Most people we know, personally or through their writing, live with apprehension over how the rest of 2024 will play out. They seem to harbor more fear of what a second Trump Presidency might bring than horror at what we are witnessing right now. President Biden has been anointed by establishment Democrats with the title of last best hope to save democracy but as the year moves along he keeps digging himself ever deeper into a hole. His bold plan to incite a proxy war with Russia to weaken and overthrow that large country’s government has not worked out as intended and now, as Israel has taken control of US foreign policy, things are looking bad for American interests and for its good name. By being sucked in to aid the final solution to Israel’s Palestinian problem, the president has made us all collaborators in genocide.
Many DNC establishment columnists have managed to write glowing reports on the economy while ignoring the death and destruction that are spreading the perception that rather than being the savior of the rules-based order, the US has become a rogue state and the world’s largest agent of state terrorism. The Democratic Party is more likely to promote some democratic concepts than its rival, the Republican Party, now completely dedicated to a selective libertarianism marching in the direction of a Neo-feudal society. The current situation will not be corrected without strong measures, a few of which I will propose.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was formed to provide collective defense against Soviet aggression. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, NATO had honorably completed its mission and should have been dissolved but, as with all well-financed organizations, it is easier to search for a new mission than to liquidate all the high-ranking directors in its employ. Thus, NATO was transformed into a large international agent of US imperialism. In the past three decades, to my knowledge, NATO has never intervened militarily to defend any of its member states. Who would they be defending them from? However, over that period, when the US has developed an antipathy toward another nation, after imposing illegal sanctions which often don’t produce the desired effect, it has invoked NATO to launch an attack on the offending country with the goal of overthrowing the government and replacing it with a new Neo-con compliant regime. Of course the CIA has been the silent partner in these operations. The military actions have been conducted under the concept of “shock and awe” and have typically been effective, if a bit extreme. The second phases of establishing dependable puppet regimes have usually been less successful. The pattern has been repeated in Serbia, Iraq, Libya and more of Latin America than we can keep track of.
Now that Israel has turned itself into the world’s principal pariah nation, repeating the war crimes that we saw eighty years ago and thought that we would never see again, it is time to put our strengths to work. We could halt the genocide in Gaza immediately by simply cutting off all all financial and military aid to Israel, but that would provide no acceptable solution for the future. Therefore, while it may seem distasteful to some of the more successfully indoctrinated subjects of the US and its NATO colonies, should the American president simply declare Israel to be in violation of the US rules-based order and direct NATO to bring “shock and awe” to Tel Aviv, the overthrow of the government could be achieved in a few days, or possibly minutes. A Nurimberg-style war crimes tribunal could be set up to deal with the worst of the Netanyahu cabinet and a new and more humane government could be installed. Israel has made it clear, to all those not willfully deaf and blind, that it has no intention of accepting a two state solution for Palestine, so it will be up to NATO to expel the illegal settlers from the occupied territories and secure the borders as defined in 1948.
The NATO forces will then have to maintain security at those borders for decades to come. If NATO must continue its existence to keep the American economy rolling, it would be far better to have it engaged in a long-term peace keeping mission rather than preparing to act out Lindsey Graham’s nightmarish fantasies of wiping off the planet those nations he just knows are working in the service of the Devil. In addition, a two or three mile wide neutral buffer strip could be created outside the long Gaza border which would house both the NATO peacekeeping forces and a new airport serving both the Israeli and Palestinian communities. It would give them an opportunity to try working together.
The US has proved successful at bending other small countries to its will, sometimes in clear conflict with their own interests. Israel is a very small country. President Biden has changed course many times in his long political career. He faces ignominious defeat at the hands of a self-admitted tyrant in November. With a few bold strokes as outlined above, he could emerge as the man who created lasting peace in the Middle East and initiated an era of good relations with all the countries of the area. Israel might be the greatest beneficiary of all since its very survival as a nation would be secured. There will be long and loud shrieks of protest coming from Zionists everywhere and in its death throes, AIPAC may lash out to derail the president’s initiatives, but with one more simple act, i.e., the dropping of all charges against Julian Assange, the President would become not only the man who brought peace to the Middle East but also the champion of a free press. At that point the president could glide into next summer’s Democratic Convention to ask the delegates to select his worthy successor and to announce that he will be leaving the White House at the end of year to spend his remaining years basking in the afterglow of his newly found place in history.
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Peace in the world is a rather elusive goal as most conflicts are founded on desires that often involve taking other people’s stuff, engaging in forced religious conversions or are caused by racial issues or simply male combativeness, often supported by their respective social networks.
Assigning the world’s conflict woes to Biden is a bit of a stretch as the hostilities of Russia towards its own people and its neighbors have been ongoing and quite brutal for quite some time. There is a reason that Russia has a modest population and a reason that virtually no one immigrates there. The Russian people do love their country and their culture and there is much to be said for both, but they have never achieved stable rule and while the fought WW2 Germany and took many losses, the initially sided with Germany to invade Poland and Eastern Europe. They did this because the Red Army failed to reach Spain as they set out to do in 1920. They were stopped by the Poles. Putin has been unhappy about all of this, including the collapse of the USSR. He says mistakes were made, but that grossly underestimates the carnage that decimated the population and was largely self inflicted. We supported White Russia, rather than the Red Army, but it was the Poles who stopped them in 1921 and again with the collapse of the USSR.
As for the Middle East, this conflict is a thousand year old religious conflict involving three relions, two of which had Judaism as their ancestor. No one has been able to resolve this, nor has anyone been able to resolve the conflicts between the various Islamic Sects. Gaza had a zillion miles of war tunnels beneath it. The Jews suffered 6 million deaths in Europe, the Palestinians got tossed from a Homeland that resulted from a Jewish diaspora inflicted by Rome. There is no happy place there because three religions have great difficulty leaving each other alone. Jerusalem had three mayors and a set of laws, one for each group, when the British got there. The Turks might have had a better idea on what to do with the situation. Biden didn’t do this. We initially tried to settle the Palestine issue in the UN, but that was overrun by other issues in Europe resulting from the consequences of WW1 and WW2. Peace is elusive given the level of fanaticism present.
Biden is a person whose main mission is preserving Democracy. He is battling Trump of course, whose main mission seems to be to destroy it, but there is an underlying problem in the country that is caused by a portion of the population that cannot cope with a multicultural society.
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