Biden’s Ukraine visit signals that he’s on board with prolonging the war
On this Presidents Day, many on the Right noted, rightly, that Joe Biden elected to visit far-off Ukraine instead of the American city of Palestine, Ohio, the site of a recent tragic train derailment.
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But visiting Ukraine before East Palestine isn’t the only way Biden has his priorities mixed up. Thanks in large part to Biden’s leadership, the US has now spent $100 billion on aid to Ukraine over the last two years. To put that in context, it’s a similar amount to what we spent on our own war in Afghanistan on an annualized basis.
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Yet even after all this money has been spent, the chances of an outright Ukraine victory are quite slim.
Take it from the RAND Corporation, which is funded in part by the Pentagon and not exactly an anti-war organization. According to their analysis, “Since neither side appears to have the intention or capabilities to achieve absolute victory, the war will most likely end with some sort of negotiated outcome.”
The Biden administration hasn’t shown much eagerness for a negotiated outcome for most of this war.
Zelensky wanted negotiations early after just a week of armed conflict. “It’s not that I want to talk to Putin. I need to talk to Putin. The world needs to talk to Putin,” Zelensky said in early March 2022 after the invasion. There is no other way to stop this war.”
Over the course of the war, Zelensky’s eagerness for negotiations he once thought so crucial began to wane, to say the least, in correlation with U.S. attitudes on the subject.
After originally rejecting Zelensky’s request last March, Putin said, “I think that everyone should think about normalizing relations and cooperating normally.” Referring to sanctions on Russia, Putin added, “There is no need to escalate the situation, impose restrictions. We fulfill all obligations.” (Of course, Russia escalated the situation by invading Ukraine!)
The U.S. has piled on sanctions throughout this conflict, making negotiating more difficult. Biden even said in March 2022 of Russian oligarchs that he would “seize their yachts, their luxury apartments, their private jets.” “We want him to feel the squeeze,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said of Putin.
Not exactly negotiating words.
In October 2022, the Washington Post reported, “Privately, U.S. officials say neither Russia nor Ukraine is capable of winning the war outright, but they have ruled out the idea of pushing or even nudging Ukraine to the negotiating table.”
Other leaders are taking a different approach.Last week, Brazil’s President Lula sanely stressed the dire need for negotiations to Biden during his trip to the White House. Lula was also met with derision by the establishment gatekeepers at CNN for expressing that all involved should be trying to end the war.
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Like BASEDPolitics, one of the better news and opinion sources in independent media today for honest talk on a variety of issues including U.S. foreign policy is “Breaking Points” hosted by Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti. Analyzing Biden’s surprise Ukraine visit on Monday, Ball’s breakdown of how we got to this point is worth sharing.
As this war has been “prosecuted we have gotten ourselves further and further and further in,” Ball noted. “So there really is no more plausible deniability that this is basically a Russian war with us.”
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“So at this point, a year in, what has become very clear is we are a predominately driving force in this war,” Ball observed. “We have decided that our goal is to actually make Ukraine win to try to damage Russia. There has been little to no effort to try to achieve any sort of peace negotiations. This is a sign from Biden again that they are committed to this course and they are going to continue this course.”
A tragic mindless course with no hope in sight.
The White House’s official Twitter account shared two posts about the president’s Ukraine trip on Monday.
https://twitter.com/WhiteHouse/status/1627658086054854657 https://twitter.com/WhiteHouse/status/1627644745735438340
“For as long as it takes.” I’m sure we will.
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