Will it be called the “Speech to End all Speeches”—at least to end humanity as we knew it? It sounds like a war speech to me, especially when it comes to not seeking American troops to be fighting in Russia, quickly corrected to “against Russia” or Ukraine. Just after the Freudian slip, he continued talking about the Baltic republics, another region being under so-called threats—and as always from the same bogyman.
Nobody should be deceived as to what is going on, less than upstanding intentions and with the backdrop of a US domestic political crisis, records budget deficient, gaping economic division between rich and poor, out of control illegal immigration, and a rapid meltdown of the US integrity over the policy failures in Afghanistan, Iraq and Ukraine for starters.
If you think things were bad, with all what is has going on in Ukraine and other hotspots, now add in Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, and Iran … you have not seen anything yet!
Biden is like Woodrow Wilson, presenting himself as one who unites, but in reality he is a racist imperialist that pretends to be a progressive—and is willing to do whatever it takes to defend his clan and economic interests, even if it takes the rest of the world with him.
I wonder how kindly history will serve Joe Biden and his administration in comparison, “Woodrow Wilson was a visionary and proponent of self-government while obscuring the fact that his racism and racial paternalism drove much of his policies at home and abroad.”
In an open letter to President Wilson dated September 1913, Du Bois wrote:
“Sir, you have now been President of the United States for six months and what is the result?” showing his concern that the black vote that helped propel Wilson into the oval office had been “conveniently forgotten”, in light of Woodrow Wilson’s support for segregationist policies in the old south.
Gun Boat “Flattop” Diplomacy
It is no wonder since Biden has been president that the results of his tenure has been so dubious, and with the arrival of two aircraft carrier strike groups off the coast of Israel and the Gaza Strip, The U.S. State Department issued a ‘worldwide caution’ alert Thursday amid “fears” the Hamas-Israel conflict could spread across the region—as if that is not ALREADY the game; it is NOT concealed.
One needs to go to the source of such inspiration for such learned and targeted speeches, in the realm of shock of awe, the Atlantic Council and its collecting of crowing pundits – as it is clear what is their intention, i.e., to somehow “to tie together the conflicts in Israel and Ukraine” as part of a larger struggle for democracy and freedom. Biden made the case that US leadership in these global crises will make the United States safer.”
Not many, at least those who know Biden and his sordid history, believe that he is being honest with the American people, and it is blatantly obvious he is using the two separate conflicts as a flimsy cover to continue with the same failed domestic and foreign policies that are bankrupting both America and its allies, both morally and financially.
Yes, he may have “leveled with Americans that this [purported] safety will come at a cost, calling on Congress to pass an “unprecedented” aid package for Ukraine and Israel. But he also told Americans that the cost of walking away from these wars would be much higher.”
The motivation is clear: to “somehow” combine calls for more and more money to finance the fight for “freedom and democracy,” and support those who are alien to the subject at the same time. He tried his best to gives arguments in his speech whereby “both parties can embrace for an Ukraine-Israel aid package!”
Naturally, what the collective West is providing, according to the shiny propaganda, and in tandem, especially on the part of the United States, is to neutralize the evil intentions of Russia, Iran and China, as they are collectively the New Evil Empire in the rhetoric of the US administration and neocons.
Biden makes it all sound so simple, as he adds fuel to the fire in that is “he’s sending an urgent request to Congress for a substantial package of aid for both Israel and Ukraine— which will require support from both Democrats and Republicans to become law.”
Why should Americans Care?
Biden talks about rights, but what rights and at whose expense, those in the crossfire or those who have to pay for foreign policy firefights, wars and conflicts are merely a complication, and the Palestinian tale is more like a story from The Gulag Archipelago, one penned by Solzhenitsyn in telling the fate of a scattered prison-slave labor system connecting prisons and labor camps that came into being shortly after the Bolsheviks seized power in Russia in 1917.
As Daniel Fried, the Weiser Family distinguished fellow at the Atlantic Council and a former US assistant Secretary of State for Europe, so accurately describes in his speech.
He didn’t do a lot of other things in the speech, and critics will have a field day pointing out various “he could have said.” This was a speech to rally US support for an internationalist agenda and the funding for Israel and Ukraine to back it.
It was a speech rooted in a belief in American leadership in the world, in a conviction that the US national interest requires not just transactional deals but a higher purpose. It’s a tough case to make to a skeptical US public, with cynical isolationism coming back as a political force for the first time in generations, but a critical one.
It may go down as the speech that sealed his fate, and was a game changer in the American political landscape. Why should the populace in the US and much of the world worry about self-inflicted problems that countries as Ukraine and Israel (if you want to accept either as legitimate countries, or nation states, as it is all moot now) have brought upon themselves by their overtly racist and genocidal policies?
Their destinies, on the policy level, are being decided by others, and the populations, including Palestinians, are just pawns in a large board game. It not, as Biden claimed, “American leadership is what is holding the world together,” but it is just the opposite. It is not that in theory this is true, but in practice, and how those claiming the moral high ground are far from it.
As Matthew Kroenig, vice president and senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, says.
Still, ultimately, I believe the speech fell short. Biden needed to explain what he hopes to achieve in Israel and Ukraine, how he plans to do that, and why the outcome of these conflicts matters to the kitchen table concerns of everyday Americans. He did not do that.
Hence, it is clear American values are being eroded by apathy, cultural decline and moral decadence, so much so that many people and even countries are waking up to see the shift in direction as the root cause of much of the decadence at home and abroad—and not to mention a range of social and economic issues.
Is it an Infliction point, deflection or reflection point?
Yes, Biden did emphasize the decisions we make today will affect decades to come, as we’re “facing an inflection point.” What he did not mention, is that what decisions today will be like when reaching the point of diminishing returns, the term often used to consider the potential returns on investment, and at which point does each unit of investment bring about reducing returns.
It is better described thus “throwing good, “hard-earned” taxpayer money after bad” —and for what – to turn more of the world against the Americans and their range of willing executors, allies, collaborators’, and to further destabilize an already destabilized region and world all the more?
Why should innocents on all side die for the benefit of so few people in the elites, for corporate projects, political subterfuge and to shore up fragile egos?
This is especially a question that needs to be asked when most of the conflicts could be resolved by negotiations if corrupt régimes were not being encouraged and financed with the means to violate the rights of their own citizens; all the while with the US turning a blind eye. It was US coffers that supplied the money and logistical support to do so—and with almost total impunity.
And not to forget to mention how Palestine is an occupied territory and Israel is an artificially imposed construct in the wake of the Holocaust, imposed by the UN and Zionists on the locals, including both Sabra Jews and Palestinians living side-by-side in peace.
The old and often overused Zionist saying
“A Land without a People for a People without a Land” is one of the BIGGEST lies of history”.
Ukraine was also a totally preventable armed conflict, with alternative outcomes that could have been negotiated, but now all that is moot! Who even mentions the Minsk Agreements anymore or the Camp David Accords, the “Framework for Peace in the Middle East,” or the Oslo Accords?
The purported two-State Solution is now assigned to the waste bin of history, and why does Biden not pull it out and to start afresh? And who remembers the Sykes Picot Treaty, Balfour Declaration and the British White Paper, the foundation for the mess that the Middle East finds itself in the wake of WW1 and its bloody aftermath, the foundation for WW2.
The rest is history, and it is no wonder why so few want to revisit history, as it explains so much of what went on and how we got to where we are now. And there is even history of American troops fighting in Russia after the Russian Revolution alongside the Whites.
“The Elephant in the Room”
And while we talk of messes of historical importance, one should not overlook the elephant in the corner of the room in this latest saga of violence in the Middle East.
Until the Hamas attack from the Gaza Strip, it was looking like Netanyahu was increasingly at risk of facing criminal charges for corruption, and his so-called judicial reforms were widely seen as an attempt to politicize the judiciary to protect himself. Not only Israeli society, but the security services and military, were split down the middle, with mass protests and fear of a civil war.
Now, thanks to the attack by Hamas, these divisions have been healed “miraculously” while hatred of “the other” in the form of the Palestinians mirrors the horrors of Nazi Germany towards the Jews.
Western media remains suspiciously silent on the history of Hamas, as explained by the Washington Post, and how the militant Islamist group was funded by Israel to undermine and fragment the secular Fatah and PLO, as was widely recognized previously
Is it only me who finds it suspicious that this attack occurred at exactly the time Netanyahu and his government needed it? Could this be the darkest of dirty games unfolding right before our eyes?
Look at who benefits most from this conflict, and try to hold down your bile.
Seth Ferris, investigative journalist and political scientist, expert on Middle Eastern affairs, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.