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Not Only GOP, But Also Left & Independents Feel Team Biden Has Lost Its Way in Ukraine

© AFP 2023 / DIMITAR DILKOFFUS President Joe Biden (R) walks next to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky (L) as he arrives for a visit in Kiev on February 20, 2023
US President Joe Biden (R) walks next to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky (L) as he arrives for a visit in Kiev on February 20, 2023 - Sputnik International, 1920, 03.03.2023
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Polls indicate that public support for arming Ukraine is softening in the US, while protests and public anxiety over the conflict are surging in Europe and Germany, in particular. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh emphasized this development in his recent op-ed, adding that the US Congress has yet to exert pressure on the White House.
"So far, peace protests are not gaining the type of traction similar ones did over Iraq when [George W.] Bush was president, but I expect that anti-war feelings will likely grow here at home, particularly because the left and independents are increasingly convinced that Joe Biden and his team have lost their way," Wall Street analyst and investigative journalist Charles Ortel told Sputnik. "While American taxpayers have funded the bulk of Western aid, Europeans are suffering most from the ramped costs of energy and will be hurt most should the conflict in Ukraine escalate beyond Ukraine's borders. Let us hope that sanity soon prevails and that actual negotiations may bring about a sensible resolution."
A wave of anti-war protests swept through Europe last weekend, with the "Peace Rally" bringing together an estimated 50,000 people in Berlin alone. The “Manifesto for Peace” calling on German officials to halt the flow of weapons to Ukraine has attracted 650,000 signatures in two weeks.
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh, who dropped the Nord Stream bombshell last month, drew attention to the emerging peace movement in Europe in a recent piece. He lamented the inaction demonstrated by US lawmakers and the American press, which have yet to pressure the Biden administration over its "fervid political, economic, and political support for Ukraine in its ongoing war against Russia."
Last month, Hersh revealed that the Nord Stream pipelines were destroyed by two members of NATO, namely the US and Norway. According to the journalist's source, the explosives were planted in June 2022 by US operatives under the guise of the BALTOPS 22 NATO exercise and were detonated in September 2022.
A man waves Russian flags as he attends a demonstration supporting a so called 'Manifesto for Peace' in Berlin - Sputnik International, 1920, 27.02.2023
Analysis
Diplomacy Instead of Arming Ukraine: How Peace Movement is Scaling Up in Europe

Is the Wind of Change Starting to Blow?

Meanwhile, the first harbinger of change has apparently started to appear. On March 1, The New York Times acknowledged that despite Biden's bravado while he was abroad, national surveys show that support for arming the Kiev regime is "softening" in the US. In addition, two Republican presidential candidates "are increasingly speaking out against" involvement in the Russo-Ukraine conflict, while House GOP lawmakers recently questioned two Pentagon officials about spending on Ukraine and grilled them over the lack of financial accountability.
A day earlier, yet another US mainstream media outlet, NBC News broke a story about Russia's Crimea. The media admitted that it's not realistic that the Kiev regime could ever dream of seizing the peninsula, and that "the people there... view themselves as Russian."
The report quoted Praskovya Baranova, 73, as saying that if Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his army invade Crimea, "we will all put on uniforms and will go to the border to defend ourselves."
The piece came like a bolt from the blue, given that over the past eight years, the US mainstream press has refused to recognize the March 2014 referendum in Crimea that opened the door to the peninsula's reunification with Russia.
A Ukrainian serviceman carries large caliber ammunitions for armored fighting vehicles mounted weapons during an exercise in a Joint Forces Operation controlled area in the Donetsk region, eastern Ukraine, Feb. 10, 2022. - Sputnik International, 1920, 17.02.2023
Americas
Time for Peace Talks? Biden Facing Faded Public Support for Arming Ukraine
On the other side of the pond, Hungary has called for an international investigation into the Nord Stream sabotage attack under UN auspices, after Russia's resolution seeking a similar investigation into the matter was rejected in the UN Security Council.
Testifying at the UNSC meeting on February 21, Jeffrey D. Sachs, a professor at Columbia University and specialist in global economy, insisted that "the investigation by the UN Security Council of the Nord Stream explosions is a high global priority."
"I applaud Orban's initiative and wonder why more Republicans are not joining the call to learn the truth about what may have happened with Nord Stream," Ortel said. "Moreover, responsible leaders in Germany should be appalled by Hersh's revelations and their implications. What does it mean to be an ally of Joe Biden's America? Whether in Afghanistan or, now, in Germany, many ostensible allies of America must be wondering."
Sy Hersh on US Proxy War on Russia, Snowden's Expose & Nord Stream Sabotage - Sputnik International, 1920, 25.02.2023
Analysis
Sy Hersh on US Proxy War on Russia, Snowden's Expose & Nord Stream Sabotage

Were US Wartime Presidents Always 'Great'?

In his Wednesday piece, Hersh also referred to the dangerous misconception among US leaders that great presidents are usually "wartime presidents," and pointed to the accompanying havoc and violence, including the My Lai massacre exposed by the investigative journalist in 1972.
Hersh warned that Joe Biden and his foreign policy team, "in their unwillingness to seek an immediate ceasefire" in the conflict between Russia and a NATO-backed Ukraine, could in fact be "on the Titanic as the ship neared the ice flows."
"The view that war makes for great leaders is an utterly foolish reading of history – great leaders protect their own peoples and preserve peace, after all, human life is arguably the most precious of all possible things," said Ortel, commenting on Hersh's latest op-ed.

"War should be a last resort, which is a view that America's Founders certainly shared, steeped as they were in English and European history (not to mention lessons learned back to ancient times in Rome and in Greece). Fanning the flames of war is a tactic that dangerous and weak 'leaders' take, particularly when the conflict in question lacks clear objectives and fails to protect vital national interests."

According to the Wall Street analyst, the Vietnam and Southeast Asia conflicts were disasters for President Lyndon Johnson and his successors, "and these are, in my mind, the best comparables for hapless President Joe Biden." What's more, one should bear in mind the "fires burning around roles of the Biden family likely taking bribes from foreign powers."
"Given Biden's obvious, diminished mental capacities, I suspect Biden has already neutered his 2024 political prospects," the analyst remarked.
Still, Ortel hopes that the odds of Europeans or Americans pressuring their respective governments into reconsidering their stance with regard to the Ukraine conflict are high and rising.
"The scale of American financial support is impossible to justify or continue for much longer given negative developments on our borders, soaring crime here and storm clouds on the economic horizon for nations with high cost labor and expensive, counterproductive governments," he said. "Meanwhile, expensive and inefficient 'redistributive' schemes long popular across Europe make little sense whether at national or regional scale, while prospects for true economic growth dim so long as populations there are weighted down with seniors and declining percentage-wise overall. Peace is an option that must be pursued sensibly and with vigor."
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