WWIII: American Made

“In politics, nothing happens by accident. If something happens, you can bet it was planned that way.” - Winston Churchill

The above quote might be apocryphal. There is no audio or film or written record that Churchill ever offered up such an insight. The words have also been attributed to Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt, but no confirmation exists of those claims, either. Hardly matters, though. I don’t think there has ever been a truer declamation in human endeavors, and it’s also central to why I believe the scene in the Oval Office with President Zelensky was a set up. After fifty years of writing and reporting on politics from city councils to state legislatures, congress, and presidential campaigns, I acquired a fairly refined olfactory skill of smelling a rat, and there were a couple of large ones in that meeting.

Consider the run up to the drama. Elonald Trump made clear only days after he took office that he was going to cut a deal with Putin to end the war. Initial negotiations did not even invite the Ukrainians to the table at a summit in Saudi Arabia. The Russian mass murderer, though, who moonlights as a dictator, accelerated his attacks on Ukraine. Even as Zelensky sat with fellatio performing artist J.D. Vance and Elonald in the White House, Russia was stepping up drone attacks on Ukrainian civilians. The dying is a long way from done, and Trump is apparently not getting regular reports sent to the presidential golf cart. The meeting was supposed to finalize a deal where Ukraine would trade rare earth materials in exchange for armaments from U.S. defense contractors, but Elonald had no intention of settling terms. Was never even a part of his plan for the meeting. It was set up to humiliate Zelensky and make him look like he was resisting peace.

President Zelensky was expected to genuflect and offer thanks multiple times before the scope of any deal was outlined, if ever there were one being contemplated. There was, however, no indication from the American president that he might agree with any arrangement. He seemed to want to bully and embarrass a man that the wider world believes will be remembered by history as a courageous leader standing up to Russian aggression. Vance’s role was to accuse the Ukrainian hero of embarrassing the U.S. but he and the president were managing that task quite well without additional assistance. The minerals were a pretense to get Zelensky to Washington, to give him the appearance of a Dickensian character, begging, “Please, sir, may I have another?”

The history that was made and recorded was the first time a U.S. president has raised his voice in a confrontational manner against another sovereign nation’s leader. Not even Hitler yelled at Neville Chamberlain as they worked out a truce that was allegedly designed to prevent war. Hell, in talks with Poland’s Foreign Minister, before the invasion of Sudetenland, Hitler was stern but still diplomatic. His crazed mind was less visible than the one Elonald is sporting around the West Wing. The goal of the meeting was to figure out potential values of Ukraine’s rare earth materials and use that value to purchase a continuous supply of military weaponry for its national defense. The U.S. position seems to be that it is already owed the mineral resources as payment for defense armaments already supplied to Ukraine.

Zelensky can now be effectively branded as the man who did not want to make a deal for peace, even though nothing was presented to him other than Vance’s hillbilly hypocrisy. Putin can accelerate the war and drive on deep into Ukraine while the White House puts out disingenuous news releases that he had refused offers to negotiate a peace settlement. The American president argued that Zelensky did not want to sign a cease fire but the Ukrainian insisted there have already been thirty with Putin in the past ten years since he invaded Crimea and he violated all of them only days after execution. If Ukraine were to get no money for its natural resources, meanwhile, how would it rebuild after the war? Investment capital will not exactly run in that direction unless bonds are guaranteed by third party countries, and who will want to do that with Russian guns still pointed eastward?

“I tried to help him,” Elonald said. “But he didn’t want to end the war.”

Shortly after the Ukrainian president was kicked out of the White House, the U.S. State Department announced it was sending another $3 billion dollars of weapons to Israel under an emergency authorization. The amount includes munitions and D9 armored bulldozers, which have but one purpose, and that is to destroy homes and roads on the West Bank and kill and remove Palestinians. Israel is not done with its unlawful expansion and is spreading its genocidal tactics to the West Bank and Americans are happily providing the resources. It’s a great time to be working for a defense contractor in this country, but not in one of our national parks. We are firing rangers and service workers and nature guides and experts under President Musk’s orders to reduce waste, which will also increase decay and misuse of our parks.

Every European country appeared to support Zelensky after he exited Trump’s tirade. Each of their national leaders issued public statements saying, “You will never walk alone.” Unlike the U.S., they are prepared to help Ukraine defend itself without a transactional agreement, which makes war feel inevitable. The first front of the new world war will likely develop along the western frontiers of Ukraine and NATO allies will send men and materiel to stop Putin’s advance. He will suddenly have multiple enemies and will likely also try to capture the least defensible territories like Latvia and Estonia, to procure ports on the Baltic Sea. Russia is economically weak, though, and will be unable to sustain any conflict without weapons and troops from China and North Korea, which will complicate the fighting. Iran, angry with the West and its unilateral support of Israel, can be expected to offer air support for Putin’s warriors. Eventually, tactical nuclear weapons will be deployed and humans and communities will be vaporized.

Meanwhile, along the U.S. - Mexico border, an invasion is likely to commence and open another front. We have been flying spy drones over the sovereign soil of our biggest trade partner, searching for cartel headquarters. The Pentagon has already sent thousands of troops to El Paso and other reaches of the Rio Grande in Southwest Texas where they joined the 10,000 National Guardsmen from Texas and state troopers from the Department of Public Safety. Their duties, according to a widely quoted Guardsman, was to do “a whole bunch of nothin’.” The market for immigrant arrests has failed badly with the decline of immigrants approaching the border. Consequently, the billions wasted on a short stretch of wall and salaries for various personnel, seem poorly invested, and always did.

While Trump sells $5 million dollar entry tickets to the U.S. for wealthy foreigners, he and his Texas confederate, Governor Gregg Abbott are building a wall and erecting razor wire to keep out the poor. The last time the U.S. sent troops across the Rio Grande was in pursuit of Pancho Villa after he had raided Columbus, New Mexico just prior to World War I. Mechanized vehicles with weapons and aircraft were used for the first time in combat by this country, but nothing was accomplished. General Black Jack Pershing crossed the big river and pursued a ghost for three years. Neither he nor his troops or airplanes or armored vehicles ever caught a glimpse of Villa.

If we invade Mexico, this time, though, maybe we can kill all the immigrants before they get to the border and have a body count to show Elonald. They have mostly stopped coming, in any case, and jobs will be far fewer if Washington institutes a tariff against Mexico. Trump keeps promising and postponing. He wants Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum to become a supplicant and travel to Washington where the world can see her insulted exactly as was Zelensky. There is no country on Earth now that has any remaining respect for the United States of America.

And why would they?