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

New York Mayor Mamdani only Democratic leader in line with majority of Democrats calling for arrest of Netanyahu for war crimes

New York Mayor Mamdani only Democratic leader in line with majority of Democrats calling for arrest of Netanyahu for war crimes

There are well over a thousand, likely several thousand elected Democratic office holders at the local, state and federal level. Yet, the only one I’m aware of that called for Israeli Prime Minister and indicted war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu to be arrested for those war crimes in Gaza was New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani.


Netanyahu came to Washington D.C. this week to attend the funeral of the Senate’s most virulent warmonger Lindsey Graham who died July 11 after visiting Ukraine in support of America’s proxy war to weaken Russia. Netanyahu was paying his respects to Graham, an ardent supporter of Netanyahu’s grisly genocide in Gaza that has virtually leveled Gaza’s 139 square miles, killed upwards of 100,000 Palestinians and made life unbearable for the remaining 2,200,000 with little left to survive. Graham thrilled Netanyahu when he proclaimed Israel should “flatten Gaza just like America flattened Berlin and Tokyo.”


While in D.C. Netanyahu met with unindicted fellow war criminal, President Trump who responded to Mamdani’s principled charge stating, “Netanyahu will not be arrested, in any way, shape, or form, while in the United States of America.”


Mamdani sure is an outlier within the Democratic Party. A recent Economist/YouGov poll cited by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz found three quarters of Kamala Harris’ voters wanted Netanyahu arrested when he stepped onto the tarmac at D.C. Even a quarter of Trump voters approved of Netanyahu being handed over to the International Criminal Court instead of being allowed to praise the Senate’s most supreme warmonger before chatting with fellow war criminal Trump in the Oval Office.


Harris lost over 6 million Biden voters last election in the process of losing every swing state in allowing Trump to return to power to launch the most destructive criminal war in America’s 250 years. Polling revealed the biggest reason was Harris refusing to break with Biden over his support and enabling of Netanyahu’s genocide in Gaza still going on in slow motion under Trump.


Inviting an indicted war criminal to D.C. to praise a supporter of that war criminal’s genocide in Gaza is a dastardly stain on America. While it was the Republican war criminal president who invited him, that does not absolve the entire Democratic Congress from complicity in allowing him to defile America without joining Mamdani in calling for his arrest and handover to the ICC for justice.


The Democratic Party shows once again why they will likely not regain many if not most of those 6,265,300 votes lost in ’24 when they continue to support war policies that disgrace core democratic values.


Zohran Mamdani stands alone in contrast to the Democratic Party ignoring the peaceful will of their base.


Walt Zlotow West Suburban Peace Coalition Glen Ellyn IL

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries shows he’s just another fake antiwar Democrat

For the second time last Thursday Hakeem Jeffries rallied his Democratic caucus to pass a war powers resolution to stop military action in Iran. The resolution however is symbolic as it has no enforcement mechanism. When both the House and Senate passed a War Powers Resolution in June, the first time in the law’s 53 year history, Trump simply ignored it and kept the war bombing, killing, and spiraling the world economy out of control.

But just a day earlier Jeffries could have dealt Trump’s criminal war a devastating blow by possibly preventing passage of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) required to fund the Iran war as well as Trump’s other criminal military activities worldwide. Seven Republican representatives voted against passage. Had Democrats held firm it would have failed to pass. But six Democrats disobeyed Jeffries and joined 210 Republicans to pass the NDAA 216-212.

Jeffries did nothing to enforce his order to vote against. He could have demanded that a yes vote violated a Democratic ‘red line’ against supporting the war. He could have gone public that Democrats hold the line, framing support for the NDAA as enabling Trump’s continued Iran war. He could have both publicly and privately told them they would face political consequences for siding with Trump on his criminal Iran war upending the world economy. Jeffries remained mute on all three avenues to derail Trump’s NDAA.

Jeffries’ criticism of Trump is mainly political, arguing against Trump’s usurping congressional war making authority and his war blunders to date. But Jeffries, who scoops up gobs of campaign cash from US weapons makers and the Israel Lobby, is a strong proponent of US and Israeli dominance in the Middle East including the need to weaken Iran. Jeffries opposes ending annual US $3.3 billion aid to Israel which assists their ongoing genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. In Europe, Jeffries is all in for helping Ukraine destroy itself in America’s proxy war to weaken Russia. Jeffries laments nonsensically “a strong Russia means a weaker America.” He’s oblivious that a strong Russia at peace with Europe means cheap energy and economic prosperity for Europe…and less dead Ukrainians.

Hakeem Jeffries is no friend of peace. He’s a new Cold War dead ender against Russia and a cheerleader for Greater Israel destroying Gaza and West Bank Palestinians.

Walt Zlotow West Suburban Peace Coalition Glen Ellyn IL

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After 150 days, Republicans still too terrified to employ the 'Goldwater Option' to save world economy from Trump's Iran madness

After 150 days, Republicans still too terrified to employ the 'Goldwater Option' to save world economy from Trump's Iran madness

 

 

 

Republican Congresspersons and Cabinet members prefer to bow down to president bent on global economic destruction than removing him from office.

 

 

 

Trump has put the world economy at risk of collapse for 150 days now in his criminal Iran war he lost on Day 1. When Iran didn't fold upon the assassination of their leader the Ayatollah Khomeini that day, Trump had no chance of prevailing. After 39 days of futile bombing he threw in the towel. His ceasefire April 7 signaled defeat. His June 17 signing of the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) certified his defeat.

 

 

Trump knew Iran's closure of the Strait of Hormuz proved his defeat to the entire world. So he simply ignored the MOU trying to reopen the Strait to achieve victory by stealth, using a blockade and a southern route away from Iranian control. Didn't work. So Trump has reverted to bombing which, like at the start, will never work.

 

 

 

Trump will keep up his charade he can win for his remaining 907 days unless stopped. The Cabinet cannot invoke the 25th Amendment to remove him from office because he is neither physically nor mentally impaired enough to do so.

 

 

 

But the Cabinet and Republican Congress can employ the Goldwater Option to force him out. What, pray tell, is the Goldwater Option?

 

 

 

On August 7, 1974, erasable but principled conservative Sen. Barry Goldwater led a delegation of Senate and House Republican leaders to visit President Nixon, embroiled in the Watergate scandal. They told him he'd lost control of the Republican Party in Congress and must resign the presidency forthwith. The next day Nixon resigned, something he publicly said was against every fiber of his being.

 

 

 

 

Goldwater’s successful gambit removing Nixon from office had little importance beyond the simple political need of Republicans to end the Watergate scandal and continue in power under squeaky clean Gerald Ford.

 

 

 

The stakes 52 years later are monumentally more critical. A clearly degraded President Trump unilaterally launched a criminal war of aggression on Iran. Within a day the war was lost for two reasons. First, Instead of heeding Trump’s edict for Iranians to depose their government on behalf of the US and Israel, the Iranian people rallied to their government’s existential defense. Second, knowing the US and Israel would attack, Iran prepared a missile defense that largely destroyed US military assets in the region and devastated Israel itself.

 

 

 

Even worse for Trump and the world, Iran shut down the Strait of Hormuz, cutting off a fifth of the world’s oil supply. The unfolding economic decline worldwide will be enormous and unstoppable unless Trump ends his failed, criminal war and settles on Iran’s sensible terms.

 

 

 

 

Since Trump will never admit defeat to save thousands of lives and a worldwide economic meltdown, a select group from his Cabinet and GOP Congress must remove him from office. Since the 25th Amendment is technically unavailable, hey must invoke the Goldwater option. Pay him a visit and demand his voluntary resignation. When Trump as expected refuses, they tell him they will go public with their demand. When as expected he refuses again, they must employ the nuclear option, shut down the Cabinet and shut down Congress till he resigns.

 

 

 

Finding a principled leader to play the Goldwater role will be a daunting challenge. Virtually every Republican in Congress and administration is a terrified toady of Trump and his MAGA mob. Any with a semblance of a spine like Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger and MTG have been purged.

 

 

 

 

But we must implore those Republicans in power to consider the looming catastrophe facing the world, including the Homeland if they do not crawl out of the cesspool of Trumpism they've descended into. They are no longer just facing a political crisis in November. They are enabling an existential economic crisis embroiling the entire world.

 

 

 

The Cabinet and GOP Congress must not waste a single one of Trump's 907 remaining days to invoke the Goldwater Option to prevent further war crimes and worldwide economic calamity.

 

 

Maybe Trump will resist bowing to a GOP imposed government shutdown, preferring to bring the entire edifice of American democracy crashing down like Sampson bringing down the temple of Dagon in Gaza. Then again, possibly even extreme narcissist Trump might bow to the inevitable, resign and leave Washington next day with a final MAGA salute ala Nixon 52 years earlier.

 

 

If he does, and if Goldwater could drop down from Conservative Heaven, (or pop up from Conservative Hell) to observe the proceedings, he’d smile and say ‘Nice work boys .... glad I could show you the way.'

 

Walt Zlotow  West Suburban Peace Coalition  Glen Ellyn IL