The American People Must Draw Red Lines Now

by | Mar 2, 2023

The American People Must Draw Red Lines Now

by | Mar 2, 2023

321 when to draw a line in the sand

Washington and NATO have rapidly escalated their war with Russia. The White House appears to have blown up the Nord Stream pipelines in a blatant act of war against Russia, not to mention Germany and other European allies.

The CIA is reportedly conducting sabotage attacks on Russian infrastructure and the Pentagon has tacitly endorsed Kiev’s drone strikes hundreds of miles deep inside the Russian mainland.

Along with an assortment of NATO commandos, U.S. troops, CIA, and Special Operations forces are on the ground in Ukraine as well. The White House has greenlit the transfer of Bradley armored fighting vehicles, longer range rockets, and M1 Abrams battle tanks to the battlefield.

Kiev is demanding hundreds of tanks. Concurrently, multiple European NATO members are sending their own main battle tanks to Ukraine, and a U.S. backed assault on Crimea is expected soon.

While Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky goads London, Berlin, and Paris into handing over fighter jets, his country has already suffered more than 100,000 casualties, hundreds of Ukrainian troops are dying every day just over a battle for the eastern Donetsk city of Bakhmut.

In recent months, officials in Kiev have explicitly stated that Ukraine—a “de facto” NATO member—is “shedding blood” for a “NATO mission.” The goal is eliminating Moscow as a “threat” to the alliance by weakening, destabilizing, and disintegrating Russia.

In the process, Ukraine, the human battering ram, is being destroyed. But in the words of Madeline Albright, from the Empire’s perspective, “the price is worth it.”

Russia must be crippled before the Pentagon launches its impending war against China, “the big one,” which top military commanders and four star generals now warn will take place in only a few years.

In the meantime, experts and analysts continue to point out—along with even The New York Times—that we are systematically pushing “the United States and its NATO allies closer to direct conflict with Russia.”

What is the justification for this seemingly perpetual escalation? The U.S. war machine reasons that since Russian President Vladimir Putin has not yet ordered strikes on NATO territory or pushed the nuclear button, Washington and its NATO vassals can freely provide Kiev with increasingly advanced weapons and even support assaults against the Crimean Peninsula as well as the Russian homeland itself.

The aforementioned tanks will likely be used for the potential attacks on Crimea (read: Russian territory) currently being considered by the White House. Such an escalation could swiftly lead to World War III and a nuclear exchange.

Incidentally, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists warns nuclear war is now a more likely possibility than at any time during the Cold War. In making their case for turning the clock to 90 seconds to midnight—for the first time—the group partly refers to the refusal of the United States, Ukraine, and its allies to come to the negotiating table.

BAS president and CEO Rachel Bronson said in a statement following the decision that the “U.S. government, its NATO allies and Ukraine have a multitude of channels for dialogue; we urge leaders to explore all of them to their fullest ability to turn back the clock.”

Last fall, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley was advocating a negotiated settlement between Kiev and Moscow. However, he was all but vetoed by the so-called diplomats in Antony Blinken’s State Department.

Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett recently discussed how he attempted to mediate a peace deal with Russia and Ukraine in early March 2022. According to Bennett, both sides made major concessions and “there was a good chance of reaching a ceasefire.”  He has now revealed the effort was overruled and ultimately “blocked” by President Joe Biden and former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

According to “multiple former senior US officials,” that same month, Turkish brokered talks in Istanbul between the warring sides also established a workable foundation for a future settlement. The whole enterprise was squashed again by Johnson, acting on behalf of the “collective West.”

Even when U.S. military leadership expresses uneasiness about the war’s trajectory, the provision of heavy western-made tanks, or the sheer inability of Ukrainian forces to regain all the territory Russia has captured, the escalations continue anyway.

The hawkish Secretary General of NATO himself has said “I fear that the war in Ukraine will get out of control, and spread into a major war between NATO and Russia.”

Likewise, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has warned “I fear the world is not sleepwalking into a wider war. I fear it is doing so with its eyes wide open.”

The American people must draw red lines now and stop their out of control ruling class waging wars against nuclear armed powers. As Roger Waters says, this is not a drill.

Our fellow countrymen have become dangerously desensitized to the thought of direct conflict with both Russia and China.

Tragically, our people have been numb for a long time. They have yet to truly reckon with our government’s mass murder marathon of the last 20 years including one million dead Iraqis, half a million dead Syrians, as well as the hundreds of thousands killed in Afghanistan, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen.

Designedly, our enemies in Washington need us to be numb to the inevitable results of their reckless, murderous policies.

The hawks will next try the same proxy war strategy in Taiwan, we will not get another chance to draw red lines.

We must demand all military aid be terminated, and that the White House and the State Department be forced to support or at least not interfere with negotiations.

We must demand an immediate end to this war now.

Connor Freeman

Connor Freeman

Connor Freeman is the assistant editor and a writer at the Libertarian Institute, primarily covering foreign policy. He is a co-host on Conflicts of Interest. His writing has been featured in media outlets such as Antiwar.com and Counterpunch, as well as the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity. He has also appeared on Liberty Weekly, Around the Empire, and Parallax Views. You can follow him on Twitter @FreemansMind96

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