripped bare, with the curse of nothingness.’ This was no natural disaster. This was made by the American government and paid for by American taxpayers.
I ran for Congress so that I could represent the social and economic interests of working men and women. I intended to spend my service championing education, health care, pension protections and to save America’s manufacturing base.
I soon found myself trying to forestall one military adventure after another, which inevitably drained trillions of dollars away from domestic needs. In Iraq, as in Vietnam, America was losing its way by attempting to force “democracy” upon distant countries, while undermining democracy and the rule of domestic and international law.
The shameful lack of empathy in the White House, and in the U.S. Congress, for the people of Iraq was alarming. Those of us who raised questions about the legality of the war, and who pointed out that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, and who reminded media and government officials alike that there was no proof Iraq’s alleged Weapons of Mass Destruction actually existed, were roundly chastised and ridiculed.
In a concerted effort to beat down the opposition, mainstream media, peddling the least intelligent positions that the U.S. government had to offer, brainwashed the American people with anti-Iraq propaganda. Those of us who dared object were condemned.
I answered this deadly war drumbeat as best I could through parliamentary procedures, 341 speeches on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives in opposition to the war. I made two runs for president to attempt to rally the American people behind a fundamental transition in American foreign policy doctrine from militarism’s ‘Peace Through Strength’ to diplomacy’s, ‘Strength Through Peace’.
As a result of the War upon Iraq, America shifted its priorities ever more firmly to conquest. The constitutional doctrine of separation of powers has been shredded, establishing an imperial executive. The government has shifted the resources of our country away from a domestic agenda to a war-fighting mode. It has ever more firmly entrenched the military-industrial complex in the affairs of the nation.
The war against Iraq legitimized conquest for resources such as oil. It has set the very finances of our nation upon the precipice of unsustainable debt. It established the assassination of foreign leaders as a U.S. government policy. It normalized the use of depleted uranium munitions creating multi-generational birth defects. It has further energized a culture of violence and polarization.
The U.S. government broke Iraq, beginning on March 20, 2003 and committed wholesale aggravated, premeditated murder against Iraqis. Our leaders, their propagandists and war profiteers manipulated our deeply held feelings about freedom, fairness, and justice and our fears, and misled us in an unholy endeavor around which they sacrilegiously wrapped the American flag.
Imagine Iraq as a trial run for the next war; for ever-expanding military budgets, impunity from international trial; for media manipulation that makes the public fearful enough to accept their own economic demise in exchange for a false sense of security through militarism.
These individuals were members of the bi-partisan consensus that promoted the Iraq War: Then-Senator Joe Biden, Democratic Staff Director of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Antony Blinken, and U.S. Permanent Representative to NATO, Victoria Nuland, were themselves promoted politically, to positions of greater influence where they could wreak even greater havoc upon the world.
These same individuals, Vice-President Biden, Deputy National Security Advisor, Blinken and assistant Secretary of State, Nuland, were joined by Hillary Clinton acolyte Jake Sullivan (Vice President Biden’s National Security Adviser in 2013), to engineer the overthrow of the Ukrainian government in 2014, and the subsequent sacrificing of Ukrainians in the U.S. proxy war with Russia.
It is critical to remember that in 2013, then Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, rejected a NATO-inspired military agreement, in the guise of economic reform and EU association, that was aimed at severing Ukraine’s connections with Russia, and advancing a western geo-political agenda.
The West exploited the desperation of Ukrainians whose average monthly minimum wage was then about $150, violently propelled protests with the help of Right Sector and Svoboda parties, and ousted Yanukovych in a pro-western coup. Ukrainians thus became pawns in an international power struggle catalyzed with the help of Biden, Blinken, Nuland and Sullivan.
Now, in the White House and suspected of colluding to blow up the Nord Stream pipelines, President Biden, National Security Adviser Sullivan, Secretary of State Blinken and Undersecretary of State Nuland are positioning the U.S. to pivot from the proxy war with Russia.
Ukraine will be abandoned so the U.S. can prepare for war with China by 2025. This dangerous brinkmanship is supported by both parties in Congress, the media and so-called think tanks cashing in from military build-ups and unnecessarily created conflict.
How do we, as a nation, recover from the heinous deeds committed in our name against the people of Iraq? How do we stop government leaders from lying to us and the media, to stoke and to incite wider and wider wars?
The people who led us into the Iraq War must be held accountable. We must teach the real history of the Iraq war, the deceptions and propaganda a complicit media communicated unquestioningly to the American people.
The media must question the government’s current policies and not swallow sensational stories that government officials peddle for their own narrow, venal concerns. We need a return to investigative journalism, where the media properly holds government to account, instead of being compliant spear-carriers.
We must insist upon the constitutional safeguards which exist to insure such foreign adventures never happen again. Congress must return to its mandated role as a co-equal branch of government. It must guard against executive usurpation of the war power, as directed in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution.
Congress must continually challenge the executive branch’s cause for military action by (1) insisting that intelligence be shared with all members of Congress and (2) bringing intelligence agencies forward to authenticate information attributed to them, either by anonymous news reports or the statements of top-ranking administration officials. There must be severe sanctions for presenting fake intelligence.
We must insist on strict accountability for those who have or will mislead us into aggressive wars, masked as “defending America and its values.” We, as a nation, cannot continue to act as if the U.S. can do whatever we wish to any other nation we please, without incurring the enmity of the world and endangering the future of the United States of America.
Unless we change course, the Pentagon budget and military contractors will soon command over 50% of U.S. discretionary spending. Congress has recently given the Administration an historic $858 billion for defense, an astounding $45 billion more than requested, to help sustain at least 750 military bases in 80 countries. This is a classic definition of a national death march.
Today, amidst rising the interest rates, bank failures, layoffs in tech, and with food prices rising sharply, the U.S. is drastically cutting food stamp benefits! We can’t feed our own people, but we have unlimited money for contrived wars everywhere.
It is time to ask, what the hell is the end game? Is there anyone who does not understand that a U.S.-initiated war with China and Russia means assured annihilation? It is time to demand that those who had have led us in this direction be voted out or removed from public office.
We must learn and then teach that it is not patriotic for a nation to wage aggressive war. Aggressive war, as the U.S. practiced in Iraq, does not extend prowess, but instead shows the absence of a moral code and the weakness of our craven, fearful leaders’ minds and the spirits. True strength extends from moral, not military authority. True patriotic leadership focuses on the needs of the American people and on taking care of things here, at home, in the United States.
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The United States and the International Criminal Court
by John Lawrence
The ICC has declared that Putin is a war criminal. Russia does not recognize the jurisdiction of the ICC which comes as no surprise.What does come as a surprise though is that the US does not recognize its jurisdiction either. Neither Russia nor the US is a state party to the ICC. The purpose of the international criminal court, founded in 2002, is to "bring to justice the perpetrators of the worst crimes known to humankind—war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide," when national courts are unable or unwilling to do so. China is also not a member of the ICC. As of March 2023, 123 states are members of the Court. On May 6, 2002, the United States, having previously signed the Rome Statute, which founded the ICC, formally withdrew its signature and indicated that it did not intend to ratify the agreement. That was during the George W Bush administration. So the US wants to have it both ways. It does not recognize the jurisdiction of the ICC if the ICC should be so bold as to declare a US President or citizen a war criminal, but it jumps on the bandwagon with the ICC if the ICC declares one of the US' enemies such as Putin a war criminal.
The abuses at Abu Ghraib during the Iraq war clearly would have qualified as war crimes according to the ICC if the US had been a member of the ICC. That's probably why George W Bush withdrew US membership. Torture or "enhanced interrogation techniques" were specifically authorized by the George W Bush administration and by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
"Enhanced interrogation techniques" or "enhanced interrogation" was a program of systematic torture of detainees by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and various components of the U.S. Armed Forces at remote sites around the world—including Bagram, Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, and Bucharest—authorized by officials of the George W. Bush administration. Methods used included beating, tickle torture, binding in contorted stress positions, hooding, subjection to deafening noise, sleep disruption, sleep deprivation to the point of hallucination, deprivation of food, drink, and medical care for wounds, as well as waterboarding, walling, sexual humiliation, rape, sexual assault, subjection to extreme heat or extreme cold, and confinement in small coffin-like boxes. A Guantanamo inmate's drawings of some of these tortures, to which he himself was subjected, were published in The New York Times. Some of these techniques fall under the category known as "white torture". ... In addition to brutalizing detainees, there were threats to their families such as threats to harm children, and threats to sexually abuse or to cut the throat of detainees' mothers.
The term "torture memos" was originally used to refer to three documents prepared by the Office of Legal Counsel at the United States Department of Justice and signed in August 2002: "Standards of Conduct for Interrogation under 18 U.S.C. sections 2340–2340A" and "Interrogation of al Qaeda" (both drafted by Jay Bybee), and an untitled letter from John Yoo to Alberto Gonzales. Since the initial revelation of these documents, other communications related to the use of torture to coerce or intimidate detainees during the Bush administration have been divulged. These include a December 2, 2002, internal Department of Defense memo signed by Donald Rumsfeld, then Secretary of Defense, authorizing 17 techniques in a "Special Interrogation Plan" to be used against the detainee Mohammed al-Qahtani; a March 13, 2003, legal opinion written by John Yoo of the Office of Legal Counsel, DoJ, and issued to the General Counsel of Defense five days before the U.S. invasion of Iraq started, concluding that federal laws related to use of torture and other abuse did not apply to agents interrogating foreigners overseas; and other DoD internal memos authorizing techniques for specific military interrogations of certain individual detainees.
In May 2002, senior Bush administration officials including CIA Director George Tenet, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and Attorney General John Ashcroft met to discuss which techniques the CIA could legally use against Abu Zubaydah. Condoleezza Rice recalled "being told that U.S. military personnel were subjected in training to certain physical and psychological interrogation techniques". During the discussions, John Ashcroft is reported to have said, "Why are we talking about this in the White House? History will not judge this kindly."
It's clear that the US with the full complicity of the George W Bush administration officials committed what are considered war crimes by the ICC during the Iraq war. War crimes include torture, mutilation, corporal punishment, hostage taking and acts of terrorism. This category also covers violations of human dignity such as rape and forced prostitution, looting and execution without trial. War crimes, unlike crimes against humanity, are always committed in times of war. In the King James version of the Bible, Matthew 7:3, it says "And why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye, but do not consider the plank in your own eye?" Hypocrisy is as old as the human race has existed on the planet. If the ICC has any legitimacy at all, it needs to condemn the war crimes of every nation that commits them.
A person carrying an umbrella passes a newspaper vendor on March 20, 2003 in Washington, D.C
(Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images)
by Brett Wilkins, March 20, 2023
"It should not be forgotten that this debacle of death and destruction was not only a profound error of policymaking; it was the result of a carefully executed crusade of disinformation and lies," said one prominent critic.
As the world this week mark the 20th anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, journalism experts weighed in on the corporate media's complicity in amplifying the Bush administration's lies, including ones about former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's nonexistent nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons upon which the war was waged.
"Twenty years ago, this country's mainstream media—with one notable exception—bought into phony Bush administration claims about Hussein's stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, helping cheerlead our nation into a conflict that ended the lives of thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis," Los Angeles Times columnist Robin Abcarian wrote Sunday.
That "one notable exception" was a group of journalists at the Washington, D.C. bureau of Knight Ridder—which was acquired by McClatchy in 2006—who published dozens of articles in several of the company's papers debunking and criticizing the Bush administration's dubious claims about Iraq and its WMDs. Their efforts were the subject of the 2017 Rob Reiner film Shock and Awe, starring Woody Harrelson.
"The war—along with criminally poor post-war planning on the part of Bush administration officials—also unleashed horrible sectarian strife, led to the emergence of ISIS, and displaced more than 1 million Iraqis," Abcarian noted.
She continued:
That sad chapter in American history produced its share of jingoistic buzzwords and phrases: "WMD," "the axis of evil," "regime change," "yellowcake uranium," "the coalition of the willing," and a cheesy but terrifying refrain, repeated ad nauseam by Bush administration officials such as then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice: "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."
According to the Center for Public Integrity, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit investigative journalism organization, Bush and top administration officials—including then-Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell, and Rice—"made at least 935 false statements in the two years following September 11, 2001, about the national security threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq."
Those lies were dutifully repeated by most U.S. corporate mainstream media in what the center called "part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses."
"It should not be forgotten that this debacle of death and destruction was not only a profound error of policymaking; it was the result of a carefully executed crusade of disinformation and lies," David Corn, the Washington, D.C. bureau chief for Mother Jones, asserted Monday.
Far from paying a price for amplifying the Bush administration's Iraq lies, many of the media hawks who acted more like lapdogs than watchdogs 20 years ago are today ensconced in prestigious and well-paying positions in media, public policy, and academia.
In a where-are-they-now piece for The Real News Network, media critic Adam Johnson highlighted how the careers of several media and media-related government professionals "blossomed" after their lie-laden selling of the Iraq War:
David Frum—Bush's lead writer who coined the term "Axis of Evil" to refer to Iraq, Iran, and North Korea—is "a well-paid and influential columnist for The Atlantic and a mainstay of cable TV."
Jeffrey Goldberg, then a New Yorker reporter who pushed conspiracy theories linking Saddam Hussein to 9/11 and al-Qaeda to Iraq, is now editor-in-chief of The Atlantic.
MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, an erstwhile Iraq War hawk, rebranded himself as a critic of the invasion and occupation, and is a multimillionaire morning show host on that same network.
Fareed Zakaria hosts "Fareed Zakaria GPS" on CNN and writes a weekly column for The Washington Post.
Anne Applebaum, a member of the Post's editorial board at the time who called evidence of Iraq's nonexistent WMDs "irrefutable," now writes for The Atlantic and is a senior fellow at the Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies.
"The almost uniform success of all the Iraq War cheerleaders provides the greatest lesson about what really helps one get ahead in public life: It's not being right, doing the right thing, or challenging power, but going with prevailing winds and mocking anyone who dares to do the opposite," wrote Johnson.
Other journalists not on Johnson's list include MSNBC's Chris Matthews—who infamously proclaimed "we're all neocons now" as U.S. forces toppled Hussein's statue while conquering Baghdad—and "woman of mass destruction"Judith Miller, who although forced to resign from The New York Times in disgrace over her regurgitated Bush administration lies about Iraq's WMDs remained an influential media figure over the following years.
In an interview with the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft—which is hosting a discussion Wednesday about the media's role in war and peace—Middle East expert Assal Rad noted:
Rather than challenging the narrative of the state, calling for evidence, or even humanizing the would-be victims of the war, the Iraqi people, reporters such as Thomas Friedman with significant platforms like The New York Times most often parroted the talking points of U.S. officials. There was little critical journalism to question the existence of WMDs and little reflection on important issues, such as the U.S. role in supporting Saddam Hussein in the 1980s against Iran, international law, or the humanity of Iraqis.
While there was some contrition from outlets including the Times as the Iraq occupation continued for years and not the "five days or five weeks or five months" promised by Rumsfeld, journalist Jon Schwarz of The Intercept noted that media lies and distortions about the war continue to this day.
"Perhaps the most telling instance of the media's acquiescence was a year after the Iraq invasion," said Rad, "when President Bush's joke at the White House Correspondents' dinner about finding no weapons of mass destruction was met with uproarious laughter from an audience of journalists."
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US Would Like to Forget It Invaded a Sovereign Country Recently
by John Lawrence
The hypocrisy is appalling. The US invaded Iraq, a sovereign country, in 2003. Joe Biden voted for that war. Many children and civilians were killed as a result. The rationale for the invasion was that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. He didn't and George W Bush knew it. The invasion and consequent death and destruction in Iraq was based on a lie. The Guardian reported:
"Two decades ago, the United States invaded Iraq, sending 130,000 US troops into a sovereign country to overthrow its government. Joe Biden, then chairman of the Senate foreign relations committee, voted to authorize the war, a decision he came to regret.
"Today another large, world-shaking invasion is under way. Biden, now the US president, recently traveled to Warsaw to rally international support for Ukraine’s fight to repel Russian aggression. After delivering his remarks, Biden declared: “The idea that over 100,000 forces would invade another country – since world war II, nothing like that has happened.”
"The president spoke these words on 22 February, within a month of the 20th anniversary of the US military’s opening strike on Baghdad. The White House did not attempt to correct Biden’s statement. Reporters do not appear to have asked about it. The country’s leading newspapers, the New York Times and Washington Post, ran stories that quoted Biden’s line. Neither of them questioned its veracity or noted its hypocrisy."
The Iraq war and the war in Ukraine are similar in that a sovereign country was invaded on false pretenses. The difference is that Iraq was no threat to the US. Ukraine is within what Russia would consider its "sphere of influence," much like Cuba is within the US' sphere of influence. The invasion of Cuba by the US turned out not to be too successful. However, Cuba has been punished by the US for going on 70 years because it had the impertinence to ally itself with the Soviet Union. By the same token Russia considered it a threat if Ukraine allied itself with NATO. The war could have been prevented if NATO had given any credence to Russia's concerns in pre-war negotiations.
"While Washington forgets, much more of the world remembers. The flagrant illegality of bypassing the United Nations: this happened. The attempt to legitimize “pre-emption” (really prevention, a warrant to invade countries that have no plans to attack anyone): this mattered, including by handing the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, a pretext he has used. Worst of all was the destruction of the Iraqi state, causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and nearly 4,600 US service members, and radiating instability and terrorism across the region.
"The Iraq war wasn’t the only law- or country-breaking military intervention launched by the US and its allies in recent decades. Kosovo, Afghanistan and Libya form a tragic pattern. But the Iraq war was the largest, loudest and proudest of America’s violent debacles, the most unwarranted, and the least possible to ignore. Or so it would seem. Biden’s statement is only the latest in a string of attempts by US leaders to forget the war and move on."
Today Fareed Zakaria said, "America's unipolar status has corrupted the country's foreign policy elites." American foreign policy too often consists of making demands and issuing threats and condemnations. There is very little effort to try to understand the other side, never giving any credence or credibility to it. Fareed's column in the Washington Post is "America’s foreign policy has lost all flexibility." America's foreign policy is sclerotic, the policy of an aging empire. Meanwhile the rest of the world has moved on.
Dennis Kucinich makes the Comparison. How soon we forget about the Iraq and Vietnam Wars. Now the warmakers are at it again using Ukraine as a proxy. Read Kucinich's analysis and weep.
IRAQ PLUS 20 - Lies as Weapons of Mass Destruction
Lies and the Spreading of Fake Information - Photo by Kentoh
Twenty years ago this month, America was led into a $5 trillion war. It cost the lives of more than a million Iraqis and thousands of U.S. soldiers. The Iraq War was based on the transparent lies of leaders whose judgment was hijacked by neoconservative ideologues. The neocons see America as the center of the universe, from which we must rule the world and seize its resources. When that is one’s starting point, diplomacy is archaic.
Events after 9/11 were deliberately twisted by the mad martinets of the Project for the New American Century, those monomaniacal specimens locked in the amber of a Post WWII, unipolar era.
It was those same neocons who impressed upon us their preconceived but instrumental narrative that Iraq’s Saddam Hussein (who had nothing to do with 9/11) was the great evil in the world, requiring he and his nation be destroyed.
Once accomplished, the neocons leapt over the wreckage they have created. On to the next conjured enemy. Empire, always empire: Bleed Russia, using the brave Ukrainians as a pawn, then pivot to China, war in no less than three years!
The western media, with few exceptions (Pentagon Papers and Watergate), have been dutiful spear-carriers for the U.S. government. Those who raised questions about the perilous path in Iraq 20 years ago were condemned as useful idiots, censored and cancelled. It is happening again, this time with the lock-step march toward war with China. Ukraine is being sold out. It has never been about freedom. It has been about controlling an energy market.
Post-hoc analysis of war is always painful. “If I only knew then what I know now, I would not have supported the war,” is a favorite apologia of some of the more stalwart supporters of invading Iraq. I was a member of the United States Congress from 1997-2013. Over a period of a dozen years, I delivered at least 341 speeches on the floor of the House in opposition to the Iraq war, which I saw as a criminal misuse of power. I knew then and I know now.
Just as we ignored diplomacy in Iraq, America has refused diplomacy that could have prevented bloodshed in Ukraine, choosing instead to pursue a geopolitical fantasy of deposing Putin with the help of Europe.
The U.S. is escalating with Russia at this writing, as a U.S. drone and a Russian fighter jet collided above the Black Sea. The U.S. has been practicing missile launches in the direction of St. Petersburg, sending B-52s over the Baltics towards Russia. Simultaneously the U.S. ratchets up aggression against China, as we threaten to make Taiwan our next Ukraine.
Iraq stands as an important tale of U.S. government arrogance, deception and depravity and the increased danger when there is a media buy-in. The cavalcade of Iraq chaos recited in the timeline below, demonstrates that the perils of prevarication are extreme and the consequences earth shattering.
Please tell me it can’t happen again…!
Twenty years ago, America descended into war, pronouncement by pronouncement. Read the words below, and the certainty with which those who took us to war expressed themselves as they led us blindly into a maelstrom of deceit and mass murder rocking the cradle of civilization. Tell me it can’t happen again.
In the days following the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, as intelligence agencies stumbled and dissembled in often chaotic private briefings with members of Congress, I heard rumors around Capitol Hill that Iraq was going to be made to pay the price for the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Iraq? What did Iraq have to do with 9/11? Nothing. But it had everything to do with dying embers of a unipolar world.
Through the following year, the highest U.S. administrative officials made concerted efforts to conflate Iraq with 9/11 and to make claims that were unsubstantiated or and even rejected by intelligence agencies.
This timeline and quotes are by no means complete. But they are characteristic of the much-publicized accusations made against Iraq that led to the March 19, 2003 United States attack on that nation and its people.
Read this and weep, not just for the Iraqi people, but for our own children and grandchildren:
1/29/02: [States such as Iraq, Iran and North Korea] “and their terrorist allies constitute an Axis of Evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world, by seeking weapons of mass destruction. These regimes pose a grave and growing danger.” --President Bush, State of the Union address.
2/2/02: “His [Saddam Hussein’s] regime has had high-level contacts with al Qaeda going back a decade and has provided training to al Qaeda terrorists.” -- Vice President Cheney, Speech to Air National Guard Senior Leadership.
3/17/02: “We know they [Iraqis] have biological and chemical weapons.” -- Vice President Cheney, Press Conference with Crown Prince of Bahrain.
3/19/02: “…and we know they are pursuing nuclear weapons.” -- Vice President Cheney, Press Briefing with Israeli Prime Minister Sharon in Israel.
3/24/02: “He [Hussein] is actively pursuing nuclear weapons at this time…” -- Vice President Cheney, CNN Late Edition.
3/24/02: “The notion of a Saddam Hussein with his great oil wealth, with his inventory that he already has of biological and chemical weapons… is I think, a frightening proposition for anybody who thinks about it.” -- Vice President Cheney on CBS’ Face the Nation.
5/19/02: “We know he’s got chemicals and biological (sic) and we know he’s working on nuclear.” -- Vice President Cheney, NBC’s Meet the Press.
8/26/02: “We know that Saddam has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons…Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction. He is amassing them to use against our friends, our enemies and against us.” -- Vice President Cheney to the VFW 103rd Convention.
9/8/02: “We know he has the infrastructure, nuclear scientists to make a nuclear weapon… The problem here is that there will always be some uncertainty about how quickly he can acquire nuclear weapons. But we don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.” -- President Bush’s National Security Adviser, Dr. Condoleeza Rice. CNN with Wolf Blitzer.
9/8/02: “…he [Saddam Hussein] has indeed stepped up his capacity to produce and deliver biological weapons, that he has reconstituted his nuclear program to develop a nuclear weapon, that there are efforts under way inside Iraq to significantly expand his capability.” -- Vice President Cheney, NBC Meet the Press.
9/8/02: “He is, in fact, actively and aggressively seeking to acquire nuclear weapons.” -- Vice President Cheney, NBC Meet the Press.
9/12/02: “Saddam Hussein’s regime is a grave and gathering danger. To suggest otherwise is to hope against the evidence.” -- President Bush to UN General Assembly.
9/16/02: “Iraq continues to defy us and the world, we will move deliberately, yet decisively, to hold Iraq to account….” -- President Bush, speech in Iowa.
9/19/02: No “terrorist state poses a greater or more immediate threat to the security of our people than the regime of Saddam Hussein and Iraq.” -- Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Statement to Congress.
9/28/02: “We’ve learned that Iraq has trained al Queda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases.” --President Bush, Weekly Radio Address to the Nation.
10/2/02: “The regime has the scientists and facilities to build nuclear weapons, and is seeking the materials needed to do so.” -- President Bush from the White House.
10/5/02: “In defiance of the United Nations, Iraq has stockpiled biological and chemical weapons, and is rebuilding the facilities used to make more of those weapons.” -- President Bush speech.
Early on October 2, 2002, President Bush, surrounded by leaders of both political parties, including Democratic Leader Richard Gephardt, a future presidential candidate, announced White House-prepared legislation to be brought to Congress entitled “Authorization for the Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002.” (Also known as the Iraq War resolution.)
When I first read the text of the Iraq War Resolution, I was incredulous.
So, this was the factual narrative the White House intended to pursue to attempt to persuade Congress to authorize a military attack on Iraq?
I immediately went to work, dissecting the claims made in the war resolution, quickly reviewing massive notebooks I had prepared since 9/11, jammed with internal congressional reports, private notes written after intelligence briefings, media accounts, and even reports from Iraq arms inspectors. I saw no evidence from the National Intelligence Estimate, the Central Intelligence Agency or the Defense Intelligence Agency that Iraq posed the kind of threat the Bush Administration was projecting.
The truth was, no matter what the Bush Administration and Congressional leaders said, Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. Iraq had nothing to do with al Qaeda’s role. Iraq did not have the intention to attack the United States. Iraq, with a military budget about 1% of the U.S. Pentagon expenditures, did not have the capability to attack our nation. Most significantly, it was fairly easy to determine that there was absolutely no proof that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) and, as such, was not preparing to use them against our nation.
I wrote a report on my congressional letterhead categorically discounting the Iraq Resolution’s cause of war, and, on October 2, 2002, I went to the floor of the House of Representatives and, through the next week, personally placed my analysis in the hands of about 250 members of the House, of both the Democrat and Republican parties, with a request that it be read before the vote.
Despite my efforts and that of several of my colleagues in the House, the legislation passed the House on October 10, 2002, by a vote of 296-133. Most significantly, an overwhelming number of Democrats voted against going to war in Iraq, 126 nays to 81 yeas. Fully 60% of House Democrats rejected the war. Only six Republicans, including Ron Paul voted “no.” Bernie Sanders, Independent, also voted “no.”
House Democratic Whip, Nancy Pelosi voted “no,” having issued a statement that included these telling lines: “Because I do not believe we have exhausted all diplomatic remedies, I cannot support the Administration’s resolution regarding the use of force in Iraq.”
Late that evening, the US Senate approved the Iraq War Resolution by a vote of 77-23, with all Republicans voting “yes.” Noteworthy Democratic votes for the Iraq War Resolution included Senators Biden, Clinton, Dodd, Edwards, Harkin and Kerry, all of whom were past or future presidential candidates. Those senators voting “no” included Feingold and Wellstone as well as one-time presidential candidates Graham and Ted Kennedy, with whom I worked closely during the run-up to the vote.
On October 16, 2002, flanked by Secretary of State Powell and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, President Bush signed the resolution into law, with then senator and future president, Joe Biden, standing close by.
Thus as the United States began preparing to use the full might of its military against Iraq, a horrific realization settled into my heart that the lives of millions of innocent Iraqis were being put at risk, based on fiction promoted by the White House, proliferated by the media and swallowed whole by most congressional leaders. America’s sons and daughters were going to be sent abroad to kill or be killed in pursuit of a mission that was not supported by intelligence agencies and despite easily ascertainable facts and common sense.
After Congress passed the Iraq War Resolution, the Administration accelerated its effort to cement public approval and international participation in the coming war, focusing on a narrative that Iraq was obtaining uranium for enrichment, preliminary to the building of a nuclear weapon.
10/30/02: “…but the danger is so great, with respect to Saddam Hussein having weapons of mass destruction and perhaps terrorists getting hold of such weapons that …. the President is prepared to act with likeminded nations.” -- Secretary of State Colin Powell, interview with Ellen Ratner, Talk Radio News.
11/20/02: “Today the world is also uniting to answer the unique and urgent threat posed by Iraq. A dictator who has used weapons of mass destruction on his own people must not be allowed to produce or posses those weapons. We will not permit Saddam Hussein to blackmail and/or terrorize nations which love freedom.” -- President Bush to Prague Atlantic Student Summit.
1/20/03: “The [Iraqi] report also failed to deal with issues which have arisen since 1998, including attempts to acquire uranium and the means to enrich it.” --President Bush, letter to Vice President Cheney and the Senate.
1/28/03: “The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.….Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production…. [Saddam Hussein]…could provide one of his hidden weapons to terrorists, or help them develop their own…” -- President Bush, State of the Union Address.
2/5/03: “Every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources. These are not assertions. What we are giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence… Most US experts think [these tubes] are intended to serve as rotors in centrifuges used to enrich uranium…” -- Secretary of State Colin Powell to the United Nations.
2/5/03: “But the risk of doing nothing, the risk of the security of this country being jeopardized at the hands of a madman with weapons of mass destruction far exceeds the risk of any action we may be forced to take.” -- President Bush to the National Economic Council at the White house.
2/6/03: “All the world has now seen the footage of an Iraqi Mirage aircraft with a fuel tank modified to spray biological agents over wide areas… A UAV launched from a vessel off the American coast could reach hundreds of miles inland.” --President Bush, Statement from the White House.
3/6/03: “With every step the Iraqi regime takes toward gaining and deploying the most terrible weapons, our own options to confront that regime will narrow. And if an emboldened regime were to supply these weapons to terrorist allies, then the attacks of September 11th would be a prelude to far greater horrors.” -- President Bush, Statement in National Press Conference.
3/16/03: “We believe he [Saddam Hussein] has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons.” -- Vice President Cheney, Meet the Press.
3/18/03: “Reliance by the United States on further diplomatic and other peaceful means alone with neither (A) protect the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq nor (B) likely lead to enforcement of all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq…” -- President Bush letter to Congress.
3/21/03: “I directed U.S. Armed Forces, operating with other coalition forces, to commence combat operations on March 19, 2003.” -- President Bush, in a letter to Congress.
Next Week - Part Two: The Consequences of the Iraq War and the Lessons Learned
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Should we Have a Second Pentagon ... Devoted to Peace?
by John Lawrence
So we have a Pentagon of War. We should have an equally funded Pentagon of Peace, a huge 5-sided building where all they do is plan and seek to implement various peace scenarios. Unimaginable? That's because the human race has so little imagination, and the result is ... continuous warfare since the dawn of civilization and before including the wiping out of another species, the Neanderthals, by our species, homo sapiens. The history of the human race is one of war with some technological progress in the interstices. Let's face it. Human beings especially of the masculine variety get off on war. Most warmongers are completely bored by peace. They can't wait to get back into action and cover themselves in glory on the battlefield, to prove their mettle, to prove their masculinity. Right now the US spends close to a trillion dollars a year on war, the weapons of war and planning for war. We spend a pittance on peace, the implementation of peace and planning for peace. As a result the human race has been heading for some time to Mutually Assured Destruction. We will probably get there whether or not it happens by means of a nuclear holocaust or whether it happens by neglect of the things that need to be done to forestall climate change.
The war in Ukraine and the looming Cold (and maybe even Hot) War between the two sides that are lining up represents at least a dithering while the planet heats up and eventually burns becoming a Venus like uninhabitable hellscape. So we have the US and Europe on one side and Russia, China, Iran, Cuba, Venezuela and North Korea on the other. Of the not quite aligned nations, most of Africa is siding with the Chinese. Why? Because the Chinese have put great energy into developing African infrastructure with their Belt and Road initiative. The US on the other hand has put great energy into building military bases all around the world. "There are roughly 750 US foreign military bases; they are spread across 80 nations! After the U.S is the UK, but they only have 145 bases. Russia has about 3 dozen bases, and China just five. This implies that the U.S has three times as many bases as all other countries combined." So this goes to show the relative priorities of the various countries. The priorities of peace vs the priorities of war. Helping improve the economies of other people directly is something that the Pentagon of Peace should be about. Sad to say China did that first, but there's always hope. As my Dad used to say, you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. Sure China's goal was to make friends and influence people with its Belt and Road initiative. What's the US doing in the meantime ... building military bases.
The Peace Pentagon should have a budget equal to the War Pentagon's budget - roughly a trillion dollars. I'm not saying do away with the Department of War and become defenseless. No, keep a robust defense but counterbalance it with a robust Department of Peace. So if possible peace initiatives will carry the day, but, if worse comes to worse, well there's always the fantastic array of weapons of war that the US already possesses. The war capabilities are enormous. The peace capabilities are meager. There's a difference between pursuing our interests by becoming friends with other people and pursuing our interests by guarding ourselves from other people. One of the ways to avoid war is to recognize the legitimate interests of other countries as stated by them. The war in Ukraine could have been avoided if NATO and the US had acknowledged Russia's stated security interest in Ukraine's not becoming a member of NATO. But that interest was totally discarded by the West - not even put on the table, not even some sort of compromise which would have recognized that stated interest. I'm not saying if that interest was legitimate or not - only that that was the stated interest on the Russian side that was completely ignored and never even negotiated. The result of that non-negotiation and non-compromise was the mess in Ukraine right now - a grinding war of attrition in which only Ukraine civilian lives and only Ukraine real estate are being destroyed. Ukraine would like nothing better than to have advanced weapons such as F-16 fighter jets which would allow them to spread the war into Russian territory, and then you have World War III. That seems to be where we are heading.
Throughout history men have gone to war to cover themselves in glory and prove their masculinity. In World War I, many young British men were gung ho for going to war. They intended to cover themselves in glory and be home before Christmas. Instead many of them died face down in muddy trenches or were impaled on barbed wire. According to historycrunch.com: "...one of the main reasons for the excitement of the war was that many viewed it as an adventure. They read stories about soldiers bravely marching into battle and dying heroically on the battlefields for their countries. For many of these young soldiers, they viewed the Great War as their opportunity to play a role in the ‘glory of war’ and follow in the path of earlier soldiers in earlier European conflicts. To them, war seemed adventurous and a show of bravery that many claimed they ‘did not want to miss’." It was forever so but in general only the victors were able to cover themselves in glory.
War, I would contend, is primarily a masculine pursuit. It represents an attempt by men to prove their manhood. Even some American Indian tribes cultivated a warrior tradition. Their women would have nothing to do with men until they had proved themselves in war. According to Wikipedia: "What evolved among the Plains Native Americans from the 17th to the late 19th century was warfare as both a means of livelihood and a sport. Young men gained both prestige and plunder by fighting as warriors, and this individualistic style of warfare ensured that success in individual combat and capturing trophies of war were highly esteemed." Not for nothing were they called Braves. Martina Sprague in her book The Glory of War: The Way to Historical Immortality writes: "What motivates men to go to war? The answer is the desire for recognition and the opportunity to gain eternal fame. War is perhaps the most common way in which a man can become a hero. We tend to romanticize war. War is portrayed as a daring adventure for a sacred cause, where the soldier will ultimately reach the highest level of self-actualization. As demonstrated by the great military figures in history, the promise of honor and heroism can help a man conquer the world."
Covering oneself in glory, proving one's masculinity, becoming a hero, these are ultimately traps which cause the perpetuation of war. Some men become addicted to war, the excitement of war. If one war ends, they will seek out the next one. Life is never so dull as life without war. It is the ultimate football game because the stakes - life or death - are so high. Witness the volunteers from other countries who are putting their lives on the line in Ukraine. The problem is that the pursuit of peace is never as exciting as the pursuit of war. Until peacemaking becomes as noble and glorious a pursuit as war, there is no hope for the human race to live peaceably and cooperatively side by side with each other. Until they give out as many medals and honors for peace heroes as they do for war heroes, the human race will go down fighting and ultimately extinguish each other.
I'm afraid that the war in Ukraine is only the latest example of people preoccupied with the excitement of war. Sure it was a clumsy and ignoble thing for Russia to do to so overtly invade Ukraine. They should have taken a page out of the CIA's book and been more subtle and covert about it. For example, the CIA undermined the democratically elected regime of Salvador Allende in Chile because he was a socialist and a Marxist ushering in the regime of Augusto Pinochet and his reign of terror. "According to the Chilean government, the number of executions and forced disappearances was at least 3,095 [under Pinochet]. Operation Condor, a U.S.-supported terror operation focusing on South America, was founded at the behest of the Pinochet regime in late November 1975, his 60th birthday." I'm afraid that Zelensky is following the same playbook of promoting the war based on 'glory for Ukraine' and his David and Goliath symbolism. His insatiable lust for American artillery shells and other advanced weaponry is duly granted by President Biden and the European allies with the goal of "winning the war." No one except the Chinese seem the least interested in creating a peaceful solution to the war. Instead the war will only be escalated when Ukraine gets F-15 fighter jets. Then they will be able to hit Russian targets in Russia escalating the war even further. Until now tragically it's only Ukrainian civilian lives and property that are being destroyed.
It seems like revenge, hatred for Russia and glory for Ukraine are the ultimate factors at work here not a search for compromise which both sides can live with. Does Russia have any legitimate national security interests in Ukraine's not becoming a member of NATO? Did the US have any legitimate national security interests in Chile nor becoming a socialist and Marxist state? There are always many reasons for war, but few for peace. Meanwhile, a lack of cooperation among the world's nations is hastening the day in which global warming will put an end to human civilization unless we can wake up and see that peace and cooperation are more glorious than war.
The War in Ukraine is More About Winning Than About Creating a Peaceful Solution
by John Lawrence
Biden talks about winning. Zelensky talks about winning. Putin talks about winning. Both sides are more interested in winning than in creating a peaceful solution that both sides can live with. That's their mindsets and orientations, unfortunately. It doesn't help for either side to demonize the other or characterize them as war criminals. So far there have been a total of approximately 8000 civilian deaths since the February 2022 Russian invasion. In contrast are the Vietnam war results: "Around 2 million civilians were killed in the territories of North and South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. It is suspected that over 1.2 million of these deaths were murders." The war in Iraq, the invasion of which was based on a lie, resulted in the following: "No one knows with certainty how many people have been killed and wounded in Iraq since the 2003 United States invasion. However, we know that between 275,000 and 306,000 civilians have died from direct war related violence caused by the U.S., its allies, the Iraqi military and police, and opposition forces from the time of the invasion through October 2019."
Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, who was considered the architect of the Vietnam War, said in an interview: "[General Curtis} LeMay said, if we'd lost the war, we'd all have been prosecuted as war criminals. And I think he's right. He, and I'd say I, were behaving as war criminals." McNamara characterized himself as a war criminal, but of course was never prosecuted as such. Only the losers of wars are prosecuted as war criminals. McNamara's son, Craig McNamara was a critic of his father's role in promoting the Vietnam war.
"[Craig} McNamara enrolled at Stanford University in 1969. McNamara took part in antiwar demonstrations at Stanford. Often joining him on the podium to denounce the war were two other students at Stanford, namely Susan Haldeman and Peter Ehrlichman, who were respectively the daughter of H.R Haldeman and son of John Ehrlichman. H.R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman were respectively the presidential chief of staff and domestic affairs adviser under Richard Nixon, being known as Nixon's "Berlin Wall", owing to their German surnames and ability to grant or deny access to the president. [Craig] McNamara recalled: "Pretty much all the time at Stanford was occupied with anti-Vietnam and Cambodia demonstrations...I remember the rage settling in on me, and the frustration that we all felt because we couldn't stop the war""
After the war, Robert McNamara was fired as Defense Secretary and became President of the World bank which resulted in another family clash with his son. "In 1971, [Craig McNamara] moved to Chile whose President, Salvador Allende, was a Marxist in order to see Marxism in action. In 1984, McNamara stated that he moved to Chile because: "I felt an enormous sense of frustration with my family, with my country. I felt there was nothing I could do to change my father, so I left the country"."
"In 1973, [Craig] McNamara visited the United States where over the course of a dinner, he became caught up in an argument with Katharine Graham, the owner of The Washington Post newspaper and his father over Chile. The younger McNamara insisted that the Nixon administration was trying to overthrow Allende because he was a Marxist while both the elder McNamara and Graham insisted that there was no such policy on the part of the United States. Later on in 1975, the "destabilization campaign" waged by the Nixon administration came to public light. [Craig] McNamara stated: "That's why I'm still cautious about my father to this very day-that's the flip side. If they [Graham and Robert McNamara] didn't know what was going on in Chile factually, they must have known it intuitively. But they wouldn't say so".
"Shortly before he was due to return to Chile, the Allende government was overthrown in a military coup d'etat led by General Augusto Pinochet on 11 September 1973. The Pinochet government vowed to "exterminate Marxism" in Chile, earning a reputation as one of the worst human rights abusers in Latin America."
Putting all this in perspective purported war criminal Putin's civilian death total in Ukraine pales in comparison with (self-characterized) war criminal Robert McNamara's civilian death total in Vietnam or even the civilian death total in the Iraq war perpetrated by President George W Bush. Not to mention the approximately 200,000 civilian deaths as a result of atomic bombs dropped on Japan or the 25,000 civilians killed in the fire bombing of Dresden.
The war in Ukraine is a tragedy regardless of the number of civilian deaths. One civilian death is one too many. However, the longer the war goes on with both sides determined to win rather than determined to find a just peace that both sides can live with, the longer will be the destruction of civilian lives and real estate.The concept of winning in and of itself is the problem.
I repeat: where's the off ramp for peace in Ukraine. Each side seems more interested in winning than in finding a resolution to the conflict that both sides can live with. Meanwhile, Ukraine is having billions of dollars in real estate destroyed not to mention having thousands of its citizens killed. Russia is having no real estate destroyed and won't unless the war is escalated. What would a negotiated settlement look like? It would have to be acceptable to both sides obviously. Otherwise, Russia could attack again at will. Unless they made Ukraine a member of NATO in which case any Russian attack on NATO would result in World War III. However, there may be another way. That would involve recognizing that Russia has a legitimate interest in a negotiated settlement. Right now the West seems more interested in demonizing Russia than in finding a negotiated settlement. They even pooh pooh the very reasonable negotiated settlement proposal which China has put forward. This does not bode well for peace in Ukraine. A war of attrition in which one side, namely Ukraine, is the side attrited while the homeland of the other side, namely, Russia, remains relatively unscathed is a disaster for the people of Ukraine. When all is said and done, these two countries will still be neighbors. The only thing that remains is whether they will be hostile neighbors in perpetuity or can a solution be found for which they could possibly be friendly ones.
Let's go back to the root of the problem: the dissolution of the Warsaw pact in 1991. As one of the victorious countries in WW II, Russia had certain rights insofar as the divided Germany was concerned. If Germany was to be reunited and become a member of NATO, then President Gorbachev was given assurances that NATO would not try to incorporate other previous Warsaw pact countries into NATO. But Gorbachev should have taken Reagan's advice: "Trust but verify." There was no formal agreement about NATO expansion - only a trusted verbal agreement. I reported in a previous post:
"NATO expanded during the 1990s largely due to the imprecations of President Bill Clinton's Secretary of State Madeleine Albright even though President Gorbachev had been promised that NATO would not expand "one inch eastward" as part of a deal to reunify Germany after the Cold War.
After explaining why the U.S. wanted the reunited Germany to stay within the framework of NATO, Baker told Gorbachev that "if we maintain a presence in a Germany that is a part of NATO, there would be no extension of NATO's jurisdiction for forces of NATO 1 inch to the east."
"I put the following question to (Gorbachev)," Baker recounted in a letter to German Chancellor Helmut Kohl. "‘Would you prefer to see a united Germany outside of NATO, independent and with no U.S. forces, or would you prefer a unified Germany to be tied to NATO, with assurances that NATO’s jurisdiction would not shift 1 inch eastward from its present position?’"
Those comments, along with similar remarks from Baker’s European allies, like Genscher and Kohl, were part of what researchers at George Washington University’s National Security Archive called a "cascade of assurances" offered to the Soviets.
But Baker and otherofficials involved in the events have denied that the conversation ever turned on expanding NATO to other countries.
So basically Gorbachev was sold a bill of goods that, if he consented to the reunification of Germany and with Germany as a NATO member, that NATO would not expand eastwards. However, "given assurances" is not the same as "legal and binding". Therefore, in July 1997, Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic (where Albright was born) were formally invited to join NATO."
Interestingly enough, Biden did not give any credence to Putin's concerns before the invasion of Ukraine regarding future membership of Ukraine in NATO. If he had, it might have been possible to work out a security arrangement prior to the war that would have addressed both Russia's and Ukraine's concerns. Instead the Biden administration has continued to heap imprecations on Putin. As I said in the previous post, "All along the road of NATO expansion Russia's security concerns were ignored or belittled or disrespected." Now instead of a settlement acceptable to both sides before the war, essentially the same thing must happen to end the war after much destruction of Ukraine and loss of lives on both sides. If Russia and Ukraine cannot find an agreement that is acceptable to both sides, there is really no way that Russia can be persuaded not to attack again some time in the future. In order to have reconciliation and peace both sides have to be satisfied with the solution and both sides, of course, have to compromise. However, Biden, NATO and the west have to face up to their mistake in not acknowledging that Russia has legitimate security concerns in the Black Sea region just as the US has legitimate security concerns in the Americas.
Photograph Source: The White House – Public Domain
More than one-third of the U.S. population was born after 1970, and thus has no personal memories of the Cold War, particularly the Berlin crises or the Cuban missile crisis. Since we are in the early stages of a new Cold War, it’s a good time to review the tensions that we will confront. Spoiler alert: Cold War 2.0 will be more costly and risky than its predecessor.
The soaring defense budget, which is woefully understated in the mainstream media, is the Congress’ pet rock and its only genuine bipartisan undertaking. The media consistently refers to the record defense budget ($858 billion), but ignore an additional $300 billion that is devoted to the military. The latter figure would include important elements of spending by the intelligence community, which primarily serves the military; the Department of Energy, which stores our nuclear inventory; the Veterans’ Administration; and important agencies of the Department of Homeland Security, which include the Coast Guard, the world’s seventh largest navy. The roughly $1.2 trillion devoted to defense equals the sum that the rest of the global community allocates to the military!
The bloated defense budget, moreover, does not take into account the huge military expenditures of key nations in Europe and Asia that support the national security interests of the United States. In addition to the 31 other nations of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization that devote huge sums of money to contain Russia, there are the increased defense budgets of such Asian states as Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan that target China. The United States is also the world’s leading arms merchant, selling and providing more weapons overseas than the rest of the global community. Saudi Arabia, the leading buyer of U.S. weaponry, allocates more money to defense than any non-nuclear state in the world with a budget that roughly equals the defense spending of Russia.
The greatest drivers of U.S. defense spending are the modernization of nuclear weapons, which have no utilitarian purpose, and the obscene U.S. military presence the world over. The Pentagon will receive $2 trillion over the next decade to create a new generation of nuclear-armed bombers and submarines. The global race for smaller nuclear bombs is also intensifying with no arms control treaties regulating so-called tactical or nonstrategic nuclear weapons.
We have hundreds of military facilities around the world, whereas China has only one facility on the Horn of Africa and the Russians have two facilities in Syria. Neither Russia nor China devote vast sums to power projection; most of their defense spending is devoted to defending the homeland. It is long past time for someone in Congress to investigate why the United States has to maintain military dominance in every corner of the globe.
The policy of dual containment of Russia and China carries far greater risk than U.S. policy in the first Cold War. Current Russian and Chinese leaders either have no limits on their use of power (Vladimir Putin) or have greater international ambition than previous leaders (Xi Jinping). Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev had to deal with a Politburo in crises involving Cuba and the Middle East, respectively, which were resolved peacefully. The United States is risking an arms race not only against Russia, but against China as well. New weapons such as hypersonic missiles and cyber weapons that threaten command and control systems are unsettling. Pentagon spokesmen have sent increasingly alarming warnings regarding China staging a “strategic breakout,” whatever that means.
Unlike the first Cold War, which was restrained due to respect for arms control and disarmament, the new Cold War is more threatening in view of the decline and fall of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (blame Bill Clinton); the abrogation of the ABM Treaty (George W. Bush); the suspension of the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty (Putin); and the abrogation of Intermediate-Nuclear Forces Treaty (Donald Trump). Biden’s lackluster national security team doesn’t even have an arms control specialist, and the Department of Defense, led by a retired four-star general, has replaced the Department of State at the center of the national security process. Civilians should be calling the shots and not general officers.
The first Cold War was marked by Soviet-American recognition of the necessity of avoiding direct conflict in the wake of the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, and to ensure direct military-to-military communication; there is far less direct communication between the two sides at this juncture. Our allies in the first Cold War did their best to maintain communication with the Kremlin; currently our allies are expanding their defense budgets and cooperating in the fields of cybersecurity and defense technology. The budgetary increases in Germany and Japan are particularly stunning with Japan becoming only the second country allowed to purchase U.S. Tomahawk cruise missiles as part of its unprecedented military buildup.
Meanwhile, the United States has become a participant in the war between Russia and Ukraine, and President Joe Biden has kept his predecessors anti-China policies in place, including Trump’s tariff policies, closer relations with Taiwan, and a military buildup in the Pacific. In Congress, the Democrats and Republicans provide bipartisan support for increased defense spending and relentlessly compete with each other in their anti-China rhetoric. It is reminiscent of the 1950s when no one wanted to be accused of “being soft” on China.
The United States remains increasingly isolated from both Russia and China at the same time that Moscow and Beijing are building the closest bilateral relationship in hundreds of years of history. The competition over Taiwan risks a conflict in the Taiwan Straits; the warfare in Ukraine risks conflict in the Black Sea. The United States may believe that it is not a “participant” in the war in Ukraine, but the use of U.S.-supplied HIMARs on New Year’s Day to kill and injure several hundred Russian soldiers in eastern Ukraine sends a different message.
The Middle East and Southwest Asia provide additional sources of tension. Biden should have returned to the Iran nuclear accord at the outset of his administration; instead, the Biden administration talked about rewrites to the agreement and Iran predictably objected. Israel has installed a dangerous right-wing government, but the Pentagon now refers to Israel as our “leading strategic partner.” Biden threatened to make Saudi Arabia a “pariah,” but instead he went hat-in-hand to Riyadh and negotiated $4 billion in arms sales. Syria and Lebanon are failed states, and invite foreign interference. The new regional stresses on stability and the challenges for deterrence vis-a-vis Russia and China do not augur well for a more predictable or peaceful international arena.
The Mid Terms: Out of the Frying Pan Into the Fire
by John Lawrence
Voters are going to vote Republican because they don't like the economy. Really? What have the Republicans proposed to do about that? Cut social security and Medicare. Yeah, that'll fix the economy all right. Give more tax breaks to billionaires? That'll fix the economy for sure. Take away Biden's forgiveness of student loan debt? That'll really fix it. "Kitchen table" voters don't like inflation? What are Republicans proposing to do about that? The only tool in the arsenal for inflation cutting is the Fed's raising interest rates and the Fed is independent of both parties. Besides the only tool the Fed has is probably not the right tool for fixing this inflation. But it will eventually destroy what seems to be a pretty good economy despite inflation. The biggest way to fight inflation is to end the war in Ukraine which will bring gas prices down. Additionally, all the weaponry that is being "given" to Ukraine is really being bought from US weapons manufacturers and defense contractors like Lockheed Martin. This is pouring more money into the American economy at a time when money needs to be extracted from the American economy to fight inflation. The Fed's raising of interest rates is an attempt to increase unemployment which is the traditional way that the Fed fights inflation. The so-called Philips curve says that inflation is directly caused by too much employment, and, if you increase unemployment, it will bring inflation down. There is a direct correlation between unemployment and inflation. So the Fed, although no politician will say it, is trying desperately to increase unemployment. This hurts poor people the most, and, whether it will decrease inflation under the present circumstances, is debatable.
However, the war in Ukraine amounts to a protracted stalemate. As long as the west supplies Ukraine with weapons and North Korea, Iran and China supply Russia with weapons, the war will continue. No one on either side wants to talk peace. Each side wants to win at all costs. So the war will drag the world economy down into inflation and recession. Russia holds the winning cards in terms of its ability to literally destroy Ukraine from the air regardless of what is happening on the battlefield. This is not World War II where success on the battlefield was the key to winning the war. It's more like World War I where trench warfare and stalemate predominated. Territorial Russia remains virtually untouched since the rules are that the war will be entirely fought on Ukraine's territory, and the west to its credit doesn't want an expansion of the war. In the final analysis this gives Russia the advantage. Ukraine is fighting a defensive war, and Russia is fighting an offensive war. It's likely that neither party will run out of resources. That means the longer the war goes on, the more of Ukraine will be destroyed. There needs to be a peace commission and a peace process in which both sides can air their grievances and aspirations. What makes the most sense? I'm sure there is a possible way out, but neither side seems to want to compromise in the interests of ameliorating the lives of the Ukrainian people and getting back to normalcy. For each side their national pride is more important than the lives of their citizens.
Joe Biden could propose a solution to the war which would also go a long way to ameliorating inflation. Unfortunately, Biden is only interested in demonizing Putin. This is not a productive way to create peace. Biden is only fueling the war, and Putin won't back down due to pride. The more Putin is demonized, the more his hackles are raised. The west should be trying to lower Putin's hackles, not raise them. Ukrainian lives hang in the balance. Russian soldiers' lives are also in the balance although Russian civilians so far have escaped most of the suffering. Ukraine taking back real estate will not in the final analysis win the war because Russia can lob missiles into Ukraine ad infinitum. Only a peace process, compromise, consideration for civilian lives and reintegration of Russia into the world community will make it possible for people in that region of the world to again lead normal lives. Winning the war for either side is not a realistic option.
In a hypothetical handshake between Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin, the agreement was that the war would be fought entirely within Ukraine's borders, and that the US and the west would provide no boots on the ground in Ukraine. Until recently that unacknowledged agreement has been honored by both sides. The US has sought to contain the war also by not providing Ukraine with any long range missiles with which it could attack Russian territory. The idea was that the two sides would slug it out on the conventional military battlefield although Russia clearly has the means by which it could attack anywhere in Ukraine with missiles. The recent attack on the Kerch bridge followed by missile strikes on Kyiv represents an escalation of the war. In the "conventional" war Russia has evidently been losing. From Russia's perspective they have other modes of attack than just a conventional battlefield war. In the words of one Russian general, Russia should bomb Ukraine back to the 18th century. At this point Ukraine has little or no air defense capabilities, and Russia could do just that. So will Russia violate the unwritten agreement that the war will be won or lost on the battlefield? Probably "yes" if they are losing on the battlefield. Russia has long range missiles; Ukraine doesn't. Russia has an air force; Ukraine doesn't. Ukraine has no air defense system. The US and the west will not use their air force resources within Ukraine. This, as Joe Biden rightly observes, would start World War 3.
So why is the West deluding itself by thinking Ukraine could win this war and things could peacefully continue from there? Why is Russia trying to win a conventional war that it clearly is losing. Why are there no negotiations to try and settle this conflict in order to prevent further human suffering and devastation of Ukraine? Why is there no peace process underway? The US air force is not going to come to the aid of Ukraine. The US is not going to give Ukraine long range missiles so that it could attack inside Russia's borders. As atrocious as the Russian side has been made to seem by western media, Russia has exercised at least some restraint by not wiping Kiev off the map with missile strikes. Now that dynamic seems to have changed. Russia can inflict much damage on Kyiv and western Ukraine that it has recently refrained from doing. But now the gloves may be off. So my prognosis is that the war will get even more destructive because Kyiv and western Ukraine are essentially sitting ducks for Russian missile strikes. So why should Russia continue to fight a war on the ground that it is losing? The US and the west is concerned that Russia could use a battlefield nuclear weapon. Russia does not need to do that in order to devastate Kyiv and western Ukraine.
Unless there is some attempt at a peace process or a negotiated settlement, the destruction of Ukraine and the suffering of its people will only get worse. Modern wars are not constrained to military troops on the battlefield as they were in Napoleanic times. Increasingly in modern warfare, more civilian than military lives have been lost. Demonizing Putin will not win the day for Ukraine. Ukraine has belonged to Russia more often than not for hundreds of years. It was essentially peacefully "given" to Ukraine by Nikita Krushchev in 1954. Nina Khrushcheva, the political scientist and great-granddaughter of Nikita Khrushchev, the then First Secretary of the Communist Party, said of Khrushchev's motivation "it was somewhat symbolic, somewhat trying to reshuffle the centralized system and also, full disclosure, Nikita Khrushchev was very fond of Ukraine, so I think to some degree it was also a personal gesture toward his favorite republic. He was ethnically Russian, but he really felt great affinity with Ukraine." Russia clearly has a historical interest in Ukraine, not to mention the fact that the Russian Black Sea fleet is based in Sevastopol which is in Crimea.
The US and the west continues to ignore Russian history at it's and Ukraine's peril. Russia will obviously not let the country that harbors its Russian military fleet become a part of NATO. That would almost be a contradiction in terms. The negotiated solution to this war, an off ramp to peace, seems unthinkable at this point, but decent human beings on both sides better start thinking about it. Unless they do, there will be even more destruction of Ukrainian civilians and of the Ukrainian civilization.
We Need a Department of Peace to Balance and Offset our War Department
by John Lawrence
Let's face it. the Department of Defense is a euphemism. It was called the Department of War until 1949. So let's call it what it really is. Don't get me wrong. There are times when war is necessary as occurred in WW II. However, we spend about $1 trillion on our War Department while spending little or nothing on peace. Is there really a Peace Corps? Yes, and its budget is about $400 million. That's about 4 ten thousandths of the War Department budget. My point is that we should be making at least the same effort towards peace as we're making towards war, and we should be putting our money where our mouth is. This doesn't mean we totally disarm ourselves. It means that we are making an effort towards creating peace in the world if at all possible and are willing to devote an equal amount of resources towards it. In our present state it's all about threatening war in order to to create a state of peace. It's Pax Americana similar to the Pax Romana which meant that you didn't mess with Rome or else you were threatened with violence. Instead of creating peace by means of a threat of war, we should be actively pursuing a peaceful world instead.
What would a Department of Peace actually do? Well, diplomacy would be under this department instead of the State Department for starters. Second, the American equivalent of China's Belt and Road initiative. Building infrastructure around the world just as China is doing. But what's most important at the present time is converting the world to green infrastructure. The middle class in India is growing. They want to live just like Americans. As more Indians enter the middle class they are consuming more fossil fuels to provide the energy to do so. This is contributing to the looming climate disaster. Just what we don't need is more carbon dioxide going into the atmosphere as a result of more people gentrifying into the middle class. Therefore, a Department of Peace, which should include the Peace Corps, would step up the efforts not only to change the fossil fuel habit in the US, but to actively change it around the world. About a half a trillion dollar budget would be about right while decreasing the War (Defense) budget which is 10 times the combined budgets of the rest of the world to half a trillion.
President Biden wants a Civilian Climate Corps reminiscent of the Civilian Conservation Corps which President Roosevelt established to build parks and plant trees during the Great Depression. An excellent idea in view of the fact that planting a trillion trees would suck the carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. Unless we do that there is already enough carbon dioxide in the atmosphere at 410 ppm to melt both poles. Why not require participation in the Civilian Conservation Corps for people receiving welfare benefits who aren't otherwise employed or who are unemployable in the prevailing economy. I'm thinking about the homeless and others for whom this might be a first step to getting back on their feet in the so-called real world. I'm in favor of the government being the employer of last resort, and employment in a Civilian Climate Corps is the perfect solution both for them and for the environment.
Building the elements of peace around the world would entail looking out for the health care needs of people outside the US in our era of pandemics. This is also good sense in a selfish way since viruses can transmit world wide in a matter of days if not hours. They don't respect national boundaries. People to people cultural contacts with people of other nations brings about understanding and the realization that, no matter what the religious or ethnic differences seem to be, human beings are all essentially the same deep down and all have the same needs and aspirations. Helping others to realize their aspirations creates peace in the world. Cultural and educational exchanges are an important way to increase mutual understanding. There are many ways to create peace in the world. The US shouldn't be always taking the stance of trying to put down those peoples and countries who don't follow the US way of life. Others might have a different way of setting up their societies, but rather than taking this as a threat, we should engage diplomatically and peacefully if at all possible knowing that in the final analysis, if push came to shove, we also have the means to defend ourselves. A Department of Peace and a Department of War should go hand in hand. Today it is lopsided in favor of war.
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