A century long barrage of propaganda seeps in everywhere.—Charles Bukowski

Dear Friends + Interlocutors,

I sure would like to stop writing about Ukraine, and probably you would like to stop hearing about it. There is nothing more to say, except the following, which is the crux of the matter:

Item. Front page story in today’s WSJ quotes Ukrainian General Budanov, head of military intelligence, as stating, “I don’t know any borders except the borders of 1991.” 

Budanov proclaims that Ukraine will keep fighting until it, “…evicts Russian forces from all of its territory—including Crimea and other areas effectively seized by Russia 2014…” His message. Send more weapons and money. Check.

Item. Front page story in today’s NYT returns to the matter of possible war crimes in Bucha. New material. New videos. What does it prove? Could they be fake, an elaborate attempt to repackage and buttress the sketchy allegations of March/April? 

Wartime atrocity propaganda is nothing new, and the the NYT has been a consistent, uncritical megaphone for the Washington/Kiev narrative. That said, let’s assume the report is, in fact, accurate and not staged. Check. 

Item. Tom Friedman's NYT article of April 10th, 2022 rhetorically entitled “How Do We Deal With a Superpower Led by a War Criminal?” The answer is, with enormous difficulty, or not at all. The party line in Washington and Kiev is that Putin is a war criminal. It’s a given. With all the non-stop propaganda pouring out of the NYT, CNN, WaPo, etcetera, both before and after the invasion, what other conclusion can be drawn? We have been inundated. Check.

What I am trying to say is, this war is open-ended by design. Since Putin is a “war criminal” he cannot be rewarded for his “unprovoked” and “illegal” and “unjustified” invasion of Ukraine. Right? It follows then, there can be no negotiations which alter the map of Ukraine. For example, in which ethnic Russian and Russian-speaking eastern and southern areas of Ukraine, like Donbas, become independent or join the Russian federation.

Ergo, Washington (Papa Joe Biden) and NATO (and the NYT) are on the hook for taking out the Russian government and installing a new one in the Kremlin. There can be no peace deal with it, after all, because that would reward the aggressor. 

Please understand, Washington has been an angel on the sidelines. Russia, the devil, cannot win. It must lose. If this means the world economy crashes to pieces, and the world explodes in a nuclear exchange, so be it. 

Such is the nightmare the policy-making war-mongers and Congressional nincompoops in Washington have created thanks to their know-it-all, arrogant mischief-making. We are in a pickle.

End of story.

Patrick

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