You could see it as they continuously leapt to their feet and energetically slapped their hands together upon the slightest inanity emanating form the well of the House. That’s because not only is this war not about freedom and human rights, nor even the rule of law, border integrity or the rules of a peaceful, stable international order.

https://original.antiwar.com/David_Stockman/2022/12/22/after-the-zelensky-spectacle-let-the-partition-begin/

by David Stockman

The spectacle in the US Capitol Building last night was downright retch-worthy. And we are not actually referring to the detestable little warmongering clown who preened at the podium in a sweatshirt and cargo pants, offering endless lies and hideously false promises about why American taxpayers and consumers are being bled to death in a pointless and unnecessary war.

No, we are referring to the pathetic gaggle of Representatives and Senators who applauded relentlessly and uproariously in response to the casuistry of the tinny poseur who stood before them, albeit one who should have never been granted that august platform in the first place.

After all, the mountebank who leads the rapidly decaying remnant of a nation that was never built to last anyway has been able to bring the world to the brink of economic catastrophe and even nuclear war for one reason alone: Namely, because the bipartisan duopoly on Capitol Hill has shoveled gargantuan sums of money into Ukraine and Washington’s proxy war on Russia with mindless negligence.

And on that score the numbers tell you all you need to know. To date, Washington has authorized $65 billion of economic and military aid, with other NATO nation’s throwing-in $32 billion additional. On top of that, the pending Omnibus Abomination will authorize $45 billion more, which Zelensky has already implied is not nearly enough.

Still, that’s $142 billion and counting, which in turn has no possibility of enabling the Ukrainian victory that Zelensky promised. And that’s also 91% of Ukraine’s 2020 prewar GDP of $156 billion, and an order of magnitude more than the under $100 billion GDP that is left before Russia’s impending winter offensive finishes it off completely.

Stated differently, these war-besotted fools are enabling the absolute destruction of the cities, towns, villages, countryside and economy of what was the world’s 30th largest polity, even as its soldiers and citizens on both sides of the front lines are being slaughtered in their hundreds of thousands.

Yet contrary to Zelensky’s deceitful rhetoric there is nothing at stake of importance to either humanity or the security of the “free world” or most especially the safety and liberty of the American homeland. Absolutely nothing at all – -and that includes all of the War Party’s cant, robotically repeated by Zelensky last night, about the rule of law, the sovereignty of borders and the freedom of the peoples of Ukraine and their neighbors.

As we have repeatedly documented, this is not a Russian invasion but a civil war in the “borderlands” territory  (i.e. “Ukraine” in Russian) that prior to the communist tyranny of the Soviet Union was always a vassal and sometimes integral part of greater Russia. The present civil war, in fact, was instigated in 2014 by the illegitimate government installed in Kiev after Washington’s coup d’ tat against the duly elected and Russian-friendly president.

This Washington managed “regime change”, in turn, set the regions of the artificial state of Ukraine against each other based on long-standing differences of language, religion, ethnicity and economics, among others. And when the Russian speaking populations of Crimea, the Donbas and the Black Sea coastal areas sought separation owing to fears of repression by the Ukrainian nationalist and neo-Nazi politicians who took control of the government in Kiev, the latter brought the bloody violence of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, including the overtly neo-Nazi Azov Brigade, down upon them.

That is to say, the Kiev instigated civil war against the Russian speaking populations of the east and south had been raging for eight years before Putin finally responded to their pleas for overt military assistance; and also after upwards of 14,000 separatist military and civilian personal had been killed by Kiev’s violent onslaught against what was purported to be its own population.

It also came 14 years after Putin had insisted (at the 2007 Munich Security Conference) that Ukrainian ascension to NATO and the emplacement of nuclear missiles within minutes from Moscow was a red line that could not be crossed, yet which action was virtually certain by February 2020.

Finally, the “invasion” also came after 10 days of massively stepped-up Ukrainian artillery attacks on the Donbas, which by every signal of military action and logistics implied that a Kiev “invasion” of the separatist republics was imminent.

See the rest here

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