Susan Abulhawa’s blistering speech at the Oxford Union was the most ferocious indictment of Israel in the last decade. Author Abulhawa—who is a long-term human rights activist—summarized the iniquitous history of the Jewish state in a few succinct paragraphs while shedding light on the obscene toxic ideology that has permeated the nation’s doctrine from the very beginning. Abulhawa ignored the fictitious claim that Israel was created to provide safety and security for the Jewish people and, instead, showed that the country’s founders were maniacally focused on seizing land while expelling or exterminating the indigenous population. Ethnic cleansing and land theft are not an unavoidable response to sporatic Palestinian violence, but the cornerstones of the pernicious dogma that animates the Zionist state. Needless to say, Abulhawa’s presentation was met with riotous applause that lasted for more than three minutes as the audience expressed their appreciation for her heartfelt testimony. Here’s part of what she said:

When I was in Gaza, I saw a little boy no more than 9 years whose hands and part of his face, had been blown off from a booby trapped can of food that soldiers had left behind for Gaza’s starving children. I later learned that they had also left poisoned food for people in Shujaiyya, and in the 1980s and 90s, Israeli soldiers had left booby trapped toys in southern Lebanon that exploded when excited children picked them up.

The harm they do is diabolical, and yet, they expect you to believe they are the victims. Invoking Europe’s holocaust and screaming antisemitism, they expect you to suspend fundamental human reason to believe that the daily sniping of children with so called “kill shots� and the bombing of entire neighborhoods that bury families alive and wipe out whole bloodlines is self-defense.

They want you to believe that a man who had not eaten a thing in over 72 hours, who kept fighting even when all he had was one functioning arm, that this man was motivated by some innate savagery and irrational hatred or jealousy of Jews, rather than the indominable yearning to see his people free in their own homeland. Susan Abulhawa, Oxford Union Debate, Jewish Voice for Labor

Has there ever been a clearer example ‘good vs evil’ than what we are seeing play out now in Gaza today? Israeli soldiers have produced a myriad of videos they have put on social media gleefully parading their sadistic behavior for all to see; mugging for the camera while they blow up hospitals, universities or residential buildings; smiling smugly while they brandish their weapons over the heads of naked prisoners bound and gagged, squatting helplessly on the ground; or dancing fiendishly while blocking trucks filled with food and medical supplies earmarked for starving women and children scraping by in threadbare tent cities. Who are these people? Where do they come from? What type of twisted environment and psychotic upbringing produced these monsters that revel in the unspeakable suffering of others?

And how is it that not even one of these TikTok celebrities has been reprimanded or faced court-martial for their heinous breach of military discipline? Or do the IDF honchos tacitly approve of this outrageous and odious behavior? Here’s more from Abulhawa:

….if the roles were reversed—if Palestinians had spent the last eight decade stealing Jewish homes, expelling, oppressing, imprisoning, poisoning, torturing, raping and killing them; if Palestinians had killed an estimated 300,000 Jews in one year, targeted their journalists, their thinkers, their healthcare workers, their athletes, their artists, bombed every Israeli hospital, university, library, museum, cultural center, synagogue, and simultaneously set up an observation platform where people came watch their slaughter as if a tourist attraction;

if Palestinians had corralled them by the hundreds of thousands into flimsy tents, bombed them in so called safe zones, burned them alive, cut off their food, water, and medicine….

if Palestinians made Jewish children wander barefoot with empty pots; made them gather the flesh of their parents into plastic bags; made them bury their siblings, cousins and friends; made them sneak out from their tents in the middle of the night to sleep on their parents’ graves; made them pray for death just to join their families and not be alone in this terrible world anymore, and terrorized them so utterly that their children lose their hair, lose their memory, lose their minds, and made those as young as 4 and 5 year old were die of heart attacks;

if we mercilessly forced their NICU babies to die, alone in hospital beds, crying until they could cry no more, died and decomposed in the same spot;

if Palestinians used wheat flour aid trucks to lure starving jews, then opened fire on them when they gathered to collect a day’s bread; if Palestinians finally allowed a food delivery into a shelter with hungry Jews, then set fire to the entire shelter and aid truck before anyone could taste the food;

if a Palestinian sniper bragged about blowing out 42 Jewish kneecaps in one day as one Israeli soldier did in 2019; if a Palestinian admitted to CNN that he ran over hundreds of Jews with his tank, their squished flesh lingering in the tank treads;

if Palestinians were systematically raping Jewish doctors, patients, and other captives with hot metal rods, jagged and electrified sticks, and fire extinguishers, sometimes raping to death, as happened with Dr Adnan alBursh and others;

if Jewish women were forced to give birth in filth, get C-sections or leg amputations without anesthesia; if we destroyed their children then decorated our tanks with their toys; if we killed or displaced their women then posed with their lingerie…

if the world were watching the livestreamed systematic annihilation of Jews in real time, there would be no debating whether that constituted terrorism or genocide.

And yet two Palestinians—myself and Mohammad el-Kurd— showed up here to do just that, enduring the indignity of debating those who think our only life choices should be to leave our homeland, submit to their supremacy, or die politely and quietly. Susan Abulhawa, Oxford Union Debate, Jewish Voice for Labor

In a recent interview with journalist Gideon Levy, the author tried to explain the extraordinary changes that have taken place in Israel since October 7, the most profound of which is that

“Israel lost its humanity…. Totally lost its humanity…That’s the first and most dramatic change…. after the seventh of October…. We can do whatever we want…. and nobody will tell us how far we can go. We can go as far as we want.”

And this, of course, is exactly what we’ve seen. We’ve seen a government and its military acting with complete impunity as if no laws, no restrictions, and no rules of conduct applied to them at all. Whoever is killed by their reckless and ruthless actions, deserved it because any act of brutality perpetrated by Israel naturally falls under the rubric of “self-defense.” This also explains the callous disdain for the suffering of others, which is a noxious mind-virus that has infected the great majority of people living in Israel today. According to Levy, empathy—the most venerable and elevated of all human feelings—is not merely banned in Israel, it’s actually become illegal. Check it out:

Syria is an indispensable part of Israel’s ambitious plan to remake the Middle East. The country sits at the heart of the region and serves as both a critical landbridge for the transport of weaponry and foot-soldiers from Iran to its allies, as well as the geopolitical center of the armed resistance to Israeli expansion. In order to truly dominate the region, Israel must topple the government in Damascus and install a puppet regime similar to Jordan and Egypt. Now that Washington has been persuaded to ‘unconditionally’ support Israel’s interests (over its own), there is no better time to affect the changes that are most likely to achieve Tel Aviv’s overarching plan. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is thus prepared to launch a ground war from the South to create a two-front war that will split Syrian forces in half greatly improving his prospects for success. At the same time, US-backed jihadis will continue their rampage in the North gradually eroding Syria’s tattered defenses while further securing Syria’s industrial capital, Aleppo. If Damascus falls and Assad is removed from power, Israel’s dream of regional hegemony will be within reach and likely attainable if—as we assume—President Trump has committed to initiating a war with Iran as part of a quid pro quo with powerful Lobbyists who shoehorned back him into the White House. But, first, Syria must be pacified, its army defeated, and its present ruler ousted. That is the only way that Iran can be effectively cut off from its allies and partners and thus prepared for the dreadful onslaught ahead.

At present, there is only one man on earth who can put an end to Israel’s bloodthirsty crusade:

If Putin does not act fast and provide emergency assistance to Assad, then the current course of events is likely to be irreversible. This could even mean the deploying of Russian combat troops to stave off the US-backed terrorist offensive or (the soon-to-be) provocations in the South. In short, the sovereign state of Syria now faces an existential crisis which will negatively impact the entire region and the world if Putin does not abandon his typically cautious approach and provide the tools Syria needs to fend off the barbarians.

In Sunday’s edition of the Times of Israel, we see that Israeli war-planners have already settled on a pretext for invading Syria from the South. Check out this excerpt from an article titled Rebels’ advances in Syria spell short-term benefits, potential trouble for Israel, intel chiefs said to tell PM

Israel is watching the jihadist rebels’ advances in Syria with considerable wariness, with intelligence chiefs telling the political echelon developments in Syria could ultimately spell trouble for Israel, Channel 12 reports…. Netanyahu was reportedly told that Hezbollah’s attention will now be shifted to Syria, and “so will its forces, in order to defend the Assad regime.â€�….

The intelligence chiefs ….have warned, “the collapse of the Assad regime would likely create chaos in which military threats against Israel would develop.â€�

Channel 12 further reports that concerns were raised at Friday’s security consultation that “strategic capabilities� of the Assad regime could fall into the jihadists’ hands. The prime concern relates to “the remnants of chemical weapons,� the report says.

The IDF is said to be preparing for a scenario where Israel would be required to act, the report says without elaboration.

There is also an assessment that Syria might open its gates to a significant number of Iranian forces in order to try to stabilize the country, the report says.Rebels’ advances in Syria spell short-term benefits, potential trouble for Israel, intel chiefs said to tell PM, Times of Israel

There it is in black and white, the justification for invading Syria. Israel has a number of excuses from which to choose; everything from “chemical weapons” to “Iranian forces” to post regime change “chaos” to Hezbollah forces “defending the Assad regime.” At every step, you can see how well-prepared Israel is for any eventuality. This plan has been in the works for years if not longer. And, of course, the strategy needs to be executed quickly to prepare the battlefield for the Grand Finale, the January inauguration, when the most pro-Zionist president in US history will ascend the throne and reward Israel with the war on Iran it so ardently seeks. Nothing is left to chance.

Video—Syrian President Assad explains that “Terrorists are the new armies of the West” 3 minutes

🇸🇾 Assad (2023): "World War 3 is already underway but it is different in form… wars are moving towards proxy wars. Zelensky wages war on behalf of the West with his Nazi army. Likewise, terrorists are armies acting on behalf of the West in Syria and elsewhere." pic.twitter.com/BIxnRzvaLs

— COMBATE |🇵🇷 (@upholdreality) November 30, 2024

Surprisingly, the folks at the Jerusalem Post are more straightforward about their views on the developments in Aleppo. In fact, one astute analyst candidly admits that the capitulation of the nation’s industrial Capital at the hands of fanatical throat-cutters is “good news”. Say what?? Her’s an excerpt from the article:

The Islamist attack on Aleppo is “ostensibly good news for Israel,â€� Daniel Rakov, a senior research fellow for the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, said in a Saturday post to X/Twitter….. he said that “the fall of northern Syria to the rebels damages the infrastructure of the Iranians and Hezbollah there and will make it difficult for them to work to restore Hezbollah.â€�……

The Israeli researcher also stated that Russian state media is largely ignoring the conflict in Aleppo while claiming that Russian commentators on global conflicts said that Moscow is not responsible for the defense failure of the Syrian city, saying that Russia had very few forces there and the incident was a huge failure for the Assad regime….

An opportunity for Israel to strike Syria?

Rakov then entertains the idea of Israel having the opportunity to attack Syria due to the weakness demonstrated by the Assad regime….

“Assad’s loss of Aleppo damages Russia’s image as a power capable of projecting influence outside the post-Soviet space and threatens an important strategic asset of Putin’s, which is the bases in Syria,� he wrote. “This also reflects negatively on Russia’s image in the region.

“The Russians, as we can learn from the Ukrainian offensive in Kursk, are in no hurry to get hysterical, but the speed with which Aleppo fell will require them to respond quickly,� he wrote.

The JISS researcher concluded his post by saying that while the unstable situation in Syria may cause Assad and the Russians to open the gates more strongly for the entry of Iranian military forces, the collapse of the Assad regime may create a scenario for the growth of significant military threats against Israel. Attacks in Aleppo ‘ostensibly good news for Israel,’ JISS researcher says, Jerusalem Post

Repeat: “An opportunity for Israel to strike Syria”?

I never cease to be amazed by the pervasive belief that the US military is superior to any other on the planet. Upon what basis is this faith founded? The US has not engaged in a real war since Korea. No one in the US military has ANY experience with high-intensity conflict. Will Schryver, military analyst

If the United States launches a nuclear “decapitation” strike on Russia that kills President Putin and his Generals, Russia has a backup system in place that will automatically retaliate. The Dead Hand system is designed to collect data from sensors scattered across Russia on radiation, heat and seismic activity confirming a nuclear strike. If the system does not receive instructions from Moscow’s Command Center with a given period of time, the system will autonomously launch 4,000 tactical and strategic intercontinental ballistic missiles at the United States ensuring the complete destruction of the country and the incineration of hundreds of millions of Americans. Moscow’s message is simple: “Even if a preemptive strike takes out our leaders, our ‘dead hand’ will still kill you all.” Dead Hand, Planet Report

Most Americans continue to believe that the United States will prevail in a conventional war with Russia. But that is simply not the case. For starters, Russia’s state-of-the-art missile technology and missile defense systems are vastly superior to those produced by western weapons manufacturers. Secondly, Russia can field an army of more than 1 million battle-hardened combat troops who have experienced high-intensity warfare and are prepared to engage whatever enemy they may face in the future. Third, the United States no longer has the industrial capacity to match Russia’s impressive output of lethal weaponry, artillery shells, ammunition, and cutting-edge ballistic missiles. In short, Russian military capability far exceeds that of the US in the areas that really count: High-tech weaponry, military industrial capacity, and experienced manpower. In order to drive this overall point home, I’ve taken excerpts from the work of three military analysts who explain these matters in greater detail underscoring the dramatic shortcomings of the modern US military and the problems it is likely to encounter when faced with a more technologically advanced and formidable adversary. The first excerpt is from an article by Alex Vershinin titled The Return of Industrial Warfare:

The war in Ukraine has proven that the age of industrial warfare is still here. The massive consumption of equipment, vehicles and ammunition requires a large-scale industrial base for resupply – quantity still has a quality of its own…. The rate of ammunition and equipment consumption in Ukraine can only be sustained by a large-scale industrial base.

This reality should be a concrete warning to Western countries, who have scaled down military industrial capacity and sacrificed scale and effectiveness for efficiency. This strategy relies on flawed assumptions about the future of war, and has been influenced by both the bureaucratic culture in Western governments and the legacy of low-intensity conflicts. Currently, the West may not have the industrial capacity to fight a large-scale war….

The Capacity of the West’s Industrial Base

The winner in a prolonged war between two near-peer powers is still based on which side has the strongest industrial base. A country must either have the manufacturing capacity to build massive quantities of ammunition or have other manufacturing industries that can be rapidly converted to ammunition production. Unfortunately, the West no longer seems to have either…. In a recent war game involving US, UK and French forces, UK forces exhausted national stockpiles of critical ammunition after eight days....

Flawed Assumptions

The first key assumption about future of combat is that precision-guided weapons will reduce overall ammunition consumption by requiring only one round to destroy the target. The war in Ukraine is challenging this assumption….. The second crucial assumption is that industry can be turned on and off at will….. Unfortunately, this does not work for military purchases. There is only one customer in the US for artillery shells – the military. Once the orders drop off, the manufacturer must close production lines to cut costs to stay in business. Small businesses may close entirely. Generating new capacity is very challenging, especially as there is so little manufacturing capacity left to draw skilled workers from….. The supply chain issues are also problematic because subcomponents may be produced by a subcontractor who either goes out of business, with loss of orders or retools for other customers or who relies on parts from overseas, possibly from a hostile country….

Conclusion

The war in Ukraine demonstrates that war between peer or near-peer adversaries demands the existence of a technically advanced, mass scale, industrial-age production capability….. For the US to act as the arsenal of democracy in defence of Ukraine, there must be a major look at the manner and the scale at which the US organises its industrial base…. If competition between autocracies and democracies has really entered a military phase, then the arsenal of democracy must first radically improve its approach to the production of materiel in wartime. The Return of Industrial Warfare, Alex Vershinin, Rusi

Bottom line: The United States no longer has the industrial base or the requisite stockpiles to prevail in a prolonged war between two near-peer powers. Simply put, the US will not win an extended conventional war with Russia.

Here’s how analyst Lee Slusher summed it up in a recent post on Twitter:

…. . The US effectively had monopolies on many decisive capabilities, like precision-guided munitions, night-vision, global strike, etc. I think the absence of high-intensity conflict between the US and other nations had a lot to do with these asymmetries. There was no need for the US to apply mass when its advanced capabilities—or even just the threat of them—were sufficient to achieve political aims….. The list of nations with advanced capabilities continues to grow. At the same time, Western militaries and defense industrial bases continue to erode. The West exchanged its large standing armies for a reliance on boutique American capabilities that were once decisive but are now increasingly commonplace. This has left the West without its technological edge and without its previous military mass. Those who still believe in US military supremacy fail to realize these changes. Worse still, most of them entertain cartoonishly underrated notions about Russian military capabilities. They fail to realize Russia has both a technological edge and military mass. Th reputation the US military had was deserved for a time, but everything changes. Lee Slusher @LeeBTConsulting

Bottom Line: America’s adversaries—Russia, China, Iran—have either caught up to or surpassed the US in advanced missile technology, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles(UAV), electronic warfare, cutting-edge missile defense systems etc—which is gradually increasing parity between the states while ending the period of US military supremacy. The American century is rapidly drawing to a close.

Freedom of speech is the principal pillar of a free government; when this support is taken away, the constitution of a free society is dissolved, and tyranny is erected on its ruins….Ben Franklin

The Antisemitism Awareness Act is a wrecking ball designed to pulverize the First Amendment. While the alleged intention of the bill is to make Jewish students feel safer on campus, the real purpose is to put an end to the anti-genocide demonstrations that have broken out across the country and to prevent the criticism of Israel. The proposed bill invokes a dodgy legal mechanism to derail the protests and to silence Israel’s critics. By using a broad and ambiguous definition of antisemitism, the bill compels university administrators to crackdown on free speech invoking sketchy claims of discrimination. Political analyst Paul Craig Roberts summed it up like this: “if universities …don’t suppress student protests against Israel’s massacre of civilians in Gaza and Lebanon they will lose their accreditation and federal financial support.” In short, universities are being encouraged to quash the free expression of political ideas to preserve their federal funding. This helps to illustrate how Zionist lobbyists are now engaged in a full-throated assault on constitutionally protected civil liberties, namely free speech.

The bill—which already passed the House with a sizable majority—shows how the charge of antisemitism can be used as a coercive political tool to silence Israel’s critics. That is why civil liberties organizations—like the ACLU, PEN America, the Alliance Defending Freedom and even Jewish groups like Bend the Arc and T’ruah—strongly oppose the bill based on free speech grounds. Even so, this attack on constitutionally protected rights has a good chance of passing the senate due to the arm twisting of powerful interest groups that have their tentacles wrapped tightly around both houses of congress. Here’s a brief summary from political analyst Guy Christensen:

The House just passed the Antisemitism Awareness Act which will shut down college protests against Israel and silence all future criticism of the state of Israel. The law literally redefines antisemitism as criticizing the state of Israel and makes it a violation of Title 6 to do so. The purpose of this is to allow politicians to pull federal funding from colleges who don’t stop these college protests and let their students continue to criticize Israel.

We must speak out against the Antisemitism Awareness Act. This is insanity. These people are full-on Zionists trying to silence free speech here in America, trying to silence criticism of the oppression of the Palestinians, criticism of the state of Israel that murdered 14,000 children.

Like I said, the guy who wrote the bill, Mike Lawler, is funded by AIPAC $180,000 (he said to NBC News when talking about this bill.) When you hear “River to the sea, Palestine will be free” that is calling for the eradication of the Jews in the state of Israel. (They are) Literally trying to make it illegal to criticize Israel.

If you don’t know how Title 6 works, all federally funded programs and institutions must follow it or they won’t receive any more federal funding. This includes US colleges and K through 12 schools who are very strict about following Title 6 because they need that funding. They can’t go without it. So, if we let this become law, it would force US colleges to shut down all these protests immediately.

This contends for the most outrageous bill for Israel the government has ever tried to pass. I will not vote or say a kind word about any politician who voted in favor of this bill…. (your representative ) care more about Israel than they care about your free speech. What they are doing is incredibly dangerous. Zionists are scared because American public opinion is changing. Students across the country are protesting against Israel. You know they’re scared because this is one of the boldest things they’ve ever tried to do…..AIPAC and the pro-Israel lobby is behind all of this. Ban AIPAC Stop the Antisemitism Awareness Act. We have to protect our free speech and our right to protest against evil. YourFavoriteGuy@guychristensen_

Not surprisingly, President Donald Trump—whose campaign was given $100 million by a strident Zionist donor—confirmed that he will aggressively implement the blatantly unconstitutional law by cancelling the funding of any college that tolerates the anti-genocide protests. He further stated that he will prosecute the universities for, what he calls, “violations of the civil rights law.â€� In other words, it is not the tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians that have been killed by Israel who are the victims, but the Jewish university students who feel “unsafe.” (Note—Trump refers to the protestors views as “antisemitic propaganda”)

Under the new bill, the U.S. Department of Education will be required to use the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition and contemporary examples of anti-Semitism when enforcing anti-discrimination laws on college campuses. But, as human rights activist Sofia Lopez points out, “the IHRA definition was never intended to be used for legal purposes, and it covers a broad swath of expression the First Amendment protects. Requiring schools to use it would not help address discrimination at institutions of higher education; it would merely pressure them to punish people who are expressing their own political views.

In order to grasp the absurdity of this bill, we must know how congress defines antisemitism. (because the definition will decide whether there has been a violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.) This is from an article by Joe Cohn at fire.org. The definition reads:

The definition targets “a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews� — a description so broad that it allows for the investigation and punishment of core political speech, such as criticism of Israeli policy. Anti-Semitism Awareness Act continues to threaten free speech on campus, fire.org

Repeat: “A certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews”??

Is that not sufficiently vague?

Yes, it is. And, by the way, isn’t hate speech protected under the first amendment? (Note—We are NOT inferring that the anti-genocide protesters express hatred towards Jews. They most certainly do NOT.)

Indeed, hate speech is protected. This is from the University of Milwaukee:

Hate speech may be offensive and hurtful; however, it is generally protected by the First Amendment. One common definition of hate speech is “any form of expression through which speakers intend to vilify, humiliate or incite hatred against a group or a class of persons on the basis of race, religion, skin color, sexual identity, gender identity, ethnicity, disability or national origin.� Courts have ruled that restrictions on hate speech would conflict with the First Amendment’s protection of the freedom of expression. Since public universities are bound by the First Amendment, public universities must adhere to these rulings. However, universities also have an obligation to create a safe, inclusive learning environment for all members of the campus community.

On Sunday, President Joe Biden authorized the use of U.S.-supplied long-range missiles by Ukraine for strikes inside Russia. The sudden reversal of policy represents a dramatic escalation in the war that will require a strong response from Moscow. President Putin has repeatedly warned that firing missiles at targets located on Russian territory would trigger harsh retaliatory attacks not just on sites in Ukraine but also on those nations that are directly involved in the strikes, namely NATO and the United States. As military analyst Will Schryver noted:

📜 Patiently Waiting to Strike

"By any reasonable logic of conflict, the Russians would be well within their natural rights to strike back at the US/NATO ISR assets that have played such an essential role in several damaging attacks against them."

I have written many times over… pic.twitter.com/mRBjJbxXDa

— Will Schryver (@imetatronink) February 15, 2024

With his back against the wall, we expect that Putin will defend his country just as the US would defend itself if Chinese contractors, using Chinese missile systems, linked to Chinese satellites and technology, fired missiles at targets in the US from locations in Mexico. The situation is the same here which is why Putin went to great lengths to explain the problem in May when he said the following:

….the final target selection… can only be made by highly skilled specialists who rely on this reconnaissance data, technical reconnaissance data. … Launching other systems, such as ATACMS, for example, also relies on space reconnaissance data, targets are identified and automatically communicated to the relevant crews that may not even realize what exactly they are putting in. A crew, maybe even a Ukrainian crew, then puts in the corresponding launch mission. However, the mission is put together by representatives of NATO countries, not the Ukrainian military.

The point Putin was making can be summarized like this:

• The long-range precision weapons (ATACMS) are provided by the US.
• The long-range precision weapons are manned by experts or contractors from the US.
• The long-range precision weapons must be linked to space reconnaissance data provide by the US or NATO
• The targets in Russia are also provided by space reconnaissance data provide by the US or NATO

In other words, the long-range missiles are made by NATO, furnished by NATO, operated and launched by NATO contractors, whose targets are selected by NATO experts using space reconnaissance data provided by NATO. In every respect, the firing of long-range precision weapons at targets in Russia, is a NATO-US operation. The fact that the system may have been located on Ukrainian soil does not mitigate Washington’s role in the aggression. Bottom line: Putin will defend his country against foreign aggression in the same way that any US president would defend America.

Naturally, Biden’s critics have said that his actions are pushing the US towards World War III. (which is true) But what is equally shocking is that Biden has been informed by his top advisors that using the ATACMS would have no material impact on the outcome of the war which is already a ‘lost cause’. (Russian troops are currently advancing at the fastest pace since the war began while Ukraine’s frontlines continue to collapse.) The only effect the policy-change will have is to put US and NATO military assets and bases at greater risk. Biden was aware of this when he made his decision which further illustrates his inability to grasp the consequences of his actions.

So what can we expect now that Biden has forced Putin to respond?

First of all, we can expect Putin to continue to press ahead until he has liberated the Donbas and achieved the strategic aims of the Special Military Operation. And while the use of long-range missiles will not hamper Russia’s progress on the battlefield, it will force Moscow to expand the buffer zone that will separate the two adversaries pushing deeper into western Ukraine in order to protect Russian cities from missile attacks. Some analysts think that Putin will seize all of the territory “east of the Dnieper River, as well as the Black Sea coastal regions all the way to the Danube.” This seems probable but tragic all the same. Ukraine will be a perennial economic basket-case with no access to the sea, forever dependent on the generosity of foreign governments. What a waste. Here’s more from Will Schryver:

…. when the realization of this objective draws nearer and nearer to being a fait accompli, we can be almost certain that the empire and its obeisant European vassals will do something stupid and bring to pass some level of direct warfare between them and the Russians. If and when that happens, then we will see the Russians finally move decisively against the US/NATO ISR assets in the region. And they will do so with at least two full years of battlefield experience, careful observations of its weaknesses, and competent adaptation and innovation cultivated by that analysis. Patiently Waiting to Strike, Will Schryver@imetatronink

IMHO, Trump is just as likely to “do something stupid” as Biden due to his feeble understanding of the conflicts’ origins and his blundering eagerness to impose a deal on Putin that Putin will undoubtedly reject. After two years and much bloodshed, the war in Ukraine is going to be settled on Russia’s terms, not Washingtons. Ukraine is going to be neutral or it’s going to be obliterated. Those are the only two options. If Trump thinks Putin will allow western Ukraine to continue to be armed-to-the-teeth by the West and serve as a hostile American outpost on Russia’s border, he’s got another think coming.

While Biden’s policy turnaround was a surprise it was not completely unexpected. In August, the Ukrainians launched an offensive into the Kursk region, where they burned villages, ransacked homes and seized a sizable chunk of Russian territory. For a while the forces seemed to be unstoppable, wreaking havoc and destruction wherever they went. Three months later, however, Ukraine’s splinter army is surrounded and taking heavy casualties. It’s only a matter of time before they are killed or defeated, which is why—according to the New York Times—Biden approved the use of the long-range missiles systems:

“If the Russian assault on Ukrainian forces in Kursk succeeds”, says the Times, “Kyiv could end up having little to no Russian territory to offer Moscow in a trade.” Later in the article, the authors add this: “(Biden) was… swayed, by concerns that the Russian assault force would be able to overwhelm Ukrainian troops in Kursk if they were not allowed to defend themselves with long-range weapons.” (NY Times)

In short, the future of the doomed assault force (that unwisely invaded Russia in August) has factored heavily into Biden’s decision to green light the use of long-range missiles. But it seems particularly delusional that anyone would think that Putin would negotiate to reclaim Russian territory or that he would halt his offensive because a few missiles hit targets in Russia. That’s just not going to happen. Putin did not want this war, and did everything in his power to avoid it, but now that Russia is involved, he is going to move heaven-and-earth to prevail. As we said earlier, the ATACMS will have no impact on the outcome of the war at all.