The war in Ukraine is an American war for which the United States government should be ashamed and blamed.
It was initiated by President Joe Biden and then-British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, both of whom advised Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy that if he rejected a peace treaty that his own government had freely negotiated and agreed to in 2022 with Russian negotiators, Ukraine could join NATO. The treaty was more than 100 pages in length, each page of which had been initialed by both sides, and its essence accepted by the Kremlin and by Kyiv — until Biden and Johnson advised against it.
Their advice was essentially to trust their military support, as it would be strong enough to resist any Russian incursion into eastern Ukraine and relieve Kyiv of the need to make concessions to the Kremlin. They used Zelenskyy as a puppet, since their purpose was not motivated by peace or empathy or justice, rather by hatred for all things Russian.
So, the U.S. and the U.K. encouraged bloodshed instead of peace, confrontation instead of communication, and Congress began paying for a war without declaring one. Motivated by years of anti-Russian jingoism, headless of its duties under the Constitution, thumbing its nose at at least three treaties ratified by the Senate that permit war only when the U.S. or an ally is gravely threatened, Congress permitted Biden to start an undeclared war against a country that poses no threat whatsoever to the national security of the United States.
Here is the backstory.
The war began in 2014 when the U.S. State Department and the CIA engineered a coup against the popularly elected and neutral-leaning government of Ukraine. Much of Russian-speaking and Russian culturally oriented Ukraine in the east was unhappy with the coup. The American and British plotters then installed a puppet regime that actually began attacking Russian Ukrainians in eastern Ukraine.
The area of eastern Ukraine in which this government-orchestrated violence was taking place has been Russian in culture, religion and language since before the American Revolution. The American and British plotters of the 2014 coup did not expect the resistance that their coup generated. Yet, they looked the other way when the Ukraine government attacked its own people for demonstrating a decided affinity for Moscow over Kyiv; so decided, that the province of Crimea actually voted overwhelmingly to return to Russia.
One person who did not look the other way was Russian President Vladimir Putin. Who could blame him? The U.S. has known since the early 1990s that Russia will not accept an eastward expansion of NATO. The George H.W. Bush administration promised the late Russian President Mikhail Gorbachev as much in return for the peaceful liberation of eastern Europe and especially the reunification of Germany. Nevertheless, with Poland’s entry into NATO, the western perfidy became apparent, as NATO — and its heavy weaponry — moved toward Moscow.
Angry that his predecessor had permitted this, fearful of the same mentality that engineered the 2014 coup now managing NATO, Putin came to the rescue of Russian Ukrainians. When the U.S. and U.K. succeeded in busting the Russia/Ukraine treaty tentatively agreed to in Istanbul, and tempted Zelenskyy with Ukrainian membership in NATO, Putin’s only alternative was to resist NATO expansion and the Ukrainian military by the use of Russian force.
Who can blame Putin? How would American presidents react to the threat of Chinese offensive weaponry in Mexico?
I know this is not a popular history in the U.S., as mainstream media as well as popular culture and government schools have demonized Russia since the end of the Cold War. That demonization gave Biden cover to promise Zelenskyy “whatever he needs for as long as it takes.” In his nearly four years in the White House, Biden has declined to articulate as long as it takes to do what.
Biden’s war has cost the American taxpayers nearly $240 billion and Ukraine 600,000dead troops. It was not declared by Congress. It was facilitated by many Americans on the ground in Ukraine — military in uniform and out, intelligence personnel, and defense contractors. Much of the military equipment that the U.S. has sent to Ukraine — most from America’s substance, not surplus — required U.S. troops and other personnel to train Ukrainian troops in the use of it.
But last weekend, Biden — whose presidency has been thoroughly repudiated by American voters — authorized the use of offensive weaponry that can reach 190 miles into Russia and which can only be manned by U.S. personnel. At this writing, the U.S. equipment has attacked and destroyed a warehouse holding artillery ammunition some 70 miles inside the Russian border.
Who is firing U.S. offensive weaponry?
There is no dispute but that the U.S. is waging war on Russia — without a congressional declaration, without the consent of the United Nations (as the U.S. is obliged to do under a treaty that the U.S. wrote) and solely on its own. I say solely on its own because the weaponry that destroyed the Russian military warehouse requires secret U.S. satellite technology to operate, and U.S. personnel with top-secret security clearances to aim and trigger. It would be an act of espionage to permit Ukrainians to do this.
War is politics by other means. But it is the most deadly, destructive and irreversible means — and must always be a last resort. The Constitution intentionally separated the war-declaring power from the war-waging power. Its author, James Madison, poignantly argued that if presidents could both choose the enemy and fight it, such a person would be a prince and not a president.
Joe Biden’s presidency has been an abysmal failure, and he doesn’t know it. He must perversely hope that history will reward him if he keeps the killing coming to the last Ukrainian and even risks a wider war. Can a presidency of peace come soon enough?
Structural Reforms
The U.S. today is ruled by a clique consisting of the media cartel, campaign donors, lobbyists, think tanks, the DNC and the top echelons of the appointed government. The media have de facto most of the power. The American media cartel is a massive lying machine the like of which the world has never seen before.
People will ultimately do what the TV tells them to do, and think what the TV tells them to think. It takes only a handful of evil billionaires to purchase all the newspapers to launch the entire country on a path of destruction. This is the case in America today. And that is not all. The Congress has been bribed by special interests. They finance their election campaigns. AIPAC and the military industrial complex come to mind. The Congressional seats could as well be traded on the commodity market. Major structural reforms are required:
* ANTITRUST LEGISLATION FOR THE MEDIA. Standard Oil was broken up into 34 different entities. We should break up the six headed media hydra into at least 30 different companies. No individual, family, clan, organization or identifiable group should be allowed to control more than 20% of the media market. This will not help if they all get the news from the three multi-national news agencies (AP, Reuters, AFP.) None of them should be permitted to control more than 20% of the U.S. market, i.e. the media should be required to diversify their intake.
* THE RIGHT TO A REPLY. When the media slander you, you should have the right to publish your version in the very same newspaper. The right to defend themselves against false accusations extends to foreign governments. It would put a check on yellow journalism. Audiatur et altera pars!
* REINSTATING THE FAIRNESS DOCTRINE. It was an FCC policy between 1949 and 1987. It required broadcasters to present issues of public importance such that contrasting viewpoints be presented. The courts found it constitutional, but then the FCC dropped it. It should be legislated as a law.
* OUTLAWING INTERNET CENSORSHIP. No entity that holds itself out as a public communication platform should be permitted to evaluate or censor content any more than T-mobile should censor your telephone conversation. The right to express philosophical or political opinions or to criticize public institutions is absolute. The only exceptions to this rule are manifestly criminal conduct (fraud, pedophilia, soliciting murder) or invasion of privacy.
* ACROSS THE BOARD ANTI-MONOPOLY LEGISLATION targeting the tech giants such as Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft etc.
* CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT OVERTURNING CITIZENS UNITED vs FEE.
* PUBLIC FINANCING OF ELECTION CAMPAIGNS. All contributions of $25 or less per month should be matched by the government 10x up to the level of the candidate with most money. For example, if a candidate takes $1 million in donations of $25 or less, the government should contribute additional $10 million provided at least one candidate collected more than $10 million from donations higher than $25.
You might think that this program has no chance of being enacted. But it is a program. A political program, a legislative program. It is better than no program. And never say never.