Scott Ritter – About Things That Matter

What Yet Another U.S. Surrender Looks Like — This Time in Ukraine

Since February 2022, Americans have been fed a fairy tale about the war in Ukraine — a story so uniform across NPR, PBS, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Time, CNN, MSNBC, and even Democracy Now that it reveals less about Russian aggression and more about the collapse of critical journalism in the United States.

In that fairy tale, Russia “unprovoked” invaded an innocent neighbor. Ukraine, noble and outgunned, somehow fought the Russian behemoth to a heroic standstill while inflicting catastrophic losses on Moscow. The United States, we are told, has been the grown-up in the room — always seeking peace — while a stubborn, irrational Vladimir Putin refuses compromise.

None of that matches what has actually happened.

I don’t come to that conclusion lightly. Since the start of Russia’s “Special Military Operation,” I’ve written more than a dozen articles on Ukraine — most of them here and for OpEdNews. (See below.) Across those pieces, I’ve argued five things:

By long-established U.S. standards and precedents, Russia had ample cause to defend itself against NATO’s relentless march to its borders.
The war has never been simply Russia vs. Ukraine; it has always been a proxy war between Moscow and the United States/NATO.
Despite the vast imbalance in money, weaponry, and propaganda, Russia has prevailed militarily and strategically at nearly every turn.
Moscow has largely refrained from U.S.-style “Shock and Awe” tactics that deliberately terrorize civilian populations.
Whether one admires him or not, Putin has been the most restrained and predictable major leader in this war.

Those are strong claims. So let me explain how I arrived at them — and what they mean now that Washington and NATO are quietly negotiating terms of capitulation they once declared impossible.

Rejecting Scripted Narratives

From day one, I made a conscious decision to eschew mainstream narratives about Ukraine. I’ve watched this movie too many times: Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria. In each case, official “experts” and prestige media gave us a clean story of good intentions and necessary wars — until reality, corpses, and classified documents told another story.

Instead of relying on that machinery, I turned to analysts with actual experience and memory:

Realist scholars like John Mearsheimer and Jeffrey Sachs,
Former intelligence and security professionals like Ray McGovern and Scott Ritter,
Military strategists like Col. Douglas MacGregor,
Independent geopolitical commentators like Alexander Mercouris, Alex Christoforou, Brian Berletic, Garland Nixon, Jimmy Dore, and Robert Barnes.

These aren’t saints. They disagree with one another. But they share three qualities utterly missing from mainstream coverage:

They know how wars actually work.
They remember U.S. foreign-policy history.
They are willing to analyze “designated enemies” rather than demonize them.

In particular, I’ve followed Alexander Mercouris’ daily 90-minute briefings, where he methodically tracks changes along the 1,000-kilometer line of contact. Through that lens I watched:

The slow, grinding fall of key Ukrainian strongholds,
The complete failure of Ukraine’s much-hyped 2023 “summer offensive,”
The steady Russian advance westward in an attrition campaign the mainstream never honestly described.

On paper, NATO’s side had nearly everything: money, high-tech weapons, satellites, intelligence, media power. Russia had geography, industrial capacity, and patience. Patience won.

NATO Expansion: The Forgotten Red Line

To understand why this war happened and why Russia was prepared to fight it, we have to step back.

For decades, Russian leaders of every stripe — including those favored in the West — warned that NATO expansion to Russia’s border was a red line. This wasn’t just Putin’s obsession. It was echoed by George Kennan (the architect of containment), Henry Kissinger, Jack Matlock (Reagan’s ambassador to Moscow), and even CIA Director William Burns.

From the 1990s onward, successive U.S. administrations broke informal and formal assurances, pushed NATO eastward, armed and trained Ukrainian forces, and treated Russia as a defeated colony rather than a major power. The 2014 Maidan coup, the subsequent civil war in the Donbass, and eight years of Ukrainian shelling of Russian-speaking regions only deepened the crisis.

By the time Moscow launched its operation in 2022, Russia believed — rightly or wrongly — that it was fighting not for “land,” but for survival as a sovereign state.

That doesn’t make everything Russia has done morally pure. But it does make the word “unprovoked” dishonest.

De-Nazification: Propaganda or Inconvenient Fact?

One of Moscow’s stated objectives was “de-Nazification.” Western commentators mocked this as propaganda. Yet the facts are not really in dispute.

Units like the Azov Battalion, Aidar Battalion, and Right Sector have been documented — by Western journalists, Israeli media, and human rights organizations — as harboring neo-Nazi symbols, ideologies, and networks. After 2014, these formations were incorporated into Ukraine’s security structures and presented to the West as heroic defenders.

To acknowledge this is not to demonize all Ukrainians or deny their suffering. It is simply to say that Russia’s reference to Nazi influence was not conjured from thin air. It was rooted in something Western media chose to minimize or forget.

What Surrender Looks Like in a Suit

Today, the battlefield reality is grim for Kyiv:

Ukraine’s pre-war army has been largely destroyed.
Manpower is so depleted that men well into their 50s and 60s are being conscripted.
Western arsenals are drained.
Russia controls key logistical hubs and enjoys overwhelming artillery superiority.

In such a context, the word “stalemate” is a euphemism. Ukraine is no longer capable of decisive offensive action. NATO has no credible conventional path to “defeating” Russia in Ukraine.

So we hear whispers of “peace plans,” “ceasefires,” and “negotiations” — often framed as Donald Trump inexplicably “giving in” to Putin, as though Putin “has something on him.” That story continues the tired Russiagate myth and saves face for a Washington establishment that promised victory.

The truth is less dramatic and more humiliating: Washington and NATO lost their proxy war. The winner, as always, sets conditions.

And here is the irony: those “outrageous” conditions widely described as Putin’s “maximalist demands” are essentially the same objectives Russia articulated before the war began:

Ukrainian neutrality — no NATO membership.
Demilitarization — no NATO missile systems on Russia’s border.
De-Nazification — removal of Nazi-linked formations from state structures.
Recognition of Crimea and breakaway regions as Russian.
Security guarantees that NATO expansion stops.

In April 2022, at Istanbul, Russian and Ukrainian negotiators initialed a draft agreement along those lines. The war could have ended then. Instead, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson rushed to Kyiv and reportedly urged Zelensky to abandon the deal and “fight on” with Western backing.

Tens of thousands of Ukrainian lives were sacrificed on the altar of that decision.

Now, after two and a half years of bloodshed, we are back to those same basic terms — except Russia controls more territory, Ukraine is weaker, and NATO is more divided.

This is what surrender looks like in a suit: euphemisms in press conferences, face-saving language in communiqués, and the quiet acceptance of terms from a side the West swore it would defeat.

The fairy tale said Russia was isolated, collapsing, and on the brink of defeat.
Reality shows something else: NATO marched to Russia’s border, lit a proxy war in Ukraine, and lost.

The Pattern: Who’s Been Right All Along?

Ukraine is not a one-off mistake. It is part of a pattern.

Time and again, the voices that proved right were not the Pentagon spokespersons or network generals. They were the dissidents, the whistleblowers, the realists, the people willing to challenge the mythology of American innocence:

On Vietnam, they were right.
On Iraq’s non-existent WMD, they were right.
On Afghanistan as an unwinnable quagmire, they were right.
On Libya and Syria, they were right.
On Gaza today, they are right again.

And on Ukraine, the “alternative” analysts I’ve followed — Sachs, Mearsheimer, McGovern, Ritter, MacGregor, Mercouris, and others — have been consistently correct where mainstream pundits have repeatedly failed.

That doesn’t make them infallible. It does mean that those who analyze “designated enemies” instead of demonizing them gain access to reality sooner.

Conclusion: A Chance for Humility

The war in Ukraine is ending as sober observers said it would: not with a triumphant Ukrainian flag over Crimea, but with Washington and Brussels quietly negotiating limits they once called unimaginable.

Ukraine did not “stand up” to Russia and win.
NATO did not “stop Putin.”
The West lost its proxy war and is searching for a way to disguise capitulation as diplomacy.

The deeper question now is not whether Russia learns humility, but whether we do. Will we continue to wage unwinnable wars, believe narratives nobody questions, and call that “defending democracy”? Or will we finally listen to the voices who have been right all along — not because they are smarter, but because they refused to confuse propaganda with truth?

For my part, I know where I stand. I stand with those who insist on seeing clearly, even — especially — when it’s our own leaders and our own narratives that must be questioned.

My Previous OpEdNews Articles on Ukraine (Chronological Order)

(2/26/22)
“20 Reasons Why The United States and Europe Bear Ultimate Responsibility for the Ukrainian Crisis”

(3/4/22)
“12 Potentially Good Outcomes of the Ukraine War”

(3/7/22)
“20 Principles for Making Sense of the Ukraine War”

(3/26/22)
“In Ukraine the ‘Gangsters of Capitalism’ Have Gone to the Matrasses Again”

(5/8/22)
“O.K. I’m A Putin Apologist: Here’s Why”

(7/15/22)
“Russia in Ukraine: Champion and Proxy for the World’s Oppressed”

(2/26/23)
“About Ukraine Even Marianne Williamson Has Sold Out to Imperialism and Conventional Thinking”

(4/23/23)
“Are We Meeting the Risen Christ in Russia and China?”

(8/24/23)
“Putin’s a Killer Who’s Guilty Until (Impossibly) Proven Innocent”

(3/26/24)
“Even for ‘Democracy Now,’ Putin’s to Blame for the Rock Concert Massacre”

(12/5/24)
“Neocons Quake as Trump Threatens Peace in Ukraine”

Even for “Democracy Now” Putin’s To Blame for the Rock Concert Massacre

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7F-a6sABAw

Last week at least 137 Russians were killed at the Crocus rock concert outside of Moscow. Untold numbers were wounded, some remaining in critical condition. ISIS K has claimed responsibility.

However, do you know who’s truly responsible according to “Democracy Now” (DN)?

“Putin!”

That’s the takeaway the show’s audience was left with at the end of today’s program (3/25/24).

The presentation said little about the attack itself, much less about its impact on the Russian people. Nothing at all about how or by whom the attack was planned. Nothing but denials about Ukraine, and not even a mention of possible U.S. involvement.

Instead, it was all about “Putin” (never “President Putin” or “Mr. Putin,” only a disdainful “Putin.”)

Accordingly, DN centralized interviews with two anti-Kremlin guests whose evident intention it was to blame the whole tragedy on the Russian president. The guests were Nina Khrushcheva, Professor of international affairs at the New School, and Moscow correspondent of The New Yorker, Joshua Yaffa. According to both:

The attack represents a major failure of Putin and his security apparatus.
It was the result of longstanding Russian mistreatment of the country’s substantial Muslim population.
The United States had responsibly and generously warned the Kremlin about the impending attack.
However, its paranoid president chose to ignore the warnings referring to them as “blackmail.”
Moreover, with zero evidence, only the Russian president’s “paranoia” has made him accuse Ukraine of being involved.
Furthermore, It’s a mistake to jump to the conclusion that the perpetrators of the attack were attempting an escape to Ukraine, since their route was interrupted by Russian police 140 miles from that supposed destination.
After all, Putin’s interests are not in protecting the Russian people, but only his own authoritarian regime that has been responsible for the assassination of Alexi Navalny and has imprisoned more people than were incarcerated under previous Soviet leaders.
Shockingly, when they appeared in court, those arrested for the crime bore marks of torture.
And of course, Russia’s (already week’s long) attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure is an attempt to divert attention from Putin’s own failures.

I found all that extremely disappointing – especially since (to her credit) Amy Goodman’s coverage of world events does not usually follow the direction mandated by U.S. propaganda. However, in this case, it clearly did.

Instead of the usual denunciations of “Putin” it would have been much more informative to investigate the actual perpetrators of last week’s massacre. Ex-CIA personnel such as Ray McGovern and Larry Johnson could have helped with that. So could an interview with Scott Ritter (see below). Together or separately, they might have contextualized the horrific event by pointing out:

Victoria Nuland’s cryptic statement about “nasty surprises” in store for Russia in its near future.
The Russian president’s un-paranoid reasons for suspecting U.S. involvement in the attack given longstanding U.S connections with ISIS in Afghanistan, Syria, and elsewhere to wage war specifically against Russia.
A long history of U.S. sponsorship of terrorist attacks on Russia including its recent destruction of the Nord Stream Pipeline.
John Kirby’s strange premature disavowal of Ukrainian responsibility for the massacre before allowing any time whatsoever for investigation. (This was like the immediate indictment of “Putin” for the death of Alexi Navalny and for that of Yevgeny Prigozhin before their corpses were even cold.)
The attack’s convenient (for the west) and distracting effect in the wake of Mr. Putin’s recent landslide victory in a presidential election that (according to non-Russian sources) witnessed a voter turnout of 70% and a vote 87% for Mr. Putin.

In any case, here’s what Russian expert and former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter had to say about the Crocus tragedy:

The attack indeed represents a puzzling failure on the part of President Putin’s security apparatus. It has much to answer for.
However, that’s far from the point that needs highlighting – viz., the event’s perpetrators and possible connections to Russia’s avowed enemies, Ukraine, and the United States.
The attack’s attribution to Muslim terrorists also provides reason to doubt such jihadist identification since the killers untypically accepted money for their crime and did not choose “martyrdom” rather than surrender in its aftermath.
On March 7^th (well before the Russian elections) the United States did indeed issue a warning to U.S. residents in Russia about impending terrorist attacks and the advisability of staying away from large gatherings such as concerts.
The Russians “know everything” about the attack and the destination of its fleeing perpetrators.
Principal sources of official information are the captured cell phones of the fugitives.
Additionally, their phone conversations were intercepted in real time as they fled towards the Ukrainian border.
Both sources also contain incriminating information such as videos made while casing the crime site just before Russia’s presidential elections.
Such evidence suggests that the mass shooting was planned to disrupt that process, but that heavy security surrounding it forced postponement of the crime.
Phone information has also allowed authorities to track down the terrorist cell in Moscow that provided logistical support for their comrades.
All those arrested are currently divulging much more information that will soon come to light.

The lesson to be drawn from all this is one of extreme caution. Putin is not the issue here. Possible connection with Ukraine and the CIA is.

And regardless of what we might think of Scott Ritter’s analysis, it signals the complications of the questions at hand, the importance of not jumping to conclusions and of asking the right questions.

Propaganda, fake news, changing the subject, and gaslighting are everywhere. Even “Democracy Now,” even Amy Goodman are not immune from disseminating Russophobia. They too can be fooled by the Grand Wurlitzer of U.S. propaganda voiced by characters such as Khrushcheva, and Jaffa.

The lesson here (as always) is to focus on the heart of the matter, don’t allow misdirection of attention; retain constant suspicion of anything our government tells you. They’re all liars. Ex-CIA director Mike Pompeo put it best when he said as much.

Alexy Navalny Vs. Julian Assange, and Gonzalo Lira

Vladimir Putin has done it again. Just as he did with Yevgeny Prigozhin, he’s murdered another political adversary. This time it’s his “most prominent political opponent,” Alexy Navalny.

That’s the IMMEDIATE conclusion UNIVERSALLY drawn and promulgated by the political establishment and mainstream media in the collective west.

Such unanimity especially in the United States with its record of political assassinations and brutal political imprisonments raises suspicions that we might not be getting the full story.

That’s especially true when one contrasts western handwringing over Navalny’s fate with its indifference to the torture of imprisoned Australian citizen Julian Assange and to the State Department’s lack of concern about the behind bars death of American citizen Gonzalo Lira in Kiev.

So, before we join in premature conclusions, let’s look at the other side of Navalny’s death especially in the light of what we know about Assange and Lira.

Rush to Judgment

First, consider the immediate response to news that Navalny had died. Virtually EVERYONE from Genocide Joe Biden to Hillary Clinton and the Secretary General of Amnesty International claimed certainty that the man had been murdered “by Putin.”

This was even the general thrust of a “Democracy Now” interview with Russia expert Masha Gessen. The latter had authored an article in The New Yorker article entitled “The Death of Alexy Navalny Putin’s Most Formidable Political Opponent.” For Gessen there is “no doubt” Navalny was killed – again “by Putin.”

One wonders where such certainty can possibly come from simply on the report of Navalny’s death. After all, people die in U.S. prisons and migrant detention cells all the time. Such rush to judgment seems to fly in the face of the foundational legal principle that everyone is innocent until proven guilty. Nevertheless, before ANY examination of evidence, before any autopsy, before any independent investigation, the case is already closed.

The message to Americans: we too should have “no doubt.” Just as we were getting to know a more humanized Vladimir Putin (thanks to Tucker Carlson’s recent interview) the cruel autocrat has struck again. Whatever “official” autopsies might conclude, Putin is surely guilty and can never be proven innocent. (After all, who could ever believe Russian investigators?)

Moreover, Alexy Navalny is universally portrayed as a heroic advocate of democracy who has always opposed the “autocracy” of Vladimir Putin. He was a “freedom fighter” in the face of anti-democratic oppression.

True, Gessen admits that Navalny had previously been an ultra-nationalist often photographed with Nazi paraphernalia. And yes, he had also been anti-immigrant and Islamophobic. He was a guns-right advocate too who at one point called for the execution of Muslims and for the extermination of “cockroaches” like Russians living in Georgia.

But according to Gessen all of that was in the distant past. Since his arrest and apparently while behind bars, he had undergone a conversion. In fact, like many jailhouse converts, the imprisoned Navalny had become a student of religions. He had even transformed into an advocate of Muslims and their right to access to The Holy Koran while serving their time.

However, even if we grant the man’s conversion, the question remains why would Putin do such a thing? Navalny was already in prison serving a 19- year sentence. He was out of the public eye. He represented no political threat to the Russian leader who by all accounts enjoys high popularity with Russians and will easily win next month’s presidential elections.

In other words, Navalny’s “murder” could do nothing but make Putin look bad, expose him to criticism from his opponents, and hurt him at the ballot box. As ex-CIA officer, Ray McGovern puts it: Navalny “was of no consequence in terms of Putin’s reelection prospects. He had no real following there (i.e. in Russia) except among a certain group of folks that didn’t amount to much.”

The Other Navalny

But who really was Alexy Navalny? According to Scott Ritter, Navalny was a CIA agent “straight up.” He came to political awareness during the Boris Yeltsin years (1991-1999) before Putin’s reforms when Russia was extremely corrupt. Like so many young Russians of that era, he shared a strong admiration of the West that even bordered on rejection of his own Russian identity.

As such, Navalny was recognized by the CIA as a “future leader.” They sent him to the World Fellows Program at Yale University whose connections to the CIA (according to Ritter) are well known. There they groomed the man as a CIA-funded political opponent of Vladimir Putin.

In other words, Navalny was a player in a process that routinely funds so-called non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Russia and elsewhere for purposes of bringing about regime change. Put still otherwise, the NGOs in question were fronts for U.S. and British intelligence agencies who after the advent of Vladimir Putin took on the task of bringing down the Russian president.

This made Navalny in the eyes of Russian law a traitor guilty of treason. As everywhere else, there are laws in Russia against such things.

Assange & Lira

Ray McGovern, an ex-CIA analyst, goes further still. He contrasts the hand wringing about the Navalny affair with the lack of such distress over Julian Assange, the Australian founder and editor of Wikileaks. McGovern’s concern is relevant because this week, the 20^th and 21^st of February, a final hearing will be held in London to determine Assange’s fate.

Julian Assange, of course, faces extradition to the United States to face a 175-year prison sentence for releasing to the public evidence of U.S. war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq. For five years, he has been held without charge in a 6’X12’ cell in London’s infamous Belmarsh Prison with Great Britain’s worst rapists, murderers, and terrorists. Before that he spent seven years as an asylum seeker in London’s Ecuadorian embassy.

And this despite appeals for his release by the Australian Parliament itself, and despite the CIA’s breach of basic client-lawyer privilege by listening in and recording confidential conferences between Assange and his legal representatives – a fact that alone should disqualify any further legal processes against this Australian citizen.

Where’s the outcry, McGovern says about Assange’s imprisonment and torture? And doesn’t that prominent foreign journalist’s mistreatment deprive the U.S. of any moral authority to criticize, let alone issue demands about the Navalny case?

And then there’s the issue of the apparent murder of American citizen Gonzalo Lira in one of Kiev’s prisons. Lira was charged with suspicion of expressing subversive opinions about Ukraine’s war with Russia. According to Tucker Carlson, “the Biden administration clearly supported his imprisonment and torture. Several weeks ago, we spoke to his father, who predicted his son would be killed.”

I ask my readers: Have you even heard of Gonzalo Lira? If not, don’t worry, you’re in good company. Genocide Joe’s administration acts as if it never heard of him either.

Conclusion

The conclusion here is not that Vladimir Putin was not ultimately responsible for the death of Alexy Navalny. That remains to be seen. Instead, the proper conclusions include the following:

It is far too premature to conclude anything.
Such prejudice flies in the face of basic legal assumptions about innocence and guilt.
Alexy Navalny was probably not a freedom fighter.
In fact, there is clear indication that he was a white supremacist and anti-immigrant ultra-nationalist.
He also seems to have been an Islamophobe, an agent of the CIA, and a traitor to his country.
Like all countries, Russia has laws about such matters.
In the light of its treatment of Julian Assange and Gonzalo Lira, the United States has zero moral authority to posture as a champion of prisoners’ rights, freedom of speech, rule of law, prosecutorial rectitude, or extra-judicial assassinations.

O yes, and then there’s all that business about Jeffrey Epstein‘s death in prison . ..

Scott Ritter, Hamas, Terrorism, & the Judeo-Christian Tradition

Readings for the 31^st Sunday in Ordinary Time: Malachi 1: 14b-2: 2b, 8-10; Psalm 131: 1-3; 1 Thessalonians 2: 7b-9, 13; Matthew 23: 1-12

The liturgical readings for this 31^st Sunday in Ordinary Time are about the hypocrisy of national “leaders” who bring disgrace to their office and who become for their people a curse rather than a blessing.

They pretend to know more than the ones they “serve.” As a result, though they might say the right words about freedom, peace, and even “God,” every action they perform contradicts the basic divine imperative (found in all the world’s Great Religions) to treat others as we would like to be treated.

Consequently, the only policy these hypocrites know is war. In Israel-Palestine, they supply weapons to kill women and children (centralized in today’s readings) and they prefer continued slaughter to cease-fires.

Religious pretenders all, they disgrace themselves before the world’s poor majorities who know exactly what lawless settler-colonialists (and their facilitators) are always about. As Haitian film maker, Raul Peck has shown, they’re always about ethnic cleansing, concentration camps, and outright extermination. Always!

Today, the whole world is watching the script unfold once again in Apartheid-Israel.

A Pro-Palestinian Demonstration

All of that was brought home to me two weeks ago when I attended a pro-Palestinian rally in New Haven, Connecticut near the Yale campus.

By my estimate the highly enthusiastic crowd that gathered there numbered between 2000 and 3000 people. We marched from the New Haven Green through the town’s center chanting slogans like “Free, free, free. . . free Palestine!” The whole experience was highly inspiring.

The signs people carried were inspiring too and very thought-provoking. One caught my eye more than others. It made me think more deeply about Hamas. It caused me to realize that contrary to acceptable opinion in the United States, Hamas is not “pure unadulterated evil” (as our confused president’s handlers made him say). Neither is it simply a “terrorist organization.”

The sign I’m referring to read “OCT. 7 IS AN OUTCOME NOT A TRIGGER.”

I took that to mean “IF YOU PUT HAMAS’ ‘TERRORIST’ ATTACKS IN HISTORICAL CONTEXT, THEY BECOME FAR MORE UNDERSTANDABLE THAN THE MUCH WORSE APARTHEID-ISRAELI RESPONSE TO THE HORRIFIC EVENTS OF OCT. 7^TH.”

So, before we get to this Sunday’s readings, let’s once again think more deeply about Hamas. This time, my guide will be Scott Ritter, the former weapons inspector in Iraq who tried to tell our government that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction. He was relieved of his post as a result. As usual, the White House and Congress preferred lie to truth.

Hamas

According to Ritter, Hamas is not a terrorist organization. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the President of Turkey, a NATO member, agrees.

For Ritter, Hamas is no more terroristic than were Americans like Samuel Adams and the Sons of Liberty whom the British called “terrorists” during the Revolutionary War.

Hamas, he says, is also no more terroristic than was Menachem Begin, the future Israeli Prime Minister. Back in 1946, Begin headed the Zionist Irgun gang which set off explosives in the King David Hotel, killing 91 people and injuring 45 including women and children. (Later, invading Israeli settlers ended up killing 15,000 Palestinians whose homes and other property they stole outright.) Begin’s goal in that strike against Great Britain was to bring international attention to the Zionist campaign for a Jewish homeland.

Seeking similar international attention for the largely ignored Palestinian cause, Hamas has at succeeded in putting Palestinian statehood back on the table. According to Ritter, its bold action has shaken up a calcified, Zionist-and-American-dominated Middle East.

In that sense, October 7^th was highly successful and a game changer. In fact, it eliminated the principal obstacle to peace in the Middle East – Israel’s opposition to the creation of a Palestinian state. Simultaneously, by provoking a predictable overreaction by Apartheid-Israel, Hamas has succeeded in turning a global majority against the Zionists.

In Ritter’s eyes, rather than an act of terrorism, October 7^th was a brilliantly planned military assault carried out with far more precision and far less collateral damage than what we witness Israel doing now.

The former U.S. Marine analyst points out that such observations are supported by the testimony of Kibbutzim survivors of the Oct. 7^th Hamas attacks. The survivors claimed that it the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) were responsible for most of the casualties falsely attributed to Hamas. The IDF’s indiscriminate fire killed large numbers caught in crossfire between the Hamas cadres and the IDF.

Ritter concludes with a probing question. If you’re against Hamas’ tactics, he asks, tell me what you would do as an alternative. Gazan resisters have tried non-violent approaches with the First Intifada (1987-1993) and Second Intifada (2000) and in the Great March of Return in 2018. The demonstrations achieved virtually nothing for the Palestinians on Israel-Palestine’s West Bank and in the Gaza Strip. Instead, direct action by Palestinians saw hundreds of peaceful protestors killed and maimed by Israeli snipers. Very few in the West remember that, even if they were aware of their implementation at the time.

Such failures have heightened despair, desperation, and anger in the Gazan concentration camp. Every Gazan man, Ritter claims, wakes up each morning with one thought in mind. Perhaps like Jews in Auschwitz, he thinks of the Israeli concentration camp guards and wonders, “How can I hurt them today?”

Such desperation led to the desperate acts of October 7^th.

If any of us were forced to live under similar circumstances, Ritter concludes, we’d likely be thinking the same way. With Patrick Henry’s famous words in mind, he speculates that if you asked Gazans if they would give their lives to free their people, most of them would probably reply affirmatively. For this reason, Hamas communiques refer to the thousands and thousands of victims of Apartheid-Israel’s terrorism as “martyrs.”

Today’s Readings

Please keep all of that in mind as you read this Sunday’s liturgical selections. I’ve “translated” them below. You can read the originals here to see if I got them right.

Malachi 1: 14b-2: 2b, 8-10

The Great Goddess promised Jewish priests that they and their people will be cursed if they forgot the nature of Mosaic Covenant. It was forged to protect slaves escaped from Egypt – to protect the poor and powerless. Priestly hypocrisy, She promised, transforms into curses any “holy words” uttered to bless Israel. The whole people suffers when official decisions favor the rich instead of God’s impoverished and oppressed. After all, everyone without exception has dignity in the eyes of the One Creator. Ignoring that simple fact violates the essence of God’s Law.

Psalm 131: 1-3

Favoring the poor is the key to peace. That however is something the rich cannot see as they concern themselves with their “great things” and their “sublime” matters which they deem beyond the ken of the poor majority. But even a still and quiet child on its mothers lap exhibits more wisdom than the haughty. What children embody gives hope for peace.

1 Thessalonians 2: 7b-9, 13

The apostle Paul understood that truth. He went even further. For him nursing mothers offered lessons about generosity and self-giving. They embodied the love of our Great Mother. Accepting that helped Paul see everyone as a sister or brother worthy of his service and hard work. His vision enabled him to communicate the very word of the Great Goddess to any who cared to listen.

Matthew 23: 1-12

That’s what Yeshua did too. He understood the power of the Mosaic tradition about the liberation of the oppressed. However, he also saw that the politico-religious “leaders” of his day were hypocrites. They said the right words, but never lived them. Rather than bringing the “Good News” of God’s peace and love, their laws and policies made matters worse for the poor. Their concern was not that of the Great Mother, but with retaining personal power, profit, pleasure, and prestige. “Don’t be like that,” Yeshua said. Consider no one your Master, no one your Father. Instead, be humble and serve. Think for yourselves!

Conclusion

Those words speak for themselves. Like the ancient Jews, we’re led by hypocrites and liars. They should not be our masters. Though old and feeble, they are not our fathers. They are worthy of contempt and curses.

Far from embodying the Golden Rule, their guideline seems to be lawlessness, revenge, extermination, ethnic cleansing, and genocide. Don’t be like them, Yeshua says. Their actions speak louder than their lying words.

Could Hamas Be the Unlikely Agent of God’s Revelation?

Readings for the Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time: Exodus 22: 20-26; Psalm 18, 2-4, 47, 51; 1 Thessalonians 1: 5c-10; Matthew 22: 34-40

Thank God for Hamas.

Yes, thank God for Hamas. At least that’s what I’m thinking. Hamas could be the unlikely agent of God’s revelation.

That Hamas possesses such agency seems likely in the light of the Judeo-Christian and Islamic traditions in general and in that of the liturgical readings for this Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time. All three can enable discerning people of faith to see past western propaganda to what Hamas is actually up to. Hamas is lifting the veil to help us identify who’s responsible for most of the world’s problems. It’s the United States and Israel. Both represent brutal criminal enterprises.

That’s my two-point message for today. it’s one that we’d do well to let into our consciousness blinded by nonstop propaganda that hates Muslims and the poor, that hates non-whites, and those who dare to defend themselves against imperialists, colonialists, and racists.

So, don’t expect here the de rigueur denunciation of Hamas’ “atrocities.” In terms of freedom and justice for Palestine’s oppressed, that requirement is deceptively counterproductive. It creates a detestable false equivalency between the tactics of resistance fighters on the one hand and the infinitely worse barbarisms of their overlords on the other. Once again, it ends up justifying Israel’s slaughter of their concentration camp captives.

[By the way, Pakistan’s UN ambassador, Munir Akram, recently said something like that to the General Assembly. He refused to criticize Hamas unless Israel was also criticized as the root cause of the crisis in Israel-Palestine. But, of course, the U.S. and Israel refused to allow such critique. (Be sure to view Akram’s speech above.)]

No, my points for us living within a nearly impenetrable “veil of ignorance” are to affirm that (1) Hamas may well be the agent of God’s revelation, and (2) the scriptural traditions of the Judeo-Christian and Islamic traditions suggest that strongly.

Hamas

To begin with what do we know of Hamas? I mean, what do we really know that’s not filtered through western (i.e., through imperial and colonial) propaganda machines?

The answer is, “almost nothing!”

Think about it. What we know of Hamas comes from its inveterate enemies. It’s like getting information from the Nazis about Jews in the 1930s. And we fall for it every time. I think Goebbels said something about that.

In other words, our information about Hamas comes from proven compulsive liars (like the colonialist Benjamin Netanyahu, the imperialist Joe Biden, and their lackey press corps). Uniformly, they tell us:

Hamas represents “pure unadulterated evil.”
Simply put, they are “terrorists.”
There is no distinction between them and the 2.3 million inhabitants of Gaza.
All of them (including women, children, and even infants) are guilty.
After all, they elected Hamas to govern them in 2006.
That proves that all Gazans are inhuman. They’re simply animals. They have no human rights. Yes, they’re beasts and can be treated as such.
The Hamas violence on October 7^th provides further evidence.
It came out of the blue and was “unprovoked.”
Hamas cadres wantonly killed innocent young people spraying them down with machine gun bullets at a rave dance. (Nothing about crossfire.)
Unlike Apartheid-Israelis who hold more than a thousand Palestinians in custody (often without charge) Hamas has no right to take political prisoners.
After all, hostages and political prisoners are not the same.
Hamas militants even beheaded infants and children. Joe Biden said he saw the photos. (Later, his team “walked that back.”)
They raped women. (No evidence. Again, a claim “walked back.”)
Their rockets, not Apartheid-Israelis, destroyed a Gazan hospital. (Without investigation, Joe Biden believes that too – on the word of the highly principled Benjamin Netanyahu.)
They’re worthy of condemnation because they have chosen violence over the non-violent tactics so obviously favored by virtuous Apartheid-Israelis and Apartheid-Americans. [Nothing about Palestinians’ non-violent “Great March of Return” (2018), Apartheid-Israel’s brutal response killing hundreds, and the general lack of coverage in the west’s mainstream media.]

That’s what we know about Hamas. Am I right or wrong?

And every one of those allegations is a lie or at best a prevarication containing a tiny grain of truth. Every one of them!

I won’t waste my time or yours debunking them one-by-one. You can find that information elsewhere.

Instead, let me tell you briefly what we’re never told about Hamas. (You can find all this on Wikipedia):

To begin with, it is a political organization democratically elected by the people of Gaza in 2006.
It is also a religiously inspired social services collective that funds welfare projects helping people survive the hardships of hostile governments throughout the Middle East.
It represents a kind of Islamic theology of liberation that (in the name of the biblical and Koranic God of the poor) serves the impoverished and embraces the right to revolution recognized by Article 51 of the UN Charter.
For instance, in Gaza, Hamas provides food, water, medical and rent assistance for residents. It funds nurseries, schools, orphanages, soup kitchens, women’s activities, library services, and sporting clubs. That’s the foundation of its popular support.
And, of course, Hamas also has a powerful military wing to defend Gazans from the atrocities that Apartheid-Israelis have routinely inflicted on Palestinians for the last 70 years.
As such, according to international law, it enjoys the legitimacy accorded those resisting illegal occupation by foreign powers. (As illegal occupiers and aggressors, Apartheid-Israelis have no such corresponding rights.)
With all that in mind, Hamas atrocities turn out to be no different (except in their lesser severity) from those of the Apartheid-Israelis which preceded and followed upon them.
In the Palestinian case, they are acts of anger and vengeance for a whole series of brutalities inflicted upon them by their oppressors for the last 70 years. Those acts are far more understandable and justifiable than the acts of Apartheid-Israel that preceded and followed them.

Agent of Revelation

Moreover, (and this is a principal point in this homily) whatever you might think of its tactics today, Hamas is functioning as the agent of God’s revelation as articulated in this Sunday’s readings.

And here I’m using the word “revealing” in its etymological sense – removing the veil.

That is, (according to Scott Ritter ) Hamas has forced Apartheid-Israel and Apartheid-America to show their true colors. As a result, we finally see the blood drenched palette every day on our TVs. Simply put, the colonizer and its imperial sponsor have revealed themselves as brutal reincarnations of that other genocidal European force whose name can barely be printed in the mass media. Apartheid-Israel and Apartheid-America are revealing themselves to be racist, white supremacist, and N*zis.

According to Ritter, such revelation is what Hamas’ strategy is all about. They desperately realized that the settler invasions and occupations of Palestinian lands coupled with Israel’s Abraham Accords with surrounding Arab nations signaled a window closing on any hopes for an independent Palestinian state.

So, Hamas decided to force Israel’s and America’s brutal hands. They took up arms against their concentration camp captors. And the captors reacted in exactly the way Hamas knew they would – by bombing the concentration camp itself. Their keepers responded with wholesale slaughter of women and children – with obvious war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and outright genocide.

And the world finally noticed. The Hamas tactic worked. Everyone (outside the western bubble) now sees Israel and the United States for the criminal enterprises they are.

Both the latter claim to embrace the Judeo-Christian tradition. But nothing could be further from the truth. It’s all hypocrisy.

Just read today’s first selection from the Book of Exodus. It’s so short and to the point that I risk quoting its first paragraph verbatim here:

“Thus says the LORD: ‘You shall not molest or oppress an alien, for you were once aliens yourselves in the land of Egypt. You shall not wrong any widow or orphan. If ever you wrong them and they cry out to me, I will surely hear their cry. My wrath will flare up, and I will kill you with the sword; then your own wives will be widows, and your children orphans.’” (Ex 22:20-26).

And then there’s today’s Gospel selection from Matthew. Confronting the upperclass Pharisees and Sadducees whom the Jewish Yeshua saw as blaming the victims of the Romans (in the case of the Pharisees) and directly cooperating with their imperial oppressors (in the case of the Sadducees) he reminds them that they must love those they despised. “Love your neighbor as yourself,” he says.

Those words expressed the Christ’s mystic insight that all humans are one single entity. We are all equally “chosen.” We are more than brothers and sisters. Our neighbor is Our Self. In killing Palestinian women and children, elders, teachers, doctors, nurses, first responders – and Hamas supporters – we are committing suicide. We’re killing our common indwelling Spirit.

All that promises to become even more apparent as Israel’s genocide of Palestinians continues while the whole world is watching. The horrific revelation will continue.

Conclusion

So, yes, I’ll dare to say it: thank God for Hamas. Yes, it’s removing our veil of ignorance. In that sense, it is the agent of God’s re-veil-ation. The thousands and thousands Apartheid-Israel is executing before our eyes are martyrs reminiscent of the early Christians. They are revealers too.

The world’s poor, the Global majority living in the West’s former colonies and current neo-colonies see that more clearly than any of us. While Israel and the U.S. scandalously oppose a cease fire, the Global South (i.e., the world’s vast majority) supports it.

It’s far past the time for westerners like us join their chorus demanding that the criminal Apartheid-Israel state and its criminal American counterpart STOP THEIR CRIMINAL OPPRESSION.

Like Scott Ritter, I find myself praying for the complete defeat and humiliation of Apartheid-Israel — and of the United States on every front.

20 Lessons from the Ukraine War (So Far)

Like no other conflict in the lifetime of this octogenarian, Russia’s “Special Military Operation” in Ukraine is causing me to learn late lessons about warfare and its strategy. Yes, I’ve lived through the Second Intercapitalist War, the Korean conflict, Vietnam, and Iraq. However, I don’t ever remember getting so much information causing me to rethink the little I know about military theory, strategy, tactics, disparate narratives, and outrageous propaganda as in the case of Ukraine.

Such intense focus is at last teaching me obvious truisms about war (and btw the futility of throwing billions at problems that in every case just mentioned could have been resolved diplomatically and at virtually no cost).

It all reminds me of the discourse of the great Ivan Illich of Deschooling Society fame. There, Illich taught that beyond a certain point, education makes us stupid. Its specialization has the highly educated learning more and more about less and less till they end up knowing almost everything about practically nothing – and by extension, almost nothing about practically everything.

Illich drew similar conclusions about medicine – beyond a certain point of development, it makes us sicker. In his Medical Nemesis, he wrote eloquently of iatrogenic diseases picked up from physicians and the ever more sophisticated treatments they administer in hospitals.

Likewise, developments in transportation have rendered us increasingly immobile (think traffic jams and high gas prices) and moved us further away from the most important people in our lives.

And, of course, computer technology has routinely impeded genuine human communication.

Relative to war in general and the Ukraine conflict in particular, Illich might urge us to understand that beyond a certain point, weapons of war (and bloated Pentagon budgets) make us far less safe than would even a policy of general disarmament. As illustrated in Ukraine and its threat of nuclear war, the weapons in question ultimately threaten the very existence of our species. General disarmament (or even unilateral disarmament) would be far safer, regardless of short-term disadvantages.

However, without even going that far, allow me to share some learnings sparked by the conflict at hand. Here are 20 lessons I’ve learned to this point:

Conclusions

War involves complex strategies beyond “Shock and Awe,” simply massing troops to advance on and overwhelm one’s enemies, dropping bombs on them, mounting artillery barrages, and kicking in doors.
Instead, standard military strategies include sophisticated elements such as “shaping the battlefield,” using feints and deceptions to fix enemy troops in place and taking time to fashion “cauldrons” to encircle opposing forces.
Warfare necessarily demands secrecy about intentions, strategies, tactics, and schedules. “Knowledge” is the enemy’s plans is often little more than guesswork or at best the product of inference and deduction.
Ignoring such concealment, propaganda to discredit Russia’s actions in Ukraine works like this: (1) Act as though you know exactly what Putin’s (secret) strategies and timetables are, (2) inflate that fictitious “knowledge” to levels impossible to achieve, and (3) declare the enemy’s efforts having failed when those unrealistic goals are not met.
In the case of Ukraine, intentional mischaracterization of or simple failure to understand Kremlin stratagems have led commentators to mistake e.g., Russia’s early “attack” on Kyiv as a blunderous failure.
However, it has arguably proven to be a brilliant effort to preliminarily shape the battlefield, fixing thousands of Ukrainian troops in place in the country’s western reaches thus rendering them incapable of reinforcing defenders of the real Russian focus in eastern Donbass conurbations.
On its own timeline and advancing slowly to preserve as many of its own troops as possible, the Russians are very deliberately and systematically defeating the Ukrainians on every front.
As for NATO’s counter moves. . .. Modern computerized weaponry is difficult to operate and maintain. It requires a long time to learn how to use and repair. When their highly trained operators and repairmen are wounded or killed, multi-million-dollar weapons become nothing but battlefield debris.
Heavy weapons systems in transport are also very vulnerable. They must be moved along roads, rail lines, and/or shipping lanes. They need to be stored before delivery. At every point of the supply chain, the systems in question can be attacked and destroyed.
Thus, logistics is important. Even in modern warfare, it is easier to defend close to home rather than far away.
Compared to Russia, NATO suppliers are disarmingly far away from Russia’s incursions into Ukraine – especially in the country’s eastern regions.
(By extension, neither is it a simple matter for the United States e.g., to militarily engage China over Taiwan, which is just off China’s shores, but more than 7000 miles from the U.S.
Simply put, China is beyond the military control of the United States.)
Ukraine is not Afghanistan. So, to expect that Russia will find “another Afghanistan” there is simplistic and (frankly) naive.
For one thing, Russia’s enemy in Ukraine is much more sophisticated than tribal peoples armed with AK47s, hiding in caves, and crammed in the cargo beds of Toyota pickups.
Ironically, this simple fact renders Russia’s better armed Ukrainian enemy far more vulnerable than tribal peoples in Afghanistan.
This is because (apart from those liabilities of massive, computerized weaponry) Ukrainians live in industrialized urban settings. Like us, they are completely dependent on oil, electricity, and computer technology – all of which are disabled with relative ease.
Unlike Afghanistan’s, Ukraine’s economy (and Russia’s too) is intimately connected with the rest of Europe’s and with the entire globe.
Hence, prolonged conflict in Ukraine unacceptably threatens the entire globalized system.
As a result, expecting the whole developed world to endure a Ukrainian war lasting years or decades all the while disrupting the lives of their own citizens is (again) patently naive.

Conclusion

In the light of Ivan Illich’s earlier noted truisms, here are half a dozen final and salutary bonus conclusions summarizing the thoughts just shared:

Illich’s suggestion was correct: beyond a certain point military sophistication becomes counterproductive in terms of world security, battlefield efficiency, and profligate expense.
The war in Ukraine is a case in point.
It also uncovers the related impotence of the United States itself and the foolhardiness of its over-expenditure on advanced weapons systems.
Additionally, the war reveals a similar impotence of the U.S. in a potential conflict with Russia or China and especially with Russia and China combined.
Russia’s overwhelming battlefield successes in Ukraine demonstrate that it has a highly trained and professional army led by generals schooled in the sophistications of modern warfare and informed by historical military precedent.
They are not fools.

Americans Should Be Dying in Ukraine: Random Notes from the Resistance Underground

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqFiF8Dqz7I

Let’s face it. The United States is the world’s classic bully – a synonym for “coward.” It’s like the playground tough who fearful of a bloody nose has others do the dirty work for him. “Let’s you and him fight,” is the bully’s refrain.

When you think about it, that’s exactly what the United States and the gang of thugs called NATO are doing in Ukraine. They admit it’s a proxy war. But our cowardly “leaders” know that a direct battlefield confrontation with Russia would be monumentally unpopular at home. (Imagine having to explain to American wives, children, parents, and grandparents why it’s worth their loved one’s death or maiming to bring “freedom” to a country more than 7000 miles away and which most would have difficulty locating on a map! It would be worse than Vietnam.)

Instead, it’s better to have Ukrainian husbands, fathers, sons, and brothers die rather than Americans. Yes: Let’s you and him fight. Few of us would have it any other way.

What I’m saying is that in the final analysis, it’s our permission, apathetic disinterest, and empty virtue signaling that has transformed the “land of the free and the home of the brave” into the land of cowardly and powerless bullies. I’m talking about you and me.

In other words, if we really believe that we’re the ones at war in Ukraine and (as Joe Biden said) “Putin must go,” then we should be willing to send our brothers, husbands, fathers, and uncles to die there, not Ukrainians. If we’re young enough, we should be willing to enlist and put our own heads into the Russian meat grinder.

But would any of us do that? Why should we dirty our hands? Why should Americans die in the war planned for decades?

No: Let’s you and him fight.

***

In the prolonged conflict in Ukraine, I’ve found that virtually the only completely informed, honest and balanced analysis derives from interviews involving Scott Ritter – the former Marine intelligence officer, Russia expert, and U.N. weapons inspector. Most others (i.e., all the mainstream media) are nothing but U.S., NATO, and Ukraine cheerleaders. Even the few who dare to speak out against “our” country’s belligerent policies miss the big picture that Ritter sees.

***

Here’s what he’s saying now:

Despite its undeniable battlefield successes, Russia is not winning in Ukraine.
Russia had three clear objectives in initiating its special operation: (1) Free Ukraine’s Russian-speaking populations in the country’s southeastern region from attacks by the Ukrainian army which over the last six years have cost the Donbass more than 14,000 lives. (2) De-Nazify Ukraine which has incorporated card carrying, swastika-tattooed Nazis into its government and military forces. (3) Force the Kyiv government to drop its ambitions to join NATO – instead adopting a position of neutrality like Sweden once did
Russia will surely achieve the first objective. Its forces have surrounded Ukrainian troops in the Donbass in ever-tightening pincers. There, Ukrainians will be compelled to surrender or be annihilated. They have no other options.
Russia success in Mariupol (a major Neo-Nazi center) has also removed from action many extreme right-wing cadres. It has achieved the same result in the Donbass where the Ukrainian army had been spearheaded by openly white supremacist, fascist troops. As already indicated, the latter are surrounded and trapped in what Russian military theory describes as an inescapable “cauldron.” In other words, Ukraine has been or will be significantly (though by no means completely) de-nazified.
However, the massive and unforeseen influx of U.S. funding and ordnance into Ukraine has rendered virtually impossible the achievement of Russia’s goal of demilitarizing the country and forcing it into political neutrality. (The $40 billion just authorized by Washington means that in just two months, Ukraine will have received dollar amounts exceeding Russian defense budgeting for an entire year!)
This unexpected development means that even if Russia declares “mission accomplished,” withdraws, and ends up controlling Donbass, Odessa, Crimea, and a few other cities and regions, it will always have to deal with a massively armed and NATO trained adversary threatening those gains.
Russia’s President Putin can counter such moves only by securing his Duma’s permission to move from special military operation to all-out war against Ukraine. That’s because his countermove would necessarily entail national mobilization including a military draft to increase Russian forces in Ukraine far beyond the 200,000 now deployed there.
In Ritter’s eyes, there’s no way anything short of the latter change in strategy might be called “victory.”
In other words, Russia will have won its battles but lost the war.

***

As he himself admits, Ritter makes the above analysis while wearing only his military glasses that allow him to perceive nothing but highly predictable battlefield realities. Such limited vision, he concedes, blinkers out crucial political factors whose effects are less foreseeable. For instance, how long will it take Ukraine’s mothers and wives to demand that Kyiv stop sending their sons, husbands, brothers, and uncles to certain death in that Russian meat grinder? How long will it take electorates in Europe and the States to rebel against food, petrol, home heating and cooling prices inflated by sanctions interdicting Russia’s supply of oil and natural gas? In other words, rebellion at the ballot box and/or in the streets could pressure NATO representatives to the negotiating table despite their desire to prolong the conflict. Ritter chooses not to highlight such factors.

***

Of course, the same holds true for Moscow. Though Russian casualties are fewer and though (contrary to the intentions of the sanctions) the ruble is now stronger than ever and even though Russia’s producers are successfully locating markets (in China, India, Iran, and by import substitution) and even though Putin’s approval ratings are over 80%, Russian wives and mothers find body bags just as repellant as their Ukrainian counterparts.

***

I do too. So let’s change the subject.

***

They say that about a thousand Ukrainian Neo-Nazi soldiers have finally surrendered after months of de facto imprisonment in the bowels of Mariupol’s Azovstal steel plant. But our deceitful MSM has called the capitulation an “evacuation” (Where? To Siberia?). They’ve called it a “leaving,” a “withdrawal,” a recognition of “mission accomplished.”

***

Can you imagine the MSM reaction if the situation were reversed – if the Russians were the ones virtually imprisoned for weeks in that steel plant? That, after all, is the way they would have been described – helplessly imprisoned rather than heroically resisting. And their “evacuation” from their underground holes waving their underwear as white flags would have been described as a humiliating surrender.

***

Where’s the peace movement in all of this? Why are the most prominent voices for peace in Ukraine coming from the right — from Trumpists for God’s sake? Can’t figure that one out.

***

And where are the followers of the one who said “Put away your sword. Those who live by the sword will die by the sword” (MT 26:2) and “Love your enemies; do good to them that hate you” (MT 5:44) and “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (LK 23:34)? Catholic Joe Biden’s not saying that — even though Pope Francis lays much of the blame for Ukraine’s war at his feet.

***

Are you saying any of those things?

***

Can anyone say “Bully for you?”

Only Critical Thinkers Taking to the Streets Can Save Us

I just finished watching an hour-long interview on Garland Nixon’s “Saturday Morning Live with Scott Ritter and Ray McGovern” (see above). Both the guests are former U.S. government insiders with wide experience in Russia.

As an anti-imperialist, I found the program quite sobering.

Scott Ritter, it turns out, has drastically changed his assessment of what’s occurring in Ukraine.

His previous analysis was quite certain that the Ukrainians would be no match for the Russians. Now however Ritter’s evaluation of Moscow’s threefold goals (liberation of Ukraine’s Donbass region, denazification of its army, and general demilitarization of the country) is much more nuanced.

He still sees the Russians moving ahead (but much more slowly than anticipated) with the liberation of the Donbass and with destruction of significant Nazi cadres there and in Mariupol.

However, he now admits, that destroying the Ukrainian military has been gravely complicated by the influx of money and weaponry (most recently, $40 billion worth) from the United States.

That flood of support has allowed the Ukrainian army to reconstitute itself in Ukraine’s west.

So, even if the Russians might be successful in the country’s southeast region, the question becomes what next? Reconstitution of the Ukrainian army complicates achievement of the goal of demilitarizing Ukraine.

All of this also raises the question of maintaining any gains the Russians might be able to achieve in the Donbass region. Maintenance there could potentially bleed the Russians dry in terms of resources, materiel, and lives lost. Will it be necessary for Moscow to keep an occupation force there to protect the breakaway republics of Luhansk and Donetsk?

Such developments and questions have forced upon the Kremlin serious decisions which include:

(1) Declaration of “mission accomplished” after the Donbass region has been secured and (2) subsequent withdrawal of forces from Ukraine, however without securing the surrender of the Ukrainian government or the country’s demilitarization
In pursuit of the goal of demilitarizing Ukraine turning attention north towards Kyiv and the military capabilities developing in that area of the country. This option would entail extensive bombing of western supply routes, depots and garrisons.
However, this would also involve widening the conflict from a “special military operation” to a declared war on Ukraine along with a corresponding mobilization of millions of Russian troops – with the social and economic costs inevitably associated with that decision.
Broadening the war even wider to include Finland’s threat to Russia before it can become a NATO member under the protection of Article 5 of the NATO Charter.

Of course, all of this involves China (by far the ultimate and real target in NATO’s crosshairs) which is keeping a close eye on the situation.

According to Ritter and McGovern, China’s fear is that NATO will try to draw it into a debilitating conflict like Russia’s in Ukraine. To that end NATO’s imperial forces seem bent on encouraging Taiwan to declare independence from China.

In the eyes of McGovern and Ritter, China would not tolerate such a move and would act immediately and decisively to keep Taiwan under control. They point out that the island’s situation is far different from Ukraine’s. Whereas Ukraine can be supplied militarily from surrounding NATO countries, that same possibility isn’t available for Taiwan. As shown by the sinking of the Russian flagship (the Moskva) any NATO ships carrying materiel would be easily sunk by Chinese artillery onshore.

So, Taiwan has two alternatives, both including ultimate control by China: (1) Taiwan can either continue with its mutually beneficial socio-political and economic arrangements with the mainland or (2) those arrangements will be maintained under Chinese occupation. China will tolerate no third eventuation.

Conclusion

Of course, both McGovern and Ritter were quite clear that none of this need be happening. No critical thinker should forget this or get swept up into our nation’s current war fever.

Instead, critical thought entails remembering that it is the bellicose insistence of the United States on widening NATO right up to Russia’s borders (rather than the dissolution of NATO itself as an outmoded organization) that has provoked this entire crisis.

Absent U.S. insistence on expanding NATO and installing missiles on Russia’s border, the Kremlin represented a military threat to no one in Europe. Neither does China constitute anything other than an economic competitor to the United States. Militarily, it is nowhere threatening the United States.

Rather, within the web of capitalist sanctification of competition as the ultimate value, China’s mortal sin consists merely in the fact that it greatly outperforms the U.S. and Europe in terms of economic growth, foreign assistance, and elimination of world poverty.

It is the decision of the United States to allow no economic rivals, it is its arbitrary and criminal insistence on maintaining “full spectrum dominance” that lies behind the current lamentable set of events. Only an anti-war movement taking to the streets in the name of clear vision, critical thinking, and sanity can prevent our government’s warmongers from leading the world to ultimate disaster.

Ukraine: Scott Ritter Exposes Six Mainstream Media Lies

There is no need to recall the familiar memes: Insane, evil, Hitler-like Vladimir Putin! His total war! Russian war crimes! The massacre at Boucha! Mass graves in Mariupol! Russian military ineptitude! Their failure to conquer Kiev! Their stalled campaign in Donbass! Moderate and heroic (reformed) Nazi patriots!

Like most Americans, when this Ukrainian crisis began, it seemed almost irresistible to accept such unanimous mainstream media (MSM) “of course” characterizations.

Most became persuaded that Vladimir Putin expected a quick victory in Ukraine. It also seemed simply given that the madman’s goal was to completely overrun, conquer, and occupy his neighbor to the west. His failure to simply roll over the country in two or three days revealed his miscalculations and the ineptitude of the Russian army. Putin’s calling the invasion a “special military operation” was a cynical renaming of a blatantly illegal incursion. The Ukrainians seemed to have a chance of winning.

Now, however, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to believe any of that – largely because of analysis offered by critically thinking sources – especially that of Scott Ritter, whose explanations of military strategy seem far more detailed, coherent, logical, and informed than what’s presented on CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, or even on “Democracy Now.”

Let me show you what I mean.

Critical Analysis

The trustworthy sources I’m referring to include Robert Merschiemer, Noam Chomsky, Stephen F. Cohen, Chris Hedges, Vijay Prashad, George Galloway, Max Blumenthal, Yanis Varoufakis, Matt Taibbi, Aaron Mate, Ben Norton, and even Jimmy Dore.

Yes, most of them admit that there was grave miscalculation on Putin’s part. For instance, they point out that he was clearly erroneous in expecting Ukrainian Russian-speakers to rally to his side. His intelligence staffs got that terribly wrong (and heads rolled as a result).

Moreover, according to almost everyone, the Russian president’s operation is rendered unquestionably illegal by international law. Wars of aggression are forbidden, they point out, by post- World War II Nuremberg Laws and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. All those rulings (and more) prohibit wars like Putin’s (and the one, for instance, initiated by President George W. Bush against Iraq in 2003).

However, analysts outside the MSM also agree that the United States and NATO purposely provoked the Russian president to take the action he did. They also concur that the MSM has become simply a mouthpiece for the State Department with no mainstream dissent allowed. They are completely untrustworthy.

Moreover, even apart from the critical sources just mentioned, a close reading of Putin’s speeches delivered just prior to Russia’s entry into Ukraine show him to be much more thoughtful, and rational than most U.S. leaders who typically speak in slogans. By contrast, Putin has a firm grasp of history and an impressive ability to martial persuasive argument including historical and legal justifications for his actions. He respects his audience by treating them like adults. By all accounts, he doesn’t bluff.

Scott Ritter

Beyond all that, however, Scott Ritter has distinguished himself as the non-MSM commentator offering the most help towards understanding what’s actually happening on Ukraine’s field of battle. It’s not what you think.

A former Marine major, Ritter was a longtime U.S. intelligence expert. He also reached prominence as the U.S. weapons inspector. Before the Iraq War he was charged with investigating U.S. convictions that Saddam Hussein was concealing in his country weapons of mass destruction. Ritter’s team found no evidence of such concealment. They were relieved of their duties when they reported their findings.

Ritter also turns out to be highly literate and knowledgeable about military strategy. That’s where his analysis turns out to be most helpful.

Consider the following six points contradicting the memes just listed. They represent Ritter’s main points about what’s happening on the battlefield.

Putin’s war is indeed a “special military operation“: It was never the Russian president’s intention to conquer all of Ukraine. Instead, as he stated on the day beginning his Ukrainian foray: “The purpose of this operation is to protect people who, for eight years now, have been facing humiliation and genocide perpetrated by the Kiev regime. To this end, we will seek to demilitarise and denazify Ukraine, as well as bring to trial those who perpetrated numerous bloody crimes against civilians, including against citizens of the Russian Federation. It is not our plan to occupy the Ukrainian territory. We do not intend to impose anything on anyone by force.”

In other words, Putin’s purpose in Ukraine is threefold:

a) To protect Donetsk and Luhansk from what he sees as genocide perpetrated there by the Ukrainian Nazi Azov regiment largely responsible for Kiev’s aggression in Donbass since 2014

b) To bring to justice those who directed the massacres

c) And denazify and destroy the Ukrainian army in the process.

Those goals are clearly limited. The Russian president completely denies an intention or ability to occupy Ukraine.

2. The operation has been run with scrupulous respect for rules of war: According to Ritter, the Russian army “came in soft” to Ukraine. As distinguished from U.S. tactics in Iraq, there was no “Shock and Awe” – no preliminary levelling of entire cities such as Mosul and Fallujah. Instead, in the words of U.S. Colonel Doug Macgregor, “The first five days, I think frankly, the Russian forces were too gentle. They’ve since corrected that.” Moreover, on Ritter’s analysis, civilian targets have been carefully avoided. However, he points out that if Ukrainians use civilians as shields by, for instance, locating tanks next to hospitals or schools, those buildings become military targets. As for “mass graves,” bodies have been identified and given separate temporary marked graves near established cemeteries. In summary, according to Ritter, the rules of war have in general been followed scrupulously by the Russian army which is run by “highly professional” officers.

3. Accounts of the Boucha massacre are questionable: Here, Ritter uses his experience as a weapons inspector to underline the inconsistencies in the widespread mainstream accounts of the execution-style killings in Boucha. According to the MSM, Russian forces were shockingly brutal in leaving behind many Boucha civilians shot in the back of their heads with their hands tied behind their backs. Such accounts, Ritter contends, are suspicious. Questions are raised, he notes, by the fact that the executed civilians often had white or green ribbons displayed around their arms. White, he says, was an indication of neutrality in the war; green showed support of the Russians. As well, in some photos, empty green boxes appeared near the victims. Such boxes were used by Russian soldiers to supply food to civilians in occupied neighborhoods. Ritter’s conclusion: the victims in Boucha were likely executed as collaborators by the Ukrainian police force.

4. Russia’s early attack on Kiev was highly successful. According to Ritter, the early assault on Kiev and other western cities were “feints” – deceptive military maneuvers that are standard parts of what military textbooks call “shaping the battlefield.” The deception’s intention was to fix in place Ukrainian defenders, so that they would be rendered unable to come to the aid of eastern comrades in Mariupol and the Donbass – Russia’s real targets as havens for the Nazi Azov Battalion. No responsible military leadership (and the Russian generals, he says, are consummate professionals) would ever attack any city (much less a huge one like Kiev) with less than a ratio of 3 attackers for every 1 defender. In Kiev, the Russians attacked with far less — only 40,00 troops in total. They therefore had no intention of taking Kiev early on. They were shaping the battlefield. The marvel is that they succeeded in getting Ukrainian defenders to buy their feints.

5. The campaign in Donbass is unfolding according to plan. Putin’s words are that the battle in Donbass is very “literate.” He means it’s being waged by the book – intentionally slowly and deliberately according to classic military strategy in order to lessen Russian casualties. Two pincers (one from the north and one from the south) have about 60,000-100,000 Ukrainian troops trapped in a military “cauldron.” Gradually (not allowing themselves to be hurried by outside expectations, criticism, and misinterpretation), the Russians are moving sector by sector towards their surrounded prey that has nowhere to go. Ukrainian options are to surrender, be killed, or attempt a breakout that will cost them at least 20,000-30,000 dead.

6. The Ukrainian army is a Nazi organization: Ritter supports this position as follows: He asks, would you say that the U.S. Army is racist? Of course not, he answers. But what if there were in the U.S. south a highly organized KKK regiment? And what if the U.S. Army incorporated that regiment as such into its ranks and distributed its officers throughout the army hierarchy? And what if it used that regiment as the leading edge of its military operations? Would you then consider the army racist? Yes, Ritter concludes. But, he says, (mutatis mutandis) that’s precisely what’s happened in the Ukrainian armed forces. A large Nazi regiment has been incorporated as such into its ranks with Nazi officer distributed throughout. And the Ukrainian government has those forces leading the attack on the Donbass region – which has taken 14,000 lives since 2014. That renders, he concludes, the Ukrainian army and its sponsoring government Nazi.

Conclusion

Recently, The Economist ran a story based on the memes initially named here. The article’s title was “How Rotten is Russia’s Army?” It contended that:

“The invasion of Ukraine has been a disaster for Russia’s armed forces. About 15,000 troops have been killed in two months of fighting, according to the British government. At least 1,600 armoured vehicles have been destroyed. The assault on the capital, Kyiv, was a chaotic failure. For Mr. Putin this is a crushing setback, because the use of military force is central to his strategy for making Russia count in the world. Russia may be vast, but it is a medium-sized polity that still yearns to be a superpower. To fill the gap between its capacities and its aspirations, Mr. Putin has repeatedly turned to the only sphere where Russia can still purport to worldclass: military force. It is a welcome fact that the failure of Russia’s rotten army in Ukraine weakens this claim. Unfortunately, this also leaves the world facing a nuclear-armed power with a point to prove.”

As noted earlier, conclusions like The Economist’s are par for the course in the mainstream media. Their propagandistic nature is shown by the fact that they would never have been drawn about the U.S. army after its repeated and obvious failures in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Vietnam. In their light, can anyone imagine an MSM outlet posing the question “How Rotten is America’s Army?”

Neither would The Economist or any other mainstream outlet perceive the obvious psychological projection and irony of describing Russia in terms entirely applicable to the United States which has “repeatedly turned to the only sphere where (it) can still purport to be world class: military force.”

Be that as it may, the common sense of Scott Ritter’s analysis seems far more evident than the The Economist’s or anyone else’s self-serving and misleading memes.

The conclusion here is that the MSM should be ignored as propaganda pure and simple. Instead, analysts like Scott Ritter and the other critical reporters mentioned above should be sought out and heeded.