The playbook the pimps of war use to lure us into one military fiasco after another, including Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and now Ukraine, does not change. Freedom and democracy are threatened. Evil must be vanquished. Human rights must be protected. The fate of Europe and NATO, along with a \u201crules based international order\u201d is at stake. Victory is assured.<\/p>\n
The results are also the same. The justifications and narratives are exposed as lies. The cheery prognosis is false. Those on whose behalf we are supposedly fighting are as venal as those we are fighting against.<\/p>\n
The Russian invasion of Ukraine was a war crime, although one that was provoked by NATO expansion and by the United States backing of the 2014 \u201cMaidan\u201d\u00a0coup<\/a>\u00a0which\u00a0ousted<\/a>\u00a0the\u00a0democratically elected<\/a>\u00a0Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych. Yanukovych\u00a0wanted<\/a>\u00a0economic integration with the European Union, but not at the expense of economic and political ties with Russia. The war will only be solved through negotiations that allow ethnic Russians in Ukraine to have autonomy and Moscow\u2019s protection, as well as Ukrainian\u00a0neutrality<\/a>, which means the country cannot join NATO. The longer these negotiations are delayed the more Ukrainians will suffer and die. Their cities and infrastructure will continue to be pounded into rubble.<\/p>\n But this proxy war in Ukraine is designed to serve U.S. interests. It enriches the weapons manufacturers, weakens the Russian military and isolates Russia from Europe. What happens to Ukraine is irrelevant.<\/p>\n \u201cFirst, equipping our friends on the front lines to defend themselves is a far cheaper way \u2014 in both dollars and American lives \u2014 to degrade Russia\u2019s ability to threaten the United States,\u201d\u00a0admitted<\/a>\u00a0Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell.<\/p>\n \u201cSecond, Ukraine\u2019s effective defense of its territory is teaching us lessons about how to improve the defenses of partners who are threatened by China. It is no surprise that senior officials from Taiwan are so supportive of efforts to help Ukraine defeat Russia. Third, most of the money that\u2019s been appropriated for Ukraine security assistance doesn\u2019t actually go to Ukraine. It gets invested in American defense manufacturing. It funds new weapons and munitions for the U.S. armed forces to replace the older material we have provided to Ukraine. Let me be clear: this assistance means more jobs for American workers and newer weapons for American servicemembers.\u201d<\/p>\n Once the truth about these endless wars\u00a0seeps<\/a>\u00a0into public consciousness, the media, which slavishly promotes these conflicts, drastically reduces coverage. The military debacles, as in Iraq and Afghanistan, continue largely out of view. By the time the U.S. concedes defeat, most barely remember that these wars are being fought.<\/p>\n The pimps of war who orchestrate these military fiascos migrate from administration to administration. Between posts they are ensconced in think tanks \u2014 Project for the New American Century, American Enterprise Institute, Foreign Policy Initiative, Institute for the Study of War, The Atlantic Council and The Brookings Institution \u2014 funded by corporations and the war industry. Once the Ukraine war comes to its inevitable conclusion, these Dr. Strangeloves will seek to\u00a0ignite<\/a>\u00a0a\u00a0war<\/a>\u00a0with China. The U.S. Navy and military are already\u00a0menacing<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0encircling<\/a>\u00a0China. God help us if we don\u2019t stop them.<\/p>\n These\u00a0pimps of war<\/a>\u00a0con us into one conflict after another with flattering narratives that paint us as the world\u2019s saviors. They don\u2019t even have to be innovative. The rhetoric is lifted from the old playbook. We naively swallow the bait and embrace the flag \u2014 this time blue and yellow \u2014 to become unwitting agents in our self-immolation.<\/p>\n Since the end of the Second World War, the government has\u00a0spent<\/a>\u00a0between 45 to 90 percent of the\u00a0federal<\/a>\u00a0budget on past, current and future military operations. It is the largest sustained activity of the U.S. government. It has stopped mattering \u2014 at least to the pimps of war \u2014 whether these wars are rational or prudent. The war industry metastasizes within the bowels of the American empire to hollow it out from the inside. The U.S. is reviled abroad, drowning in debt, has an impoverished working class and is burdened with a decayed infrastructure as well as shoddy social services.<\/p>\n Wasn\u2019t the Russian military \u2014 because of\u00a0poor morale<\/a>,\u00a0poor generalship<\/a>,\u00a0outdated weapons<\/a>,\u00a0desertions<\/a>, a lack of ammunition that supposedly\u00a0forced<\/a>\u00a0soldiers to\u00a0fight<\/a>\u00a0with shovels, and severe supply\u00a0shortages<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 supposed to collapse\u00a0months ago<\/a>? Wasn\u2019t Putin supposed to be\u00a0driven<\/a>\u00a0from power? Weren\u2019t the\u00a0sanctions<\/a>\u00a0supposed to\u00a0plunge<\/a>\u00a0the ruble into a death spiral? Wasn\u2019t the severing of the Russian banking system from\u00a0SWIFT<\/a>, the international money transfer system, supposed to cripple the Russian economy? How is it that inflation rates in\u00a0Europe<\/a>\u00a0and the\u00a0United States<\/a>\u00a0are higher than in\u00a0Russia<\/a>\u00a0despite these attacks on the Russian economy?<\/p>\n Wasn\u2019t the nearly $150 billion in sophisticated military hardware, financial and humanitarian assistance\u00a0pledged<\/a>\u00a0by the U.S., EU and 11 other countries supposed to have turned the tide of the war? How is it that perhaps a third of the tanks Germany and the U.S. provided were swiftly turned by Russian mines, artillery, anti-tank weapons, air strikes and missiles into charred hunks of metal at the start of the vaunted\u00a0counter-offensive<\/a>? Wasn\u2019t this latest Ukrainian counter-offensive, which was originally known as the \u201cspring offensive,\u201d supposed to punch through Russia\u2019s heavily fortified front lines and regain huge swathes of territory? How can we explain the tens of thousands of Ukrainian military casualties and the\u00a0forced<\/a>\u00a0conscription by Ukraine\u2019s military? Even our retired generals and former CIA, FBI, NSA and Homeland Security officials, who serve as analysts on networks such as CNN and MSNBC,\u00a0can\u2019t say<\/a>\u00a0the offensive has succeeded.<\/p>\n And what of the Ukrainian democracy we are fighting to protect? Why did the Ukrainian parliament\u00a0revoke<\/a>\u00a0the official use of minority languages, including Russian, three days after the 2014 coup? How do we rationalize the eight years of warfare against ethnic Russians in the Donbass region before the Russian invasion in Feb. 2022? How do we explain the\u00a0killing<\/a>\u00a0of over 14,200 people and the 1.5 million people who were\u00a0displaced<\/a>, before Russia\u2019s invasion took place last year?<\/p>\n How do we defend the\u00a0decision<\/a>\u00a0by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to\u00a0ban<\/a>\u00a0eleven opposition parties, including The Opposition Platform for Life, which had 10 percent of the seats in the Supreme Council, Ukraine\u2019s unicameral parliament, along with the Shariy Party, Nashi, Opposition Bloc, Left Opposition, Union of Left Forces, State, Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine, Socialist Party of Ukraine, Socialists Party and Volodymyr Saldo Bloc? How can we accept the banning of these opposition parties \u2014 many of which are on the left \u2014 while Zelenskyy allows\u00a0fascists<\/a>\u00a0from the\u00a0Svoboda<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Right Sector<\/a>\u00a0parties, as well as the\u00a0Banderite<\/a>\u00a0Azov Battalion<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0other extremist militias<\/a>, to flourish?<\/p>\n How do we deal with the anti-Russian purges and arrests of supposed \u201cfifth columnists\u201d\u00a0 sweeping through Ukraine, given that\u00a030 percent<\/a>\u00a0of Ukraine\u2019s inhabitants are Russian speakers? How do we respond to the neo-Nazi groups supported by Zelenskyy\u2019s government that harass and attack the LGBT community, the Roma population, anti-fascist protests and threaten city council members, media outlets, artists and foreign students? How can we countenance the\u00a0decision<\/a>\u00a0by the U.S and its Western allies to\u00a0block<\/a>\u00a0negotiations with Russia to end the war, despite Kyiv and Moscow\u00a0apparently<\/a>\u00a0being on the verge of negotiating a peace treaty?<\/p>\n I reported from Eastern and Central Europe in 1989 during the breakup of the Soviet Union.\u00a0 NATO, we assumed, had become obsolete. President Mikhail Gorbachev proposed security and economic agreements with Washington and Europe. Secretary of State James Baker in Ronald Reagan\u2019s administration, along with the West German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher,\u00a0assured<\/a>\u00a0Gorbachev that NATO would not be extended beyond the borders of a unified Germany. We naively thought the end of the Cold War meant that Russia, Europe and the U.S., would no longer have to divert massive resources to their militaries.<\/p>\n The so-called \u201cpeace dividend,\u201d however, was a chimera.<\/p>\n If Russia did not want to be the enemy, Russia would be forced to become the enemy. The pimps of war recruited former Soviet republics into NATO by painting Russia as a threat. Countries that joined NATO, which now include Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Albania, Croatia, Montenegro, and North Macedonia, reconfigured their militaries, often through tens of millions in western loans, to become compatible with NATO military hardware. This made the weapons manufacturers billions in profits.<\/p>\n It was universally understood in Eastern and Central Europe following the collapse of the Soviet Union that NATO expansion was unnecessary and a dangerous provocation. It made no geopolitical sense. But it made commercial sense. War is a business.<\/p>\n