HOW LIES DRIVE A FRESH BRUTAL ATTRITION WAR IN UKRAINE

The authors contend that none of the parties involved in this conflict—the Russian Federation, Ukraine, the United States and its NATO allies—have been honest with their own populations about why they are at war, what they truly aim to accomplish, and how they intend to do it. Each party asserts that their conflict is for good reasons. But, actual people are being killed and towns are being devastated in this war of blatant propaganda.

In a current column, navy analyst William Astore wrote, “[Congressman] George Santos is a symptom of a much large disorder: a loss of honor, a loss of shame, in the usa. Honor, reality, integrity, truely don’t appear to remember, or depend a lot, in the us today… however how do you have got a democracy where there is no fact?” 

Astore went on to examine the usa’s political and army leaders to the disgraced Congressman Santos. “U.S. navy leaders appeared earlier than Congress to testify the Iraq struggle changed into being received,” Astore wrote. “They regarded earlier than Congress to testify the Afghan battle changed into being received. They talked of “progress,” of corners being became, of Iraqi and Afghan forces being efficaciously educated and equipped to anticipate their responsibilities as US forces withdrew. As activities showed, it became all spin. All lies.”

Spin and Lies Make a Comeback

Now the usa is at war once more, in Ukraine, and the spin maintains. This warfare includes Russia, Ukraine, the usa and its NATO allies. No birthday celebration to this battle has leveled with its very own human beings to certainly provide an explanation for what it is combating for, what it definitely hopes to obtain and the way it plans to obtain it. All sides declare to be combating for noble causes and insist that it's far the other aspect that refuses to negotiate a non violent resolution. they're all manipulating and mendacity, and compliant media (on all aspects) trumpet their lies. 

it is a truism that the first casualty of conflict is the reality. however spinning and lying has real-global impacts in a conflict wherein masses of hundreds of actual people are fighting and loss of life, whilst their homes, on each facets of the front strains, are reduced to rubble through masses of hundreds of howitzer shells.

Yves Smith, the editor of bare Capitalism, explored this insidious linkage between the records battle and the real one in a piece of writing titled, “What if Russia won the Ukraine war, but the Western press didn’t note?” He determined that Ukraine’s total dependence at the supply of guns and money from its Western allies has given a existence of its very own to a triumphalist narrative that Ukraine is defeating Russia, and could preserve scoring victories as long as the West maintains sending it extra money and an increasing number of effective and deadly guns.   

but the need to keep recreating the phantasm that Ukraine is prevailing through hyping constrained profits at the battlefield has pressured Ukraine to keep sacrificing its forces in extraordinarily bloody battles, like its counter-offensive round Kherson and the Russian sieges of Bakhmut and Soledar. Lt. Col. Alexander Vershinin, a retired US tank commander, wrote on Harvard’s Russia matters internet site, “In some ways, Ukraine has no choice but to release attacks irrespective of the human and fabric price.” 

objective analyses of the conflict in Ukraine are tough to come by means of through the thick fog of warfare propaganda. however we must pay interest whilst a series of senior Western navy leaders, lively and retired, make pressing requires international relations to reopen peace negotiations, and warn that prolonging and escalating the struggle is risking a full-scale war between Russia and america that would amplify into nuclear battle. 

Back to the future: global struggle I again?

fashionable Erich Vad, who was German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s senior military adviser for seven years, recently spoke to Emma, a German information website. He known as the battle in Ukraine a “battle of attrition,” and as compared it to global war I, and to the war of Verdun particularly, wherein masses of thousands of French and German soldiers have been killed with no foremost advantage for both facet. 

Vad requested the same persistent unanswered query that The new york times (NYT) editorial board requested of President Biden last may additionally. What are the united states and NATO’s real battle targets? 

“Do you want to gain a willingness to barter with the deliveries of the tanks? Do you need to reconquer Donbas or Crimea? Or do you want to defeat Russia absolutely?” asked general Vad. He concluded, “there's no sensible give up nation definition. And with out an average political and strategic idea, fingers deliveries are pure militarism. we have a militarily operational stalemate, which we cannot solve militarily. incidentally, this is also the opinion of the yankee leader of workforce Mark Milley. He stated that Ukraine’s navy victory isn't to be anticipated and that negotiations are the simplest possible manner. anything else is a senseless waste of human existence.”

each time Western officials are placed instantaneous by means of these unanswered questions, they're compelled to answer, as Biden did to the NYT eight months in the past, that they're sending guns to assist Ukraine defend itself and to position it in a more potent role at the negotiating table. but what would this “stronger role” seem like? 

while Ukrainian forces were advancing closer to Kherson in November, NATO officials agreed that the autumn of Kherson would give Ukraine an possibility to reopen negotiations from a position of strength. but whilst Russia withdrew from Kherson, no negotiations ensued, and each aspects are actually planning new offensives.

A fake Narrative of war

the us media maintain repeating the narrative that Russia will by no means negotiate in true religion, and it has hidden from the general public the fruitful negotiations that started quickly after the Russian invasion but have been quashed with the aid of the us and united kingdom. Few outlets said the latest revelations via former Israeli prime Minister Naftali Bennett approximately the ceasefire negotiations among Russia and Ukraine in Turkey that he helped to mediate in March 2022. Bennett said explicitly that the West “blocked” or “stopped” (relying on the interpretation) the negotiations.

Bennett showed what has been mentioned by way of different sources given that April 21, 2022, when Turkish overseas Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, one of the other mediators, instructed CNN Turk after a NATO overseas ministers’ assembly, “There are nations inside NATO who need the battle to retain… They want Russia to turn out to be weaker.”

Advisers to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy furnished the info of Boris Johnson’s April 9 go to to Kyiv that were published in Ukrayinska Pravda on may five, 2022. They stated Johnson introduced two messages. the first changed into that Putin and Russia “must be compelled, now not negotiated with.” the second turned into that, although Ukraine finished an settlement with Russia, the “collective West,” who Johnson claimed to symbolize, would take no element in it.

The Western company media has normally handiest weighed in on those early negotiations to solid doubt on this story or smear any who repeat it as Putin apologists, despite more than one-supply confirmation by way of Ukrainian officials, Turkish diplomats and now the former Israeli high minister.

The propaganda frame that Western established order politicians and media use to provide an explanation for the battle in Ukraine to their own publics is a classic “white hats vs black hats” narrative, in which Russia’s guilt for the invasion doubles as evidence of the West’s innocence and righteousness. The growing mountain of proof that the us and its allies percentage responsibility for plenty elements of this crisis is swept below the proverbial carpet, which appears an increasing number of like the Little Prince’s drawing of a boa constrictor that swallowed an elephant.

Western media and officials have been even more ridiculous once they attempted in charge Russia for blowing up its very own pipelines, the Nord stream underwater herbal gasoline pipelines that channeled Russian gasoline to Germany. in step with NATO, the explosions that launched half 1,000,000 heaps of methane into the surroundings have been “planned, reckless, and irresponsible acts of sabotage.” The Washington put up, in what could be considered journalistic malpractice, quoted an nameless “senior ecu environmental authentic” announcing, “no person on the eu facet of the sea is thinking that is some thing apart from Russian sabotage.”

It took former NYT investigative reporter Seymour Hersh to interrupt the silence. He posted, in a weblog put up on his very own Substack, a marvelous whistleblower’s account of ways US military divers teamed up with the Norwegian army to plant the explosives under cover of a NATO naval exercise, and the way they have been detonated with the aid of an advanced signal from a buoy dropped by means of a Norwegian surveillance aircraft. according to Hersh, President Biden took an energetic position inside the plan, and amended it to include the use of the signaling buoy so that he should personally dictate the appropriate timing of the operation, 3 months after the explosives were planted.

The White house predictably dismissed Hersh’s file as “thoroughly fake and complete fiction”, but has by no means presented any affordable reason for this ancient act of environmental terrorism.

Eisenhower turned into proper

President Dwight D. Eisenhower famously stated that best an “alert and informed citizenry” can “shield in opposition to the acquisition of unwarranted have an impact on, whether or not sought or unsought, through the military-business complex. The capacity for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”

So what must an alert and informed American citizenry recognize approximately the function our government has played in fomenting the crisis in Ukraine, a position that the company media has swept under the rug? that is one of the principal questions we've got tried to reply in our e-book war in Ukraine: Making experience of a senseless struggle. The answers consist of:

america broke its guarantees not to increase NATO into japanese Europe. In 1997, before individuals had ever heard of Vladimir Putin, 50 former senators, retired army officials, diplomats and academics wrote to President Clinton to oppose NATO growth, calling it a policy error of “ancient proportions.” Elder statesman George Kennan condemned it as “the beginning of a new bloodless war.”

NATO provoked Russia by means of its open-ended promise to Ukraine in 2008 that it'd end up a member of NATO. William Burns, who become then the us Ambassador to Moscow and is now the CIA Director, warned in a nation branch memo, “Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all red-traces for the Russian elite (now not just Putin).”

the united states subsidized a coup in Ukraine in 2014. This set up a central authority that only half of of Ukraine’s human beings identified as valid. The coup led to the disintegration of the u . s . and a civil conflict that killed 14,000 humans.

The 2015 Minsk II peace accord finished a stable ceasefire line and constant discounts in casualties, but Ukraine failed to furnish autonomy to Donetsk and Luhansk as agreed. Angela Merkel and Francois Hollande now admit that Western leaders most effective supported Minsk II to buy time for NATO to arm and teach Ukraine’s army to get better Donbas by means of force.

throughout the week before the invasion, OSCE monitors in Donbas documented a huge escalation in explosions around the ceasefire line. most of the 4,093 explosions in four days were in riot-held territory, indicating incoming shell-hearth by Ukrainian government forces. US and U.ok. officials claimed those had been “false flag” assaults, as though Donetsk and Luhansk forces were shelling themselves, just as they later advised that Russia blew up its very own pipelines.

After the invasion, in preference to helping Ukraine’s efforts to make peace, the us and the UK blocked or stopped them of their tracks. The U.okay.’s Boris Johnson said they saw a threat to “press” Russia and wanted to make the most of it, and US protection Secretary Austin said their intention become to “weaken” Russia.

What would an alert and informed citizenry make of all this? we might honestly condemn Russia for invading Ukraine. but then what? simply we'd additionally call for that US political and army leaders inform us the fact about this bad war and our united states’s function in it, and call for that the media transmit the fact to the public. An “alert and informed citizenry” could sincerely then demand that our authorities forestall fueling this war and as an alternative guide immediately peace negotiations.