Grossman’s commentary on Trump’s peace plan misreads both history and current events involving war in Ukraine

 

Grossman’s commentary on Trump’s peace plan misreads both history and current events involving war in Ukraine

 

Ron Grossman spent most of his Chicago Tribune ommentary “There are echoes of World War II in Donald Trump’s peace plan for Ukraine” comparing Trump’s peace plan for Ukraine with Neville Chamberlain’s 1938 peace plan for Czechoslovakia at Munich. But not only isn’t history repeating itself in Ukraine, it isn’t even, as Grossman alludes to, rhyming.  

 

No esteemed historian or political scientist would make that comparison. Alas, it’s the easy ‘go to’ argument for those seeking to keep the war in Ukraine raging till the last Ukrainian soldier is dead. That is the inevitable outcome if a sensible peace settlement is not quickly achieved. With Russia on the cusp of victory on the battlefield, Trump’s recognition of that reality should be supported, not denigrated.

 

The history Grossman should have provided was the 23 years of NATO encroachment to Russia’s borders beginning under Bill Clinton in 1999. Russia spent that entire time asking, begging, pleading with the US not to isolate, indeed threaten Russia by bringing NATO membership and NATO nukes to Russia’s borders. That was not Hitlerite aggression. It was endless, methodical diplomacy that was dismissed out of hand by an arrogant America under 5 presidents preceding Trump’s pivot to peace in term two.

 

Besides misreading history, Grossman appears oblivious that Ukraine is on the cusp of collapse with no prospects whatsoever of reversing their impending loss. Is he even aware that over 10 million Ukrainians have fled a Ukraine with a shattered economy, a million casualties, and rampant corruption that has convinced Trump to pull out? There is sound reason for Trump excluding Ukraine President Zelensky from the peace talks. Zelensky rejected Trump’s peace plan, demanding he must get back all lost territory that will forever be Russian, even demanding Crimea back lost 11 years ago. That is not statecraft. That is delusion.

 

History tells us the US and NATO provoked the 2022 Russian invasion, indeed made it inevitable after 23 years of failed Russian diplomacy. Current events tell us that Ukraine is defeated and loses more soldiers and more land every day it continues to press on to unachievable victory.

 

Walt Zlotow   West Suburban Peace Coalition,  Glen Ellyn IL

Maybe Hegseth should have stuck with drinking instead of sobriety induced murder in the Caribbean

Maybe Hegseth should have stuck with drinking instead of sobriety induced murder in the Caribbean

 

To get confirmed as Trump’s Secretary of Defense (War to Trump), Pete Hegseth had to swear off drinking, with which he clearly had a major problem. Senate Republicans believed his promise to abstain (no Democrat would vote to confirm such a reprehensible pick) and installed him as the 29^th Defense Secretary since its inception in 1947.

 

Alas, Hegseth’s career as an infantry officer in Afghanistan and Iraq, then as a talking head on military affairs for Fox News, ill prepared Pete to run our trillion dollar Defense Department which ostensibly is designed to promote peace, not war.

 

He’s absolutely ghoulish in his love of war. He re christened service members as “war fighters” and warned potential enemies about “FAFO” (Fuck Around and Find Out). He relished Trump’s directive to start obliterating small unarmed boats in the Caribbean off Venezuela. All this as he poured ships, planes and thousands of war fighters to prepare for the criminal invasion of Venezuela to topple hated socialist President Nicholas Maduro and steal Venezuela’s oil and other valuable resources.

 

Hegseth’s mass murder of 80 hapless souls on 20 little boats was largely ignored by our war loving Congress. But Hegseth committed an atrocity too heinous to ignore when he ordered his war fighters to murder 2 survivors clinging to the wreckage of Hegseth’s bombed boats. Congress’ conscience has awakened with cries of “murderer” and “war criminal” being hurled at a sitting US cabinet member for the first time in US history.

 

It’s too early to determine if Hegseth and his mentor in mass murder Donald Trump will face retribution for their grisly conduct. But if Hegseth really did kick drinking so he could rampage in the waters off Venezuela, he clearly made the wrong choice. He should have stuck with Jack Daniels instead of playing Pirate of the Caribbean.

 

Walt Zlotow  West Suburban Peace Coalition  Glen Ellyn IL

 

Substack.com/@waltzlotow

Will Trump/Hegseth war crimes obliterating small boats provoke Republicans to head off war with Venezuela?

Will Trump/Hegseth war crimes obliterating small boats provoke Republicans to head off war with Venezuela?

 

Last month 51 of 53 Republican senators voted to give Trump the green light to attack Venezuela. They voted down the bipartisan War Powers Resolution forbidding Trump’s planned criminal war to oust socialist president Nicholas Maduro. Trump wants a compliant US puppet to take over so the US can gobble up precious Venezuelan oil and other valuable resources.

 

Just 2 morally centered Republican senators, Rand Paul and Lisa Murkowski, voted with all 47 Democrats in their failed attempt to deter Trump’s dastardly planned invasion.

 

But the furor over Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s grisly order to murder 2 survivors of the September 1st boat attack brings forth a renewed bipartisan War Powers Resolution which will be voted upon within 10 days.

 

The outrage over Hegseth’s grotesque war crimes in the Caribbean off Venezuela may be too much for the 51 loyal Trump Republicans to again flash the green light for Trump’s illegal invasion. It would just take 2 more principled Republicans to deep six Trump’s near certain attack if not prevented by Congress.

 

The 52 year old War Powers Resolution Act has never been invoked to prevent war. If passed Trump could simply ignore it and start his lusted after war since no mechanism in the War Powers authority exists to stop him.

 

However, passing it provides political risk to Trump if he ignores it and blunders into senseless war that will likely kill US service persons. It might give pause to even the most reckless president in US history when it comes to unleashing death and destruction on peaceful nations and peoples posing no treat whatsoever to the Homeland.

 

Come on Republican senators. Vote for peace instead of senseless war in Venezuela. .

First strike on small, unarmed boat off Venezuela, not second, makes Trump and Hegseth war criminals

First strike on small, unarmed boat off Venezuela, not second, makes Trump and Hegseth war criminals

Some sensible US congresspersons, government officials, pundits and others are furious over reports Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered a second strike on a mysterious little boat off Venezuela September 2 that killed 2 hapless souls clinging to the US inflicted wreckage.

They correctly point out that bombing survivors of a wrecked boat is against the Pentagon’s own Law of War Manual. “Persons who have been rendered unconscious or otherwise incapacitated by wounds, sickness, or shipwreck, such that they are no longer capable of fighting, out of combat. “It would be dishonorable and inhumane to make them the object of attack.”

Hegseth initially denied there was a second bombing killing the survivors, invoking the Trumpian charge “fake news.” Under intense criticism Pete pivoted admitting it happened but only after he’d left the room following the first strike, giving him plausible deniability. Then, despicably, he blamed the fatal order on Adm. Frank M. Bradley, the commander of US Special Operations Command. Hegseth didn’t condemn Bradley for ordering the second strike. He praised him saying he’s “got his back.”

The second strike on survivors upset congressional Republicans and Democrats enough to consider investigating it as a possible war crime. What that implies is that the 22 boats sunk, killing over 80 unidentified soles is OK as long as the US does not bomb survivors clinging to the wreckage of America’s dastardly war crimes.

Hegseth, Trump and every officer involved in these strikes are war criminals. Every serviceman ordered to commit these dastardly crimes should refuse those orders. Recently 6 morally centered congresspersons publicly implored all service members to do just that, no doubt with the illegal Trump/Hegseth boat obliterations in mind. Trump’s response? Maybe these congresspersons should be executed.

Focusing on the murder of survivors clinging to wreckage detracts from the monumental war crimes Trump commits nearly every day of his presidency.

By providing the bombs that have killed over 100,000 Palestinians in Gaza, bombing Somalia over 100 times this year, bombing imaginary Iranian nuclear sites, and most recently sending 22 small unarmed boats with 83 innocents down to Davy Jones Locker, Trump and Hegseth deserve indictment and prosecution for directing the most murderous administration in America’s 250 years.

 Trump’s buried complicity in lost US proxy war against Russia

Trump boasted he’d end the war destroying Ukraine in one day if re-elected. He claimed it was all Biden’s war that Trump had nothing to do with. If only Trump had been reelected in 2020, he claims, there would have been no war gutting Ukraine as a functioning state with tens of millions fled, dead, deserted, injured. The US wouldn’t have squandered over $180 billion to achieve this dubious Biden achievement.   

Trump, like every world leader, gets to make history but not rewrite history. Joe Biden was president when Russia launched its Special Military Operation to liberate the Donbas Ukrainians from destruction by Kyiv and keep NATO missiles off Russia’s borders. Biden essentially triggered that totally unnecessary war now in the final stages of Ukraine’s collapse. Biden also sabotaged the peace deal nearly achieved two month in that would have ended the war with no new lost Ukrainian territory. 

That will get Biden history’s everlasting condemnation.   But Trump also deserves history’s condemnation for ramping up the conditions that led to war under successor Biden. During his first term from 2017 to 2021 Trump kept alive long standing US dream of bringing Ukraine into NATO, a red line Russia warned America not to cross for over a decade prior. Trump authorized repeated NATO military exercises in Ukraine, which effectively made Ukraine a de facto NATO member. Trump allowed new NATO bases in Poland and Romania, adding to Russian angst over NATO encroachment. Trump reversed a sensible Obama policy of not arming the Kyiv government to complete its destruction of Donbas Ukrainian separatists. In his 4 years Trump oversaw a fourfold increase of Kyiv military might.   Had Trump simply reversed senseless US expansion of NATO beginning under Bill Clinton in 1999, and forced Germany, France and UK to honor the Minsk Agreements granting regional autonomy to Donbas Ukrainians, Biden may not have had the conditions or momentum to provoke the February 2022 Russian invasion.   

Trump pretends he’s the White Knight bringing peace to a Ukraine wrecked solely by Biden’s perfidy. He should own up to his first term complicity and make peace to atone for his own sins destroying Ukraine as well as those of Joe Biden.

Walt Zlotow West Suburban Peace Coalition Glen Ellyn IL

substack.com/@waltzlotow