Author: Walt Zlotow

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is the US weapons recipient who keeps on receiving. Ahead of his Wednesday address to Congress he said “We have artillery, yes. Thank you. We have it. Is it enough? Honestly, not really. We’re grateful for their (US) support, but it ($112 billion) is not enough. It is a hint – it is not enough.”

Wow. That’s some chutzpa. Not a hint Mr. President. More like a demand.

Zelensky spent most of his first 3 years in office fanning the flames of civil war in the Donbas and lobbying to join NATO. In doing so he broke his promise to make peace with the breakaway Russian speaking peoples in the Donbas provinces Donetsk and Lugansk. The ultranationalists with the real power in Ukraine quickly disabused him of that notion. Join with us in our destruction of those fake Ukrainians wanting to speak Russian, or you’ll join them in La La Land.

Continue reading “Zelensky ‘Hints’ to US: $112 Billion in Weapons Not Enough…. Send More”

The Senate passed the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) 83-11, sending it to President Biden for signing.

Congress viewed Biden’s $813 billion too skimpy so they tacked on $45 billion in goodies to ravenous US defense contractors, an 8% increase over the 2022 giveaway. $813 billion goes to the Pentagon, with the rest to other departments, including $30 billion for upgraded nukes to blow up the world.

But it would be more appropriate to rename it the National Offense Authorization Act (NOAA). Without a single existential threat to the homeland, and not a single sworn enemy lurking offshore, the bill is all about offense. It provides a virtual blank check to fuel the endless Russo Ukraine war now approaching 300 days with a hundred billion in US weapons. It ramps up billions in weapons for Taiwan to fend off an imaginary Chinese invasion.

Continue reading “NDAA, Actually NOAA, and Quite a WHOPPER”

Say it ain’t so, Joe.

Yesterday, the President signaled to Sen. Bernie Sanders to pull his Yemen War Powers Resolution from a vote. The measure, if passed, would require the US to end its 7 year support of Saudi Arabia’s vicious war in Yemen that has killed hundreds of thousands from bombs, blockade and starvation. Without US support the woeful Saudi military would collapse.

But just before the vote, Biden took a page from predecessor Trump and threatened a veto. In 2019, Trump not only threatened veto, he used it to quash a resolution that passed. Three more years of murder and mayhem in Yemen was just fine for armchair warriors Trump and Biden.

Continue reading “Biden Pulls Trump Card To Continue US War in Yemen”

The Senate is near a vote to end US participation in Saudi Arabia’s grotesque war in Yemen. Over half a million dead since the Saudis intervened in early 2015 to return the pro-Saudi, Yemen government to power in the Yemen civil war from a year earlier.

Regarding all those dead Yemenis, Saudi Arabia saluted Uncle Sam, “Couldn’t have done it without you.” Our murderous Uncle supplies most of the planes, fuel, bombs, intelligence and gleeful moral support. Why? For America, it’s a proxy war against our bête noir Iran, who we fear was extending their influence in the region. That half million dead Yemenis were simply collateral damage.

If the resolution passes, the Saudi military operations in Yemen will go ‘Poof’.

Resolution champion, Sen. Bernie Sanders, who may bring the resolution to the Senate floor as early as today, believes it will pass. My senators remain divided. Sen. Dick Durbin was a co-sponsor and will vote to pass. Sen. Tammy Duckworth, a loyal supporter of robust and endless US military intervention, remains uncommitted. Fellow Illinoisans should contact her at 833-STOP-WAR and request she hop on board the Yemen Peace Train.

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.

Reading the Chicago Tribune’s November 21^st editorial ‘Memo to the new Congress: Ukraine needs your help, not your grandstanding’, one might surmise Ukraine is winning the Russo-Ukraine war. As proof the Trib offers “Ukraine just carried out one of the most significant battlefield victories in the nearly nine-month war, with its triumph in the southern city of Kherson. Russia’s defeat in Kherson added strong evidence to the notion that Ukraine has the upper hand against Putin’s illegal, ruinous invasion.”

The reverse is true. Ukraine is being systematically annihilated by the Russian military. Russia’s withdrawal from Kherson is primarily tactical. Kherson will be reversed as Ukraine collapses. It is being grasped by the Trib, and all promoters of current US weapons support, as proof of eventual Ukraine victory.

The Trib does allude to the destruction of Ukraine’s infrastructure which has plunged much of the country into cold and darkness on the cusp of winter. But then the Trib reverts to its feelgood delusion that “What will assist Ukraine through this perilous period is an unwavering commitment from the U.S. and Europe to provide military and economic aid.” Let’s see, upwards of $100 billion in weapons aid with the upcoming $37 billion from the Lame Duck Congress, has done nothing but extend Ukraine’s death and destruction for 9 months now. Much of the destruction of Ukraine’s infrastructure did not occur till US weapons needlessly prolonged the war. Had the US signed on to fellow NATO member Turkey’s brokered 15-point peace agreement in March, the war would have ended by April. US torpedoing that peace agreement was a dastardly betrayal of Ukraine’s people. With the exception of the Iraq-Iran war of 1980-88, the US has always worked to end foreign conflict thru diplomacy, not prolonging it with endless weapons.

Instead of castigating conservative Republicans, some of whom plan to end the US weapons transfers in the 118^th Congress in January, the Trib should be supporting their efforts to curtail more weapons which will set the stage for sensible negotiations.

The Trib should also cease telling its readership Ukraine is winning this war. Doing so congers up the ghost of Baghdad Bob, the infamous Iraqi Minister of Information, who popped up daily on TV to tell the world that Iraq was vanquishing Great Satan America in its criminal 2003 US war there.