A worthy 911 remembrance

 A worthy 911 remembrance 

On the 25th 911 anniversary we should also ponder victims and cost of America's War on Terror designed and implemented to reshape the Middle East in America's image in response to and revenge for the attacks. 

Estimates from the Brown University Costs of War project place the toll at 4.5–4.7 million people since 2001, including ~940,000 direct deaths (combatants, civilians, journalists, aid workers) and 3.6–3.8 million indirect deaths from disease, malnutrition, and health complications 

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U.S. military and contractor deaths: About 7,074 U.S. military deaths and 8,189 contractor deaths 

Costs according to warcosts.org

Total cost: $8+ trillion since 2001

Breakdown:

Direct military operations: ~$3.2 trillion.

Pentagon budget increases: ~$1.8 trillion.

Veterans care (projected through 2050+): ~$2.2 trillion.

Homeland Security expansion: ~$1.1 trillion.

Interest on war debt: ~$1.1 trillion

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On 911 Remembrance Day Americans should urge their government to turn away from senseless war whether it be against Iran, Venezuela, Somalia, Yemen, Nigeria, Cuba, little unarmed boats plying the Caribbean or other locals we're not informed of. That would be a noble way to honor the victims of the senseless violence perpetrated on America 25 years ago today. 

Walt Zlotow  West Suburban Peace Coalition  Glen Ellyn IL

Trump off by one election when gas will come down

 Trump off by one election when gas will come down

Facing defeat at the midterms in 54 days, Trump tried to reassure his MAGA baase to maintain his control of Congress. ‘Just vote R November 3 and gas prices will plumet below $2 per gallon right after the election.’

Of course that was simply Trump delusional nonsense. He lost the Iran war in the first week over 6 months ago but is still claiming victory while gas and everything else Americans buy keeps rising.

He has no way out and he knows it. So he falls back on the lesson he learned from his corrupt lawyer Roy Cohn decades ago…deny reality and lie, lie, lie.

Since Trump cannot admit defeat to reopen the Strait of Hormuz on Iran’s sensible terms, oil will remain blocked and inflation will rise indefinitely. After the midterms, Trump will still be prosecuting his lost war on Iran and making up new imaginary tales of impending victory and imminent drop in gas prices.

Unless an unexpected event occurs such as a health crisis that forces Trump from office, the Iran war will remain lost, the Strait will remain closed, oil will remain blocked.

Worst case scenario? Gas prices will not recede till after the 2028 election when, hopefully, a sane peace supporting president is electied who will end the Iran war madness of Donald J. Trump upon inauguration in January, 2029.

Walt Zlotow West Suburban Peace Coalition Glen Ellyn IL

US to NATO: Keep buying US weapons for lost Ukraine war…it gooses our economy

 US to NATO: Keep buying US weapons for lost Ukraine war…it gooses our economy

If there was a Nobel Prize for the most most cynical foreign posicy among the world’s 193 countries, the US would win weapons down.


Under Secretary of War Elbridge Colby just told European NATO countries to keep buying US weapos to keep Ukraine being destroyed in their lost war with Riussia.



“The situation makes it all the more important for Europe to sustain support for Ukraine while also accelerating its own rearmament and reindustrialization. First, Europe must continue — and where necessary increase — support for Ukraine’s immediate battlefield requirements through Prioritized Ukraine Requirements List (PURL). The continued flow of munitions and critical capabilities is effective; it remains essential to enabling Ukrainian forces to hold the front line and deny further Russian advances. Second, Europe must plan now for sustained procurement that supports both Ukraine’s long-term force reconstitution and Europe’s own defense requirements." Colby omitted that NATO weapons purchases fit neatly into US economic policy.


But not one weapon will be supplied by the US. They must all be purchased by NATO countries struggling with their declining economies due in large part by squandering tens of billion of Euros on Ukaine sinking deeping into failed state status. The fact Ukraine has suffered over over two million causualties and lost a fifth of their land forever means nothing to Colby and his bosses War Secretary Pete Hegseth and President Trump. All they care about is how those billions in weapons sales will help salvage the declining US economy from Trump and Hegseth’s failed Iran war debacle ahead of the approaching November 3 midterms.


Trump has been lusting for a Nobel Peace Prize since hie took office in January 2017. He’s been tirelessly promoting his candidacy claiming he’s ended 8 wars when he’s ended none while waging war on Iran, Venezuela, Yemen, Somalia, Nigeria and any small boat in the Caribbean he claims is carrying drugs.


Yep, the Nobel Committee should consider awarding a Nobel Cynical Foreign Policy Prize. Donald Trump, on behalf of the United States would be selected unanimously.

Walt Zlotow West Suburban Peace Coalition Glen Ellyn IL

Democrats playing politics with Trump’s Iran war while ignoring it’s a supreme international crime

Democrats playing politics with Trump’s Iran war while ignoring it’s a supreme international crime

 

Democratic congresspersons and candidates are all in criticizing President Trump’s Iran war.

 

‘It’s a foolish war with no end in sight. ’It’s driving up the cost of driving and everything we buy at the store.’ It’s opposed by an overwhelming majority of the American people.’ ‘It was not authorized by Congress as required by the Constitution.’

 

While all true, Democrats are fixated on exploiting Trump’s clearly lost war that has backfired spectacularly, to take over Congress at the November 3 election. What we do not hear from Democrats is the most important criticism that must be leveled at Trump’s deranged February 28 attack on Iran. It is a criminal war that is rightly being defended to the death by Iran posing no threat to America whatsoever.

 

Not one of the 259 Democratic congresspersons and a single Democratic congressional candidate is following the mandate of Nuremberg War Crime Trial Chief Prosecutor Robert Jackson. He issued the mandate that the trial was to establish that unlawful war was the supreme international crime from which every death, injury, destruction of property emanated from that supreme international crime. Jackson stated that while the law set forth in the Kellogg Briand Pact of 1928 was first being applied to Nazi war criminals, “the law includes, and if it is to serve a useful purpose, it must condemn aggression by any other nations including those who sit here now in judgement. The real complaining party at your bar is Civilization.”  

 

"Those sitting here now in judgement", Democrats, includes the United States. You must condemn Presidient Trump’s endless war on Iran which has killed and injured thousands first, as the criminal war it is requiring immediate end, and second, prosecution of Trump and his war counsel for war crimes. Everything Democrats offered till now is politics.

Walt Zlotow  West Suburban Peace Coalition  Glen Ellyn IL 

Some inconvenient truths about Trum'p's Iran war

Some inconvenient truths about Trump's Iran war

The US lost the war within the first 3 days when the US, Israeli attack and assassination of Iranian leader Ali Khomenei did not collapse the Iranian regime

Bombing Iran for 39 days was a catastrophic military failure. Iran's retaliatory defense decimated all 20 US Gulf State bases inflicting over 750 US casualties including 18 dead

Running out of both offensive and defensive missiles, Trump blinked first and called for a ceasefire on April 8, war day 40. 

The June 17th signing of the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) was essentially a US surrender document. 

Realizing the MOU signaled his defeat, Trump simply ignored it, implemented a blockade and resumed periodic bombing. Both utterly failed to reopen the Strait of Hormuz to resume the critical flow of oil to prevent worldwide economic calamity.

Having been sucker punched with bombs twice by Trump during negotiations, Iran has signaled it will never negotiate with Trump during his remaining 2 years, 5 months in office. 

Trump's statements that Iran is negotiating surrender on Trump's terms, the Strait is open and will become US territory, the blockade is a resounding success, are so detached from reality one must ponder Trump's sanity. 

Refusal to capitulate is spreading the war within the region to Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, West Bank, Iraq, Syria, possibly even Turkey v. Israel. 

If Trump's last gasp is to utterly destroy Iranian infrastructure, Iran will retaliate and destroy the entire Gulf States oil infrastructure and possibly Israel's infrastructure as well.  

Unlike for the US, Trump's war is an existential threat to Iran's existence. They have been preparing for the US, Israeli tag team war machine to destroy them for decades. They are and will prevail regardless of the cost. 

Israel will do whatever is necessary to to keep Trump in the war to destroy Iran. Trump's only way out is to sever ties with Israel and capitulate to Iran's sensible terms. Given Trump's history, the chances of that are nil. Removing Republican control of Congress in 9 weeks may be only chance for America to avoid economic collapse.

If so, only if a Democratic Congress has the wisdom, decency and good sense to end the most self destructive war in America's 251 years. 

Walt Zlotow  West Suburban Peace Coalition  Glen Ellyn IL 

Trump first president in Ameria's 251 years to preside over 2 lost wars

Trump first president in Ameria's 251 years to preside over 2 lost wars

President Trump loves to brag he ended 8 wars. The truth is a tad darker. He presiding over the lost US proxy war in Ukraine to destroy Russia. At the same time he's presiding over the lost war to destroy Iran in the Middle East on behalf of Israel.

Trump didn't start the Ukraine war. He correctly blamed predecessor Joe Biden for provoking it on his watch in February 2022. Said it wouldn't have occurred if Biden hadn't stolen the 2020 election from him. That's a wild claim as Trump spent the preceding term arming Ukraine to smash the Ukrainian separatists in Donbas and promote NATO membership for Ukraine. Both actions were instrumental in Russia's eventual invasion under Biden. 

When reelected in 2024, Trump boasted he'd end the war on day one of his second term. Five hundred, eighty days on Ukraine is a mere rump state largely land locked and near collapse. Trump has done nothing to end Ukraine's impending defeat. Just the opposite. He's still supporting Ukraine with intelligence to fire missiles and drones into Russia having no strategic promoting victory whatsoever. He's still selling weapons to NATO to gift Ukraine in their futile effort to stay in the fight. 

Trump impending defeat in the Iran war is even more catastrophic. This war is all on Trump. He made the biggest foreign policy blunder in US history by believing Israeli war whisperer Benjamin Netanyahu that Iran would collapse within a couple of days if only Trump would assassinate Iran's supreme leader Ali Khamenei. 

That two day victory expectation has turned into a six month catastrophe, not only for the US military, but possibly also for the world economy unless Trump admits defeat and settles on Iran's sensible terms. 

Two wars, one Trump helped facilitate in his first term, then prolonged in his second term into certain defeat. The second he started all by his demented self whose dire consequences have yet to be sorted out. 

Trump's two lost wars in term two...a dubious presidential achievement, unprecedented and likely never to be repeated or topped in US history. 

NATO letting Ukriane die, not by a thousand cuts...but by a thousand drones

NATO letting Ukraine die, not by a thousand cuts...but by a thousand drones

The thousands drones NATO is squandering their desperately needed treasure on to give Ukraine to fire wildly into Russia have backfired spectacularly. 

The drones have no strategic value on Ukraine's war prospects. The are mere pinpricks having no effect on the inevitable Russian victory on the battlefield. But they have enraged the Russian populous and leadership to ramp up the destruction of Ukraine's economy and infrastructure which will speed up Ukraine's collapse. 

Foremost in this campaign in closing off Ukraine's access to the Black Sea and other ports greatly shutting down vital exports and imports, the lifeblood of the Ukraine economy. Energy facilities thruout Ukraine are being targeted in daily attacks that unlike Ukraine's scattershot drone strikes, strategically cripple Ukraine life. Ukraine has no defensive missiles to shoot down incoming Russian drones and missiles with none forthcoming from either Europe or the US. 

Virtually none of this gets reported in Western media. Most reporting touts NATO supplied Ukrainian drone strikes on Russia as evidence Ukraine is still in the fight. Utter nonsense. 

NATO leaders brag how they're bringing the war home to Russia and that Ukraine can prevail. They are locked into a a long history of Russophobia they cannot not shake regardless of how their war support is hurting their economies and alienating their constituencies. Their facing a lost cause in Ukraine, bankruptcy at home and electoral defeat. 

The UK's Keir Starmer has already been pushed out. But his successor Andy Burnham hasn't got the clear message. After Russia's Putin warned the UK of consequences for Britain providing Ukraine with drones fired into Russia, Burnham replied "London will continue to support Ukraine 100%. We are not fair-weather friends, we will be there in Ukraine's hour of need and that won't change."

Neither the UK's Burnham, France's Macron nor Germany's Merz are friends of Ukraine, fair- weather or otherwise. They've spent the last 12 years promoting war between Ukraine and Russia that has left Ukraine a shell of its former self.

How? By supporting the 2014 coup that ousted Russian leaning Ukraine President Victory Yanukovych. By promoting the Minsk I and II Accords in 2014 and 2015 that lulled Russia into believing NATO was going to provide regional autonomy for Russian leaning Donbas Ukrainians when it was simply a ruse to build up Ukrainian forces to crush the Donbas Ukrainians. By conspiring with the US to goad Russia into invading Ukraine in February 2022 by refusing to address Russia's valid security concerns regarding NATO expansion to Russia's borders in Ukraine. 

And when Ukraine does collapse, possibly  as early as this year, NATO countries will be left with nothing to show but greatly weakened economies and inroads from right wing governments sick of squandering critically needed domestic treasure on senseless, lost foreign causes. NATO leaders can ponder forever their descent into madness that destroyed Ukraine for nothing but their hatred for Russia.  

Trump's Iranian Roulette: Whose regime will collapse first, Iran's or America's?

Trump's Iranian Roulette: Whose regime will collapse first, Iran's or America's? 

Having suffered a catastrophic military defeat in his 39 day bombing war on Iran from February 29 thru April 7, Trump has pivoted to economic warfare to collapse the Iranian regime on behalf of Israel. But all out economic warfare keeps the Strait of Hormuz closed to most oil and other critical resources, guaranteeing that gasoline and everything fossil fuel based in America will rise to unacceptable levels to an American public near totally against Trump's senseless, lost war. 

Iran may be suffering economically much worse than America now, but that matters little for the likely outcome. Iran's 90 million people will resist Trump's Operation Economic Fury as the existential threat to their existence it represents regardless of cost. America's 340 million people will sweep Trump's deranged, criminal war policies causing senseless cost increases from power in ten weeks.   

During that time no country will help Trump crush the Iranian regime. Russia, China and others are and will continue to help Iran weather Trump's despicable regime change operation that has killed over 3,000 Iranians, virtually eliminated US Gulf Stage bases, inflicted over 750 US casualties in a lost cause.  

Trump's Operation Economic Fury is Trump's last desperate gamble to prevent his Unconditional Surrender to Iran's well earned, well deserved victory over Trump initiating the most senseless war in US history. It's as if Trump put one bullet in an unloaded pistol, put it to his temple, fired once, survived, then quit.  But instead, Trump keeps firing till it goes off. That's Trump's version of Iranian Roulette.  

Walt Zlotow    West Suburban Peace Coalition   Glen Ellyn IL 

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21ST century David v. Goliath: Iran's $8 billion military whups America's $1 trillion military

 21ST century David v. Goliath: Iran's $8 billion military whups America's $1 trillion military

What's going on in the Middle East is not a Biblical fairy tale. Irans's piddly military has delivered a devastating defeat to America's gargantuan trillion dollar military.

Iran's David does not need to squander a trillion annually on 750 bases housing over 160,000 soldiers in 80 countries. Nor does Iran's David need 287 naval ships including 11 nuclear powered aircraft carriers that have suddenly become obsolete in the era of drone and missile warfare. Those carriers have been steering clear of Iran's missiles and drones least they be sent to Davy Jones Locker.

The US is flummoxed at how piddly little Iran's military has made mincemeat out of all 18 US bases in US Gulf State allies Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar and Bahrain. After plastering Iran with thousands of bombs for 39 days, it was the US, not Iran that was running out of offensive and defensive missiles and bombs, so much so Trump cried 'Uncle' and demanded a ceasefire.

When Trump signed the Iran's 'Unconditional Surrender' document, the Memorandum of Understanding, on June 17, it was equivalent to Goliath being smitten by the stone puny David fired from his sling.

Of course, the story of David and Goliath is a fairy tale that allegedly occurred over 3,000 years ogo. The 21st century version is no fairy tale. Now in its 173rd day with no end in sight, it still represents the most catastrophic military blunder in US history. It will likely push the US out of the Middle East. The 5 Gulf States housing now damaged or destroyed US bases will seek more reliable countries to rely on for their security. Iran will emerge a stronger power in the region. The entire world eeconomy still teeters on possible decline from US intransigence and refusal to admit defeat.

Trump still doesn't get it. He seeks another half trillion bucks for his wildly bloated military for fiscal '27 in hopes of prevailing over Iran's tiny $8 billion dollar military. Maybe he should start reading something he's never read before...the Bible. He should start with 1 Samuel 17:1–50.

Walt Zlotow West Suburban Peace Coalition GlenEllyn IL

Israel mimicking Nazis at end of WWII…destroying evidence of genocide

Israel mimicking Nazis at end of WWII…destroying evidence of genocide

As the Nazis were collapsing in the spring of 1945, they furiously tried to cover up their massive genocide of Jews and other undesirables they engaged in during WWII.

Eighty-one years on we’re learning that Israel appears to be practicing a similar cover up of its genocide of Palestinians in Gaza that, astonishingly, is still going on ten months after the Trump brokered ceasefire that he trumpeted to end it.

Once the massive bombing stopped, the World Court issued an order for Israel to preserve evidence of genocidal acts committed in Gaza. But in a new report by the Geneva-based Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor said that Israeli forces and contractors “are conducting a wide and organized operation to process and clear the rubble from neighborhoods and facilities they have destroyed in the Gaza Strip and relocate it from areas under their military control to outside the strip. This is occurring without any official record of the quantities removed or independent oversight, and before international and local investigative committees have had the chance to survey, examine, and document the sites. This risks destroying crucial evidence of genocide and the remains of victims still unaccounted for under the rubble. The systematic removal of rubble at this pace conceals the evidence of appalling crimes Israel committed in Gaza, especially those related to genocide, including summary executions and killing unarmed civilians.

What did the Israeli genocide in Gaza look like?

In April the World Bank, UN and EU jointly published a report that estimated around 68 million tons of rubble from over 200,000 buildings are spread across Gaza’s 141 square miles after relentless bombing that left more than 250,000 Palestinians dead, injured or missing and up to 2 million forcibly displaced, starved or sickened. That’s the entire Palestinian population.

The Euro-Med report says at least 10 million tons of rubble “have been removed, crushed, or moved from their original sites within the areas under Israel’s unlawful military control, which encompass about 66% of the Gaza Strip by approximately 400 heavy pieces of excavation, demolition, crushing, and transport machinery, operated by Israeli civilian companies under military protection, that are active across eastern and southern Gaza.”

While it’s impossible to understand why any nation, be it Hitler’s Germany or Netanyahu’s Israel, would commit genocide, it’s certainly understandable why both would feverishly seek to cover it up.

Walt Zlotow West Suburban Peace Coalition Glen Ellyn IL

After 164 years it’s America facing ‘Unconditional Surrender’

 After 164 years it’s America facing ‘Unconditional Surrender’

America is famous for declaring its foes capitulate to unconditional surrender. It was first uttered in 1862 by Ulysses S. Grant who demanded the “unconditional and immediate surrender” of Confederate forces at Fort Donelson, Tennessee. U.S. Grant forever became known as Unconditional Surrender Grant.

US war presidents loved unconditional surrender. FDR employed it on Germany before he died and it worked well. Didn’t go so easily for Truman on Japan. Burning down Toyko on March 10 with Napalm, killing a hundred thousand didn’t. A bombing Hiroshima August 6 didn’t. Even the second A bomb on Nagasaki did not definitively make Japan bow to the US demand. Most likely it was the million man Russian invasion the day before the Nagasaki bomb that convinced Japan to surrender unconditionally.

Unconditional surrender lay dormant for the next 81 years. It was AWOL thru Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan as the US failed to achieve anything close to an unconditional surrender from opponents that stymied, even defeated the vaunted world’s strongest military.

But on March 6, President Trump, unaware he’d already lost his delusional war to bring down the Iranian regime at the behest of Israel, declared Iran must submit to Unconditional Surrender. ,

Trump posted on Truth Social a week into his lost war demanding "unconditional surrender" from Tehran. Then he trotted out his clueless Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt to describe what would constitute unconditional surrender.


"What the president means is that when he, as commander in chief of the U.S. Armed Forces, determines that Iran no longer poses a threat to the United States of America and the goals of Operation Epic Fury has been fully realized, then Iran will essentially be in a place of unconditional surrender."


One hundred sixty-three days into his lost war, President Trump finds America facing unconditional surrender. Unless he capitulates on all of Iran’s reasonable and non-negotiable terms, Iran will not fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz, placing the world’s economy in jeopardy of collapse.


What are those reasonable terms of surrender?
1. End all military action against Iran including bombing and blockade
2. Promise never again to attack Iran
3. End all economic sanctions on Iran
4. Return all frozen Iranian assets
5. Return to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) Trump withdrew from in 2018
6. Provide reparations for damage inflicted in Trump’s illegal criminal war launched February 28


Of course, facing unconditional surrender does not mean Trump will surrender unconditionally to Iran’s reasonable demands. He may simply adhere to the counsel of his former evil mentor Roy Cohn... ‘Never give up, never give in’ and mutter "After me, the deluge.”


Walt Zlotow West Suburban Peace Coalition Glen Ellyn IL

No Attaboy for Uncle Sam…he just ran out of ATACMS

No Attaboy for Uncle Sam…he just ran out of ATACMS

Back in 2022 the US was all in throwing tens of billions in US weapons to Ukraine to fuel the US proxy war against Russia.

At the time the US had plenty of tactical surface to surface missiles known as ATACMS to lavish on Ukraine to clobber the hated Russians. The US was just fine using Ukraine as a Trojan horse to weaken if not destroy Russia as long as Ukraine did all the dying while Americans shed not a drop of blood.

Four had a half years on Ukraine is a shattered land on life support. Millions dead, fled, injured. A fifth of its land gone forever. It’s access to the Black Sea port kaput. It’s military near collapse.

And the US not faring so well either. Just a week after the four year anniversary of the proxy war President Biden provoked, his successor Trump launched a deranged, criminal ear on Iran at the behest of Israel that was lost on day one. Trump bombed Iran furiously for 39 days then stopped abruptly.

Why? He was informed that the missile cupboard of offensive ATACMS and the newer Precision Strike Missiles (PrSM) were nearly depleted, in part from squandering them on the lost cause of the Ukraine proxy war.

Adding to America’s offensive missile woes, it has depleted over 60 % of Patriot defensive interceptors and half of its THAAD interceptors. No wonder Iran has decimated every one of America’s 18 Gulf State bases. No wonder Trump dare not attack Iran again in force least Iran wipe out Gulf State oil infrastructure sending the world economy into collapse.

America under the Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump, Biden, Trump again war machine does well against small powerless states like Serbia, Libya, Somalia and Venezuela. But try to defeat formidable foes like Russia and Iran? America’s trillion dollar war machine collapses into chaos. No attaboy for the murderous American military bombing 7 or more countries worldwide for no reason at all.

Walt Zlotow West Suburban Peace Coalition Glemn Ellyn IL

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Understanding complexities of Ukraine war vital to achieving peace

 Understanding complexities of Ukraine war vital to achieving peace

Lidia Pilecky, in her Chicago Tribune commentary ‘Ukraine has always been here — and always will be’ is correct that Ukraine will always exist.

However, four and a half years of unnecessary war have reduced it to a rump state that is a shadow of its prewar self with little or no chance of regaining its prewar status in size, population and economy. A quarter of its prewar population is gone along with a fifth of its territory. Russian attacks on Ukraine Black Sea ports have largely shut down vital Ukraine grain exports greatly worsening Ukraine’s economic decline. Ukraine faces becoming a land locked rump state.

All this could have been avoided had Ukraine not agreed to accept US and NATO entreaties to join NATO beginning in 2008. This was a NATO encroachment too far for Russia which viewed it as an effort to isolate Russia from the European political economy and advance NATO nukes to Russia’s border. Preventing that was analogous to JFK risking nuclear war to prevent Russia from putting nukes 90 miles from America’s borders in 1962.

The Ukraine crisis worsened when the US, to further its ties with Ukraine, supported Kyiv’s coup to oust its Russian leaning president Victor Yanukovych in 2014. This precipitated a civil war with Russian leaning Ukrainians in the Russian bordering Donbas whose culture was being systematically degraded by Kyiv nationalists. Thousands were killed and Kyiv was poised to finish off the remaining Ukrainian separatists when Russia intervened February 24, 2022.

Hundreds of billions in US and NATO weaponry have not prevented Ukraine’s massive destruction and likely capitulation to a much larger, much stronger opponent. Astoundingly, the war could have been ended within the first two months had not the US and UK not intervened to prevent Ukraine President Zelensky from signing the Istanbul Accords to end the war with Russia losing no new territory. That represented a catastrophic US, NATO, Kyiv miscalculation,

Everyone seeking peace in Ukraine should empathize with Ukrainians supporting the Ukrainian cause. But only diplomacy, not hundreds of billions in additional weaponry will bring that about. Understanding the underlying conditions that both led to the war and that can lead to a diplomatic solution are critical to ending the bloodshed and achieving peace.

Walt Zlotow West Suburban Peace Coalition Glen Ellyn

After 157 days of Iran war failure, Trump must quit war or quit presidency

 After 157 days of Iran war failure, Trump must quit war or quit presidency

President Trump is flailing around like every world leader in history who launched a criminal war of choice he can't win but can’t quit. Like every losing criminal war predecessor, he’s becoming more and more unhinged searching for a magic bullet, make that a magic missile, that will turn his inevitable defeat into his cherished victory.

He fantasizes Iran has been destroyed and is begging to surrender in Trump’s terms. He threatens massive destruction one day, then calls off that destruction a day later for two reasons: he doesn’t have the firepower to inflict it, and knows Iran will inflict even worse damage to US Gulf State bases and Middle East energy infrastructure cratering the world economy. Thousands more Iranians may die and hundreds more US service casualties may pile up to no avail.

Iran won, the US has lost. Deservedly so. Iran did nothing to deserve Trump’s dastardly attack.

Except for a dwindling number of ‘destroy Iran dead enders’, Trump’s war cabinet must be apoplectic over Trump’s delusional descent into endless war madness. Neither VP Vance nor Secretary of State Rubio were keen on Trump’s cockamamie war but bowed to his hubris fueled by the power behind the push for war, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

On this war day 157 of Trump’s disastrous, failed war edging the world economy toward the fiscal cliff, Trump still has 900 days to ensure that happens. On his own he appears incapable of admitting defeat or simply resigning the presidency to allow Vance to begin negotiations to end the war on Iran’s sensible terms. We can only hope Trump’s was council will conduct an intervention. Instruct Trump to quit the war or quit the presidency. If not they should threaten resignation en mass to paralyze the government to fulfill the prophesy Bob Dylan once famously sang.... “Even the President of the United States sometimes has to stand naked.”

Walr Zlotow West Suburban Peace Coalition Glen Ellyn IL

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Many top military leaders opposed atomic bombings

 Many top military leaders opposed atomic bombings

 

Every year the four day period August 6 – 9 brings to mind the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings. This year marks the 81th anniversary of those horrific acts.  We may be closer to nukes fired in anger at any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis 64 tears ago. Major wars in Ukraine and Iran could both devolve into nuclear war. U.S. withdrawal from several nuclear treaties and planning to spend a trillion dollars to upgrade our nuclear stockpile add to nuclear anxiety. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists moved the Doomsday Clock to 85 seconds to midnight in January, the closest it's been set to nuclear winter in the entire nuclear age.

I learned of the atomic bombings 75 years ago at age 6 and have been haunted by them ever since. For the first decade or so afterward I swallowed whole the US fairytale that the military and political elite were unified in dropping the bombs to prevent a U.S. invasion and its estimate of a million U.S. casualties. A little research disabused me of that false narrative designed to justify the unjustifiable. 

Few if any reputable historians buy that version today. They point to a number of top military leaders who opposed the nuclear attacks, for good reasons. Most prominent was U.S. Army Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall who argued not using the Bomb would strengthen America’s prestige and position in post war Asia. He even advocated for inviting the Russians to view our July 16, 1945 test. Navy Secretary and later Defense Secretary James Forrestal argued the bombings would impede our post WWII relations with the Soviet Union. Fleet Admiral William Leahy, senior US military officer on active duty in WWII, called the proposed bombings “barbaric”. Assistant Secretary of War John McCloy told Truman that neither invasion nor atomic bombings were necessary. Japan would surrender if we avoided terminology ‘Unconditional Surrender’ since any surrender would amount to that without saying so. Allowing Hirohito to remain Emperor would bolster that view. McCloy even advocated telling Japanese leaders we had the Bomb as additional incentive to quit the war.

Tho not involved in the Bomb decision process, Gen. Dwight Eisenhower was furious we dropped them, telling Secretary of War Harry Stimson shortly after the attacks “I voiced my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of “face.” Japanese leaders never admitted US atomic bombings motivated their surrender.  More likely it was the massive Russian invasion of Manchuria the day of the Nagasaki bombing that more motivated the Japanese surrender. 

Ike, McCloy, Leahy, Forristall, Marshall and others were right; Truman and his supporters were wrong. Eighty-one years on America is still the only country to explode nukes in anger. Current senseless wars in Ukraine and Iran, refusal to maintain critically needed nuclear agreements, routinely threatening imagined enemies with “all military options are on the table”, spending a trillion dollars to build bigger and better nukes, all bode ill we’ll make another 81 years nuclear attack free.

Walt Zlotow  West Suburban Peace Coalition  Glan Ellyn IL 

No difference at all

 No difference at all 

Americans supporting Trump's attack on Iran are no better than Germans that supported Hitler's attack on Poland in '39 and Japanese that supported Yamamoto's attack on Pearl Harbor in '41. To paraphrase Gertrude Stein...'A criminal war is a criminal war....is a criminal war.

Chicago Tribune letter supporting Trump's Iran war not tethered to reality

 Chicago Tribune letter supporting Trump's Iran war not tethered to reality

David N. Simon’s Tribune Letter ‘Trump administration’s actions in Iran are matters of self-defense’ represents an astonishing defense of US criminal war, the greatest of all international crimes.

 

Anyone who honestly studied the origins of this war knows it was initiated by Trump at the request of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It had nothing to do with Iran’s “declared war against the U.S. and the West for decades”. How did Simon miss that on February 11, Netanyahu arrived at the White House with Mossad Director David Barnea. They encouraged if not demanded invasion against an Iran at peace with the US, indeed, negotiating a new nuclear agreement to replace the one working perfectly that Trump withdrew from eight years ago. The Netanyahu-Barnea tag team argued Iran would collapse within a couple of days from a combination of assassinating Iran’s leader Ali Khamenei, massive bombing, Mossad-fomented civil unrest and ground incursions by Kurdish fighters. These are all war crimes that should get Trump indicted at The Hague if there were justice in the world.

 

Simon also misses that Trump called a ceasefire after 39 days of bombing due to massive destruction to every US base in the Gulf States and Israel, 14 US deaths and hundreds of injuries. Not only did the bombing fail to achieve a single Trump war objective, it shut down the Strait of Hormuz and now the Red Sea to vital oil traffic endangering a global economic collapse for 154 days with no end in sight. This is not self-defense…it’s self-destruction.

 

Regarding Trump’s ruinous, failed war of choice, David N. Simon, like the dwindling number of Trump dead enders still supporting it, must step up to reality before Trump’s war brings the world’s economy crashing down, including that of Mr. Simon and his followers’ Homeland.

 

 

Walt Zlotow  West Suburban Peace Coalition  Glen Ellyn IL