NATO support for the war in Ukraine, designed to degrade the Russian military and drive Vladimir Putin from power, is not going according to plan. The new sophisticated military hardware won't help.
The war was entirely intentional on the part of the United States.
The problem is the sunk cost of weapons, treasure and support, of whitewashing self-proclaimed Nazis and calling them freedom fighters, all that means that the West will continue to double down.
Or, as Senator Lindsey Graham put it, the United States will fight to the last Ukrainian rather than make peace.
The trans-migration caused by US imperialism and war is perhaps the greatest seen in the world, simply in sheer numbers.
Not just Ukraine, but all of Europe is in transit with Hungary seeing hundreds of thousand of its citizens leave due to fascist policies.
Poland already has suffered the ravages of war and forced migration. One might recall the “Polish plumbers”, who first fled last century to England and who were used as cheap labor for Trump’s casinos.
Europe has become a dumping ground for human beings fleeing planetary climate change and war.
Not only due immigrants, as we saw with the boat from Haiti last week turned back by the US, suffer from the degradation of an underground economy that most people would never recognize.
From coyotes and transport, to documents and work, this underground economy is one that is run by organized criminals who profit of human trafficking which is what is happening now in Ukraine.
I think it was Carlin who said, “Fighting for peace is like screwing for virginity.”
That Ukrainian citizens are being decimated is no surprise.
They have no chance of winning, as Chris and Scott Ritter have noted.
But the stock market and the military intelligence industrial complex have penetrated into every form of American life.
The entire staggering economic machine that is America rests on its pumping money into the military.
And this is also why the war rages on and will, awaiting that delayed and inept military machinery that the Ukrainians cannot even repair.
But it is the economic necessity of Military-Keynsianism, otherwise known as fascism, that has force-fed these monstruous military contractors, of which five are the biggest.
The head of the US Defense Dept. Austin sat on the board of Raytheon, merely one of the death merchants involved in Ukraine.
And although Taibbi revealed the Russiagate lies, his boss, Elon Musk and Space Link sends satellites to Ukraine and other military hardware, showing once again how these billionaire puppets manage perceptions at home while profiting off war abroad.
There is a fascinating book written in 2009 entitled: The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives (American Empire Project) by Nick Turse.
Turse sets the book within the lives of a family, Nick, Steve and their son.
Here is a short synopsis:
“Now in paperback, a stunning breakdown of the modern military-industrial complex―an omnipresent, hidden-in-plain-sight system of systems that penetrates all our lives.
From iPods to Starbucks to Oakley sunglasses, historian Nick Turse explores the Pentagon's little-noticed contacts (and contracts) with the products and companies that now form the fabric of America. He investigates the remarkable range of military incursions into the civilian world: the Pentagon's collaborations with Hollywood filmmakers; its outlandish schemes to weaponize the wild kingdom; its joint ventures with Marvel Comics and NASCAR. Similarly disturbing is the way in which the military, desperate for fresh recruits, has tapped into the "culture of cool" by making "friends" on MySpace.
A striking vision of this brave new world of remote-controlled rats and super-soldiers who need no sleep, The Complex will change our understanding of the militarization of America. We are a long way from Eisenhower's military-industrial complex: this is the essential book for understanding its twenty-first-century progeny.”
What Turse described 14 years ago was the militarization of everyday life: from products to identity.
America is weened on war, having had only 7 years of peace in its existence; and war underlies the economy and culture while violence rages.
The Levis and Disneyland have been replaced by the Khakis and mass murderers and killer cops.
The US is a war economy and has been for over a century.
Take a look at the spy culture that is America, its films, novels, culture, art and you will see the red stain of war.
The tragedy is that a war economy not only leads to war, it leads to fascism as war become intolerable in the form of austerity and loss of civil rights for those at home who subsidize it, be they European or American.
Chris, I wish you had been more even handed. I wouldn't dispute most of your points about America's military folly but loading them in the scale without giving the same treatment to Russia, and not giving credence to western and northern European responses to Russia's 2014 theft of Crimea and the blatant fact that they have been the military aggressors in Ukraine is unfair to your readers. The US did not coerce Sweden and Finland, two of the most socially wise and empathetic countries in the world, to ask for NATO membership. You and I know from experience that the only way to tame a bully is to resist (as did the Afghans, the Iraqis and our numerous other failures). Our country now is being ruined by fossil fuel interests and military contractors and spends an obscene amount on non-productive consumables. They are the enemy, our government is in their thrall thanks, largely to Citizens United. Fight the war against our enemies not our utterly prostrate and failed government. Please, be more even handed, it is obvious that Russia's bullying must be stopped.
It's a sickening feeling knowing the US government has channeled $113 billion for war in Ukraine, including the development of sophisticated tanks. I think about the Apollo 11 and For All Mankind documentaries and how extraordinary (and ordinary) people can create extraordinary things/events. Think what we could do for climate change, universal health care and the homeless, to name just a few issues.
Putin handed the war machine a huge gift by invading Ukraine. Now they can look forward to decades of profits keeping this cash cow flowing. The War Industry doesn't want victory, they want a long lasting stalemate which keeps the factories humming and the profits outrageous. But by pushing this agenda they risk nuclear war. Not since the Cuban Missile Crisis have we seen what is now brewing between nuclear superpowers.
It's impossible to not see this pattern of unending wars against so called " enemies" since the end of WW2 as what it really is . Eisenhower famously warned us about the unchecked power of the War Industry as he left office but he didn't do anything counteract its power while in office. By locating military bases and weapons factories in all 49 states the War Industry has unassailable political influence when it comes to weapons contracts that promise good paying jobs if politicians go along . And if they don't follow the playbook of the weapons manufacturers the threat of closing factories brings everybody around to the side of the weapons makers. Corporate welfare is bad but when it results in killing millions it is just plain evil.
Well-researched pieces like this are a key reason why I read Chris Hedges. Can the US governmental leadership please focus more attention on economic insecurity here at home, and on fending off pending global environmental collapse instead of adding potential nuclear war to the already grim equation?
Our military support for Ukraine is necessary and effective. However, if we just keep doing that without some effort in the UN and with Russia directly to make a political solution that will incentivize Russians to stop Czar Vladi from his return to older days and control of Eastern Europe, things could, indeed get worse, as they immediately would anyway, if we stop supporting the defense of Ukraine. The solution needs to be assertive and smart, not just giving in to the wannabe czar.
The U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff estimate of an equal number [100.000] of Ukrainians and Russians killed is a suspect one. The numbers commented on by Scott Ritter and Douglas Macgregor are far more asymmetrical in Russia's favour. In the battle of Kharkiv, though Ukrainian forces prevailed, according to Ritter the death ratio was 15 Ukrainians for every Russian killed. This may be the closest that the JCOS can come to admitting that fighting Russia to the last Ukrainian isn't working out as planned. The "best scenario," would seem to be a "victory" for Russia and a Ukraine reduced to a bombed out failed state, swarming with parasitic investors. But a deranged U.S. game of chicken with Russia [the most heavily nuclear armed nation] should be terrifying to everyone. When diplomacy, detente, or a cease fire have become verboten, it's certain that mad desperation and delusional hubris have taken hold of the antagonists. But most Americans probably remain ignorant of The Bulletin of Atomic Scientist's Doomsday Clock; recently moved to 90 seconds to midnight.
So, we should abandon Ukraine to it’s fate? Let Putin have it. Is that what you are saying Chris? There seems to be more involved here than the military industrial complex. There are obviously people in the Ukraine who want to have the kind of freedom and human rights that more democratic countries offer, and they will fight for that even as they are destroyed by yet another bully. I think most people might find it hard to stand around and watch though admittedly it happens all the time.
I would say that few know the history of the US alliance with fascists in Ukraine and the stay behind armies under Gladio in Ukraine specifically.
As long as you know that you are supporting Nazis, literally, The Right Party, C14, Azov etc. then you have concluded.
However the deeper you dig you find the fingerprints of Allan Dulles and the war hawks that lead right into the GOP.
Real Russ Bellant: New, Nazis old Nazis and see how Ukrainian exiles in the US, most fascists, were used by the Republican party to get Nixon elected.
The Hungarian National Cross is represented in the US by Sebastian Gorka who wore his grandfathers fascist colors on stage during Trump's presidential speech.
O.S.S. Document: U.S. Intelligence Planned on Using Stephan Bandera Against U.S.S.R. in 1946
"Stephan Bandera’s OUN/B by elements of U.S. intelligence to use as combatants against the Soviet Union. Having staffed SS and Gestapo ranks and participated in war crimes against Poles, Jews, Russians and other “racial undesirables,” this Third Reich ally conducted guerilla warfare against the Soviets until the early 1950’s.
Transitioning from Nazi Germany to the Office of Policy Coordination (a CIA/State Department operation administered by Frank Wisner), the OUN/B combatants essentially switched uniforms from the Third Reich to American intelligence.
A declassified document from the Office of Strategic Services–America’s World War II intelligence agency and the forerunner of the CIA–discloses that Bandera and his organization were targeted for recruitment in the immediate aftermath of World War II.
The document features discussion of Yaroslav Stetsko, the wartime leader of Ukraine whose Nazi puppet regime fulfilled the Reich’s ethnic cleansing doctrine with brutal thoroughness. In understanding the Ukraine crisis, the unbroken line of political succession from Stetsko/Bandera to the present should be borne in mind, as should the synthesis of U.S. covert operations and the GOP, specifically the Crusade For Freedom.
An illegal domestic covert operation, the CFF brought Nazi allies such as the OUN/B, the Croatian Ustachi, the Romanian Iron Guard, the Hungarian Arrow Cross, the Bulgarian National Front and others into the United States in order to drive the political spectrum to the right.
As of 1952, the CFF became inextricably linked with the GOP, with Arthur Bliss Lane playing a key role in the GOP’s 1952 campaign, as well as being centrally involved in the CFF. The CFF spawned the GOP’s ethnic outreach organization, which was able to deliver the swing vote in five key states in Presidential election years. It eventually became a permanent part of the GOP."
Ever increasing budgets for war are approved without the teeth-gnashing and hand-wringing that accompany any proposal to provide assistance to average citizens. We cannot afford a host of critical social needs unless they are revenue neutral or are offset by spending cuts in other areas (usually Social Security and Medicare), but war spending is automatic. Debate not required. Dissent not allowed. It's madness.
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing again and again — despite the FACT that it doesn’t WORK (for shit).
This insane repeated action, IMHO, is what is happening in the insane and unproductive DIVISION of ‘Issues’ and ‘contributed begging for MONEY’ — which is the exact opposite of employing the “Strategic Advantage” [Michael Porter HBS] of focusing ‘like an effin laser’ on one single winning Strategic Factor — calling it out, and clearly targeting it against all the varied little issues and minuscule money we have.
You can’t beat Money with less Money. And you can’t beat Focus with a shit load of hundreds of distractive little ‘issues’.
WAKE TF-up to a winning strategy.
Call-out one single thing as being the cancerous cause of all these distracting and divided little ‘Issues’ and lack of money, advertising, and power — then Strategically focus on the EMPIRE that is the cancer in “The Quiet American EMPIRE” — which hides behind it’s soft, advertising, propaganda Vichy facade.
Given the recent discusson on this substack about "Bowling Alone" and individual suicide, it's interesting to watch a nation, the U.S., commit suicide. Not having won a war since WWII, and from the exit without honor from Vietnam to the ignoble exit from Afghanistan, one would think the U.S. could take a hint. Apparently, not. I shall buy popcorn in anticipation of watching this fiasco on tv---and hope I live to see it thru to the end.
The war was entirely intentional on the part of the United States.
The problem is the sunk cost of weapons, treasure and support, of whitewashing self-proclaimed Nazis and calling them freedom fighters, all that means that the West will continue to double down.
Or, as Senator Lindsey Graham put it, the United States will fight to the last Ukrainian rather than make peace.
We need Chris' voice , with his unfailing integrity I return to his writing when the insanity of American imperialism feels overwhelming.
The trans-migration caused by US imperialism and war is perhaps the greatest seen in the world, simply in sheer numbers.
Not just Ukraine, but all of Europe is in transit with Hungary seeing hundreds of thousand of its citizens leave due to fascist policies.
Poland already has suffered the ravages of war and forced migration. One might recall the “Polish plumbers”, who first fled last century to England and who were used as cheap labor for Trump’s casinos.
Europe has become a dumping ground for human beings fleeing planetary climate change and war.
Not only due immigrants, as we saw with the boat from Haiti last week turned back by the US, suffer from the degradation of an underground economy that most people would never recognize.
From coyotes and transport, to documents and work, this underground economy is one that is run by organized criminals who profit of human trafficking which is what is happening now in Ukraine.
I think it was Carlin who said, “Fighting for peace is like screwing for virginity.”
That Ukrainian citizens are being decimated is no surprise.
They have no chance of winning, as Chris and Scott Ritter have noted.
But the stock market and the military intelligence industrial complex have penetrated into every form of American life.
The entire staggering economic machine that is America rests on its pumping money into the military.
And this is also why the war rages on and will, awaiting that delayed and inept military machinery that the Ukrainians cannot even repair.
But it is the economic necessity of Military-Keynsianism, otherwise known as fascism, that has force-fed these monstruous military contractors, of which five are the biggest.
The head of the US Defense Dept. Austin sat on the board of Raytheon, merely one of the death merchants involved in Ukraine.
And although Taibbi revealed the Russiagate lies, his boss, Elon Musk and Space Link sends satellites to Ukraine and other military hardware, showing once again how these billionaire puppets manage perceptions at home while profiting off war abroad.
There is a fascinating book written in 2009 entitled: The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives (American Empire Project) by Nick Turse.
Turse sets the book within the lives of a family, Nick, Steve and their son.
Here is a short synopsis:
“Now in paperback, a stunning breakdown of the modern military-industrial complex―an omnipresent, hidden-in-plain-sight system of systems that penetrates all our lives.
From iPods to Starbucks to Oakley sunglasses, historian Nick Turse explores the Pentagon's little-noticed contacts (and contracts) with the products and companies that now form the fabric of America. He investigates the remarkable range of military incursions into the civilian world: the Pentagon's collaborations with Hollywood filmmakers; its outlandish schemes to weaponize the wild kingdom; its joint ventures with Marvel Comics and NASCAR. Similarly disturbing is the way in which the military, desperate for fresh recruits, has tapped into the "culture of cool" by making "friends" on MySpace.
A striking vision of this brave new world of remote-controlled rats and super-soldiers who need no sleep, The Complex will change our understanding of the militarization of America. We are a long way from Eisenhower's military-industrial complex: this is the essential book for understanding its twenty-first-century progeny.”
https://www.amazon.com/Complex-Military-Invades-Everyday-American/dp/0805089195
What Turse described 14 years ago was the militarization of everyday life: from products to identity.
America is weened on war, having had only 7 years of peace in its existence; and war underlies the economy and culture while violence rages.
The Levis and Disneyland have been replaced by the Khakis and mass murderers and killer cops.
The US is a war economy and has been for over a century.
Take a look at the spy culture that is America, its films, novels, culture, art and you will see the red stain of war.
The tragedy is that a war economy not only leads to war, it leads to fascism as war become intolerable in the form of austerity and loss of civil rights for those at home who subsidize it, be they European or American.
Chris, I wish you had been more even handed. I wouldn't dispute most of your points about America's military folly but loading them in the scale without giving the same treatment to Russia, and not giving credence to western and northern European responses to Russia's 2014 theft of Crimea and the blatant fact that they have been the military aggressors in Ukraine is unfair to your readers. The US did not coerce Sweden and Finland, two of the most socially wise and empathetic countries in the world, to ask for NATO membership. You and I know from experience that the only way to tame a bully is to resist (as did the Afghans, the Iraqis and our numerous other failures). Our country now is being ruined by fossil fuel interests and military contractors and spends an obscene amount on non-productive consumables. They are the enemy, our government is in their thrall thanks, largely to Citizens United. Fight the war against our enemies not our utterly prostrate and failed government. Please, be more even handed, it is obvious that Russia's bullying must be stopped.
It's a sickening feeling knowing the US government has channeled $113 billion for war in Ukraine, including the development of sophisticated tanks. I think about the Apollo 11 and For All Mankind documentaries and how extraordinary (and ordinary) people can create extraordinary things/events. Think what we could do for climate change, universal health care and the homeless, to name just a few issues.
Putin handed the war machine a huge gift by invading Ukraine. Now they can look forward to decades of profits keeping this cash cow flowing. The War Industry doesn't want victory, they want a long lasting stalemate which keeps the factories humming and the profits outrageous. But by pushing this agenda they risk nuclear war. Not since the Cuban Missile Crisis have we seen what is now brewing between nuclear superpowers.
It's impossible to not see this pattern of unending wars against so called " enemies" since the end of WW2 as what it really is . Eisenhower famously warned us about the unchecked power of the War Industry as he left office but he didn't do anything counteract its power while in office. By locating military bases and weapons factories in all 49 states the War Industry has unassailable political influence when it comes to weapons contracts that promise good paying jobs if politicians go along . And if they don't follow the playbook of the weapons manufacturers the threat of closing factories brings everybody around to the side of the weapons makers. Corporate welfare is bad but when it results in killing millions it is just plain evil.
Well-researched pieces like this are a key reason why I read Chris Hedges. Can the US governmental leadership please focus more attention on economic insecurity here at home, and on fending off pending global environmental collapse instead of adding potential nuclear war to the already grim equation?
Our military support for Ukraine is necessary and effective. However, if we just keep doing that without some effort in the UN and with Russia directly to make a political solution that will incentivize Russians to stop Czar Vladi from his return to older days and control of Eastern Europe, things could, indeed get worse, as they immediately would anyway, if we stop supporting the defense of Ukraine. The solution needs to be assertive and smart, not just giving in to the wannabe czar.
The U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff estimate of an equal number [100.000] of Ukrainians and Russians killed is a suspect one. The numbers commented on by Scott Ritter and Douglas Macgregor are far more asymmetrical in Russia's favour. In the battle of Kharkiv, though Ukrainian forces prevailed, according to Ritter the death ratio was 15 Ukrainians for every Russian killed. This may be the closest that the JCOS can come to admitting that fighting Russia to the last Ukrainian isn't working out as planned. The "best scenario," would seem to be a "victory" for Russia and a Ukraine reduced to a bombed out failed state, swarming with parasitic investors. But a deranged U.S. game of chicken with Russia [the most heavily nuclear armed nation] should be terrifying to everyone. When diplomacy, detente, or a cease fire have become verboten, it's certain that mad desperation and delusional hubris have taken hold of the antagonists. But most Americans probably remain ignorant of The Bulletin of Atomic Scientist's Doomsday Clock; recently moved to 90 seconds to midnight.
,
Mr. Fish, is a genus. After Caravaggio, he is my favorite artist.
So, we should abandon Ukraine to it’s fate? Let Putin have it. Is that what you are saying Chris? There seems to be more involved here than the military industrial complex. There are obviously people in the Ukraine who want to have the kind of freedom and human rights that more democratic countries offer, and they will fight for that even as they are destroyed by yet another bully. I think most people might find it hard to stand around and watch though admittedly it happens all the time.
I would say that few know the history of the US alliance with fascists in Ukraine and the stay behind armies under Gladio in Ukraine specifically.
As long as you know that you are supporting Nazis, literally, The Right Party, C14, Azov etc. then you have concluded.
However the deeper you dig you find the fingerprints of Allan Dulles and the war hawks that lead right into the GOP.
Real Russ Bellant: New, Nazis old Nazis and see how Ukrainian exiles in the US, most fascists, were used by the Republican party to get Nixon elected.
The Hungarian National Cross is represented in the US by Sebastian Gorka who wore his grandfathers fascist colors on stage during Trump's presidential speech.
O.S.S. Document: U.S. Intelligence Planned on Using Stephan Bandera Against U.S.S.R. in 1946
"Stephan Bandera’s OUN/B by elements of U.S. intelligence to use as combatants against the Soviet Union. Having staffed SS and Gestapo ranks and participated in war crimes against Poles, Jews, Russians and other “racial undesirables,” this Third Reich ally conducted guerilla warfare against the Soviets until the early 1950’s.
Transitioning from Nazi Germany to the Office of Policy Coordination (a CIA/State Department operation administered by Frank Wisner), the OUN/B combatants essentially switched uniforms from the Third Reich to American intelligence.
A declassified document from the Office of Strategic Services–America’s World War II intelligence agency and the forerunner of the CIA–discloses that Bandera and his organization were targeted for recruitment in the immediate aftermath of World War II.
The document features discussion of Yaroslav Stetsko, the wartime leader of Ukraine whose Nazi puppet regime fulfilled the Reich’s ethnic cleansing doctrine with brutal thoroughness. In understanding the Ukraine crisis, the unbroken line of political succession from Stetsko/Bandera to the present should be borne in mind, as should the synthesis of U.S. covert operations and the GOP, specifically the Crusade For Freedom.
An illegal domestic covert operation, the CFF brought Nazi allies such as the OUN/B, the Croatian Ustachi, the Romanian Iron Guard, the Hungarian Arrow Cross, the Bulgarian National Front and others into the United States in order to drive the political spectrum to the right.
As of 1952, the CFF became inextricably linked with the GOP, with Arthur Bliss Lane playing a key role in the GOP’s 1952 campaign, as well as being centrally involved in the CFF. The CFF spawned the GOP’s ethnic outreach organization, which was able to deliver the swing vote in five key states in Presidential election years. It eventually became a permanent part of the GOP."
https://spitfirelist.com/news/o-s-s-document-u-s-intelligence-planned-on-using-stephan-bandera-against-u-s-s-r-in-1946/
You can read more at: The Gipper and the Underground Reich
https://spitfirelist.com/for-the-record/ftr-465-the-gipper-and-the-underground-reich/
The UC(orporate)SA is provocateur to its core, until hell freezes over, only to die fighting over possession, rule, and control of the ice.
Ever increasing budgets for war are approved without the teeth-gnashing and hand-wringing that accompany any proposal to provide assistance to average citizens. We cannot afford a host of critical social needs unless they are revenue neutral or are offset by spending cuts in other areas (usually Social Security and Medicare), but war spending is automatic. Debate not required. Dissent not allowed. It's madness.
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing again and again — despite the FACT that it doesn’t WORK (for shit).
This insane repeated action, IMHO, is what is happening in the insane and unproductive DIVISION of ‘Issues’ and ‘contributed begging for MONEY’ — which is the exact opposite of employing the “Strategic Advantage” [Michael Porter HBS] of focusing ‘like an effin laser’ on one single winning Strategic Factor — calling it out, and clearly targeting it against all the varied little issues and minuscule money we have.
You can’t beat Money with less Money. And you can’t beat Focus with a shit load of hundreds of distractive little ‘issues’.
WAKE TF-up to a winning strategy.
Call-out one single thing as being the cancerous cause of all these distracting and divided little ‘Issues’ and lack of money, advertising, and power — then Strategically focus on the EMPIRE that is the cancer in “The Quiet American EMPIRE” — which hides behind it’s soft, advertising, propaganda Vichy facade.
Given the recent discusson on this substack about "Bowling Alone" and individual suicide, it's interesting to watch a nation, the U.S., commit suicide. Not having won a war since WWII, and from the exit without honor from Vietnam to the ignoble exit from Afghanistan, one would think the U.S. could take a hint. Apparently, not. I shall buy popcorn in anticipation of watching this fiasco on tv---and hope I live to see it thru to the end.