In the Season of Goodwill, there can be no peace as far as the United States is concerned.
U.S. President Joe Biden failed to obtain his Christmas wishlist of $111 billion in additional military funds for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan.
The so-called “supplementary military aid package” was blocked by the Senate this week mainly due to opposition from Republican lawmakers. Their opposition was primarily based on demands for more funding to be given to U.S. border security measures rather than on principles of anti-war and pro-peace.
Nevertheless, it is somewhat satisfying that Biden’s madcap militarism was dealt a blow.
It’s also quite a grim eye-opener that the American president – the supposed leader of the “free world” and a professed devout Christian – sees nothing more important than spending such colossal amounts of money on weapons of war. It is all the more odious given the approach of Christmas and the Season of Goodwill.
The appalling violence in Gaza and the futile war in Ukraine must be stopped immediately. Peace and the alleviation of suffering should be the utmost priority for all world leaders worthy of the name.
However, the Biden administration is having none of that. President Biden wants to send another $68 billion in weapons to Ukraine – on top of the more than $120 billion his administration has already supplied in aid to the Kiev regime.
It is estimated that 400,000 Ukrainian troops have been killed in nearly two years of a U.S.-led NATO proxy war against Russia. Yet, ludicrously, Biden declares this war to be an achievement in “defending democracy”. Instead of recognizing (even tacitly) that the conflict is a disastrous defeat for Washington and its allies, Biden wants to keep on throttling it.
Meanwhile, the White House has repudiated international calls for a ceasefire in Israel’s wanton offensive against Gaza. After more than two months of intensive aerial bombardment, more than 17,000 Palestinians have been killed and 50,000 injured. Most of the victims have been innocent children and women.
The barbarity is unspeakable. So much so that there is a strong suspicion that the Israeli regime is exploiting the Hamas attacks on October 7 as a pretext for ethnic extermination.
Despite the horrendous destruction, the Biden administration wants to give Israel an additional $14 billion in military aid on top of the $3.8 billion it receives annually from the United States.
The reported supply of 15,000 heavy bombs and one-tonne bunker buster ordnance from the U.S. to Israel has been made without any conditions on their use to limit civilian casualties. That makes the United States fully complicit in what can only be called genocide in Gaza.
To request even more killing power in the form of $14 billion supplementary military aid is tantamount to giving Israel an even brighter green light to continue the mass slaughter with impunity.
It is shuddering that this spiritually significant time of year does not give politicians pause for thought. The massacre of children in Gaza is particularly poignant given its location in the Holy Land and the proximity to the birthplace of Jesus Christ, whom Christians revere as the Son of God. The profanity is shocking.
To put the violence against civilians in Gaza in perspective. In the Christmas period of 1972, the United States conducted a mass bombing of Hanoi for two weeks. Operation Linebacker dropped 20,000 tonnes of explosives on the North Vietnam capital and other areas resulting in up to 2,000 civilian deaths.
That horrific, heartless aerial bombing campaign was described as the most intense since World War Two.
In Gaza, as of this date, eight weeks of relentless bombing have seen an estimated 50,000 tonnes of explosives dropped on densely crowded civilian centres that have killed more than 17,000 people with as many as 7,000 people missing, presumed dead under rubble.
That brings the death toll to 24,000. And despicably, there is no sign of the Israeli regime stopping its offensive over the next few weeks.
The United States under Joe Biden’s leadership is fully responsible for fueling this criminal aggression in Gaza, a genocide that in many respects has no comparison since WWII. In full view of the world.
Returning to the Ukraine conflict, it is clear from several reliable testimonies that the war in the former Soviet republic could have been stopped as far back as April 2022 when Russian and Ukrainian envoys agreed to a mutual political settlement brokered by Türkiye.
The Biden administration deliberately sabotaged that potential peace deal along with their British ally. The war was thus needlessly prolonged, incurring hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian military losses.
Regarding Gaza, the Biden administration has repeatedly used its veto at the United Nations Security Council to block resolutions calling for a complete ceasefire.
The proposal to supply an extra $111 billion in military weapons to Ukraine and Israel underlines the warmongering insanity and criminality of the United States. As if that is not bad enough, in addition to those two conflicts, the Biden bill also earmarked a massive increase in military aid to Taiwan in what would be a gratuitous escalation in provocation towards China.
Biden’s appeals and justifications for this rampant warmongering are absurd and preposterous.
On the Ukraine aid, he told Americans in a televised nationwide address this week that failing to pass the funds would be like “kneecapping Ukraine on the battlefield”. He concluded his febrile rant: “We can’t let Putin win, we can’t let Putin win!”
It is a tragedy to note that peace is not that elusive nor is it too difficult. It is achievable with the right political will, moral conviction and diplomatic dialogue. Abiding by international law is of course a prerequisite.
Another essential element is to stop fueling war by malevolent prioritizing of resources.
Washington could stop the heinous conflict and violence in many parts of the world simply by halting the supply of bombs and munitions.
But, alas, this contradiction exposes the deep and nefarious dilemma. The United States cannot cease warmongering because its entire hyper-militarized capitalist economy is built on it.
That’s why in the Season of Goodwill, there can be no peace as far as the United States is concerned.
It is worth dwelling on that damning truth. World peace is anathema to the United States as it is currently constituted as a state. The sooner it collapses from its imperial corruption, the better for the rest of humanity.
By SCF Editorial
Published by SCF
Republished by The 21st Century
The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of 21cir.com.