By Frank Wright
Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh warns of political repercussions for the Biden administration’s handling of the international crises in Europe and the Middle East.
To get to the news these days, you have to look beyond the facade of mainstream media. No major outlet in the West has reported the findings of Seymour Hersh, made in a post on Substack on March 21, which claim that the United States government is determined to prevent peace in Ukraine.
Citing an anonymous “American official,” Hersh wrote “officials of the Biden administration, working with [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelensky, continue to rebuff any chances of significant progress in peace talks.” Referring to his earlier report, which documented ongoing talks between the U.S. and Russia, Hersh says his source is “kept abreast” of this dialogue concerning a negotiated settlement to the war in Ukraine. According to the unnamed mole, peace was within reach, and the U.S. moved to prevent it with a threat to turn off the money supply to Ukraine.
We were on the verge of a reasonable negotiation several months ago before Putin’s re-election and Zelensky’s military degradation.
The U.S. leaders got wind of the possibility and gave Zelensky the ultimatum – ‘No negotiations or settlement or we won’t support your government with the $45 billion in non-military funds.’
This is the amount that Ukraine receives now, aside from military aid, to support its government. Without it, Zelensky’s regime would collapse. This was an ultimatum – but why did the U.S. issue it? The source explained:
Biden has staked his presidency on meeting the Russian threat to NATO and outsmarting the monster, and he will not change course now, under any circumstances, and the end is inevitable.
Does this end justify the means? The source gave a sobering assessment of the Biden administration’s willingness to risk a war with Russia, to save face at home: “There is no road to victory for Ukraine, and it will end with Putin as an historical icon in Russia, having recovered a national jewel [Kharkov] from the West.”
What Russia has gained, it is going to keep, said the source. “The reality,” he said, is “that the lands in dispute” – four oblasts formerly in Ukraine’s control and Crimea – “from north to south and east to west all are Russia’s. So stop talking about it and make a deal.”
This may be news to many “news-believers” in the subject nations of the U.S. Empire, but it is well known in government circles. Aside from Hersh’s report, a grim assessment that “Ukraine could fall very quickly” is reported to have fueled French President Emmanuel Macron’s recent outbursts, which saw him threaten to send French troops to fight Russia.
Panic in the EU
Macron is reported by Politico to have made that remark at a dinner in Paris on Tuesday, March 19. It followed leaks from French intelligence which said Ukraine could not win the war, was running out of men to conscript, and that the French army were “majorettes” compared to that of the Russians.
Germany and other EU nations were quick to distance themselves from Macron’s rhetoric, fearing the direct entry of NATO troops into Ukraine could lead to a nuclear war.
Even Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba downplayed the suggestion, saying Macron’s words were “misinterpreted” by EU leaders who “panicked” over his talk of sending troops to Ukraine.
Added to this picture, again largely excluded from the news, is the obvious fact that the sanctions intended to weaken Russia have backfired. In reality, the one beyond the official narrative, the actions of the Biden administration have been a catastrophic failure.
“This is the world the Biden administration fostered,” says Hersh, quoting an Economist report that shows how Russia has not only weathered the storm of sanctions, but has in the process emerged a champion of a strengthening system, parallel to that controlled by the U.S.
According to The Economist on March 14:
Russia’s economy has been re-engineered. Oil exports bypass sanctions and are shipped to the global south. Western brands from BMW to H&M have been replaced with Chinese and local substitutes… Dissent at home has been strangled.
This last line could apply equally to the situation in the West, whose propaganda apparatus overmatches anything seen in the Soviet Union. Our “hypernormalization” – the state of unreality created by state propaganda – differs in one other important regard. Toward the end, most of the people in the Soviet Union knew their government was lying to them.
Biden, Trump, and the end times
Hersh claims that the predicament created by the Biden administration will likely see its undoing in the next election.
“Its refusal to seek a middle ground in the Ukraine war, along with its inability to check Israel’s continued assault in Gaza, will become a political liability in Biden’s campaign against Donald Trump, who warns of unending violence if he loses the presidential election in November.”
Trump’s own remarks on Israel have caused much concern amongst those convinced of his pledge to “end the forever wars” – a vow he repeated on the campaign trail in January.
Yet his ambiguity on Israel has seen him criticized by Jewish groups, as PBS reported on March 22.
Trump’s stance on both Israel and Ukraine – that neither war would have happened had he been president – is shaded by moves to appease the over 30 million Christian Zionists who PBS says lie at the core of his support. PBS said of Trump’s previous tenure:
Trump pursued policies that were popular among American Christian Zionists and Israeli religious-nationalists, including moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem and supporting Jewish settlements in occupied territories.
PBS also noted his family connections to the Jewish community:
His daughter Ivanka is a convert to Orthodox Judaism, and her husband and their children are Jewish. The couple worked as high-profile surrogates to the Jewish community during Trump’s administration.
Finally, the report touched on the evangelical Zionists:
Trump’s core supporters include white evangelicals, many of whom believe the modern state of Israel fulfills biblical prophecy. Prominent evangelicals who support Zionism have also been criticized for inflammatory statements about Jewish people.
This huge constituency includes many Christian Zionists who support the Armageddonist notion of ushering in the “Jewish Messiah” – through the sacrifice of red heifers and the rebuilding of the Jewish Third Temple on the site of the Al-Aqsa mosque.
This process is underway, with five red heifers arriving in Israel in September 2022, expedited by U.S. Zionist Christian group Boneh Israel, and a large altar was constructed in Jerusalem to perform the diabolical ritual to usher in “the End Times.”
CBS News reported from the site on March 5, 2024.
Beyond the end?
With the sitting president mired in a disaster of his own making, and his successor with ties to a group dedicated to sparking Armageddon, the story beyond the mainstream media is all about the end times. The end of the Biden administration, the end of the war in Ukraine, and perhaps the end of the world if the factions of insanity succeed in provoking an escalating war with Russia or in the Middle East.
Hersh’s article ends with what could read as the epitaph for the one-term wonder Joe Biden.
The best that Biden has come up with is continued, if so far empty, talk about a ceasefire in Gaza, and a commitment that no American soldiers will be sent to the front in Ukraine.
The president also promises that the United States will keep on paying for Ukrainians to fight and die in a proxy war that could be ended.
Added to this is the fact that the Biden administration continues to supply Israel with military hardware, without which it could not continue its war. As retired Israeli Major General Yitzhak Brik said of the U.S. in November, “The minute they turn off the tap you can’t keep fighting. You have no capability… Everyone understands we can’t fight this war without the United States.”
Brik has returned with an assessment of Israel’s war which dovetails with that provided by Hersh on Ukraine. It has been a defeat, both in military and in diplomatic terms.
“We have already lost the war with Hamas, and we are also losing our allies in the world at a dizzying pace Brik said to Israeli news outlet Ma’ariv, on March 24.
The realization is growing that the current model of U.S. power is determined to prevent the outbreak of peace. With little promise in the White House but more of the same, the hope is that in November, this will change. Yet, here are forces at work which would prefer that the end times come for us all.
What is needed is a clear statement on the future of Ukraine, of relations with Russia and the state of Israel from a man who once promised he could stop it all. We have a leaderless U.S. in the thrall of an election cycle. Instead of resignation to the end times, we need to hear some serious talk about what comes next. Our future depends upon an alternative to business as usual.
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