The US has come up a clever way of masking their contempt of the Ukrainian military in their failed counteroffensive against Russia.
Dismayed that Ukraine is squandering US weapons by hurling them at Russian forces instead hurling themselves at the well-fortified invaders, armchair US military are calling the Ukrainians “casualty adverse,” a nice way of calling them, cowards. US/UK war games ahead of the June counteroffensive envisioned Ukraine taking large casualties in order to reclaim Donbas so they could start brutalizing Donbas Ukrainians again.
That was OK for the US war party. Hey, didn’t that work for England and France during trench warfare during WWI? Apparently, US strategists forgot those allies lost a few million soldiers to take at best a few hundred yards. The Ukraine general staff shot back: “We simply don’t have the resources to do the frontal attacks that the West is imploring us to do.”
The US knew Ukraine had neither the human nor explosive resources to regain territory, a US precondition for ending the war through negotiations. That makes the US proxy war against Russia, shedding only Ukrainian blood and only destroying the Ukrainian economy, a grotesque US moral crime that must be resisted by every peace loving American.
President Biden has painted the US into a corner of death and despair he spent the last half century leading up to promoting American empire and exceptionalism. It may be too late for the electorate to inspire an epiphany in Biden to pivot to peace.
But we must try.
Walt Zlotow became involved in antiwar activities upon entering University of Chicago in 1963. He is current president of the West Suburban Peace Coalition based in the Chicago western suburbs. He blogs daily on antiwar and other issues at www.heartlandprogressive.blogspot.com.
