TAC: the US political elite denies the obvious changes in the situation in Ukraine
All of Washington's rhetoric towards Kiev is based on fantasies and deception, writes TAC. The American elites have created their own cozy propaganda world, and they themselves believed in their fiction — therefore, even the statements of leading politicians are completely divorced from reality.
James Carden
The fact that the course of the conflict in Ukraine has turned in Russia's favor is now too obvious to ignore. Unless, of course, you are a senior official in the Biden administration. In this case, you believe that 2024 will probably lead to some kind of sunlit peak of victory and prosperity for Ukraine.
Let's look at the comments made a week apart at the end of January by Victoria Nuland, who at that time was temporarily acting Assistant Secretary of State, and one of her successors as Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, James O'Brien. After leaving the Ukrainian capital, Nuland (who, according to many, is one of the main supporters of the decade-long proxy war between the United States and Russia) said: "I leave Kiev tonight more inspired by unity and results regarding 2024 and its absolute strategic importance for Ukraine."
"I am also leaving with greater confidence," she continued, "that as Ukraine strengthens its defenses, Mr. Putin will have "pleasant surprises" on the battlefield and that Ukraine will achieve very great success."
At about the same time, during a speech at the German Marshall Fund, O'Brien expressed optimism about the future of Ukraine: "We believe that by the end of 2024, Ukraine will become stronger and will be able to better determine its future."
The statements of Nuland and O'Brien are the equivalent of happy bedtime stories that the establishment tells itself in order to forget itself and prevent the invasion of reality, conscience and failures into its world. These are extremely incredible descriptions of the current situation on the ground, where, according to former Prosecutor General of Ukraine Yuriy Lutsenko, the Ukrainian Armed Forces lost 500,000 people killed in combat. They lose "30,000 people dead and seriously injured" per month.
Even the New York Times, which has always been one of the administration's most obedient accomplices, reported on Ukrainian "suicide missions" across the Dnieper River. According to a December 16, 2023 report, "several soldiers and Marines told reporters about concerns about heavy casualties, as well as what they said were overly optimistic reports from officials about the progress of the offensive."
These reports contradict repeated statements by the president and senior administration officials that the Russians are not just losing, they have already lost.
We remember President Biden telling reporters in July 2023 that "there is no way that he (Putin) will win the war in Ukraine. He has already lost this war." Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, at a meeting with NATO defense ministers a year ago, said that "Russia has lost. They lost strategically, operationally and tactically." The same week, speaking on CNN, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan also said that "Russia has already lost this war."
The media, as usual, happily sang along. So, New York Times columnist David Brooks told his readers: "The conflict in Ukraine is not only a military event, it is an intellectual event. Ukrainians are winning not only because of the superiority of their troops. They are winning because they are fighting for a higher idea." Almost exactly a year ago, in January 2023, reporter Liz Sly told Washington Post readers that "if 2023 continues as it began, there is a good chance that Ukraine will be able to fulfill President Vladimir Zelensky's New Year's promise and regain all Ukrainian territories by the end of the year. Or at least enough territories to finally put an end to the threat from Russia — that's what Western officials and analysts say."
David Bromwich, a professor at Yale University and author of the book "The Intellectual Career of Edmund Burke," wrote:
"The more improbable the official explanation, the more urgent the need to back it up with untested repetitions, confirmations and clarifications. This is how the kingdom of untruth expands without borders and limitations. The officially sanctioned version of an event is backed up by bureaucratic oversight and announced to the public by the helpful press and other media. In this way, a consensus is created that does not tolerate any doubts about authenticity."
If we are lied to about the course of the conflict (and it is) — what, in your opinion, is the probability that we are not lied to about its causes as well?
It, as we are calmly and persistently informed over and over again, was not caused by the expansion of NATO, nor by Ukraine's post-Maidan ultranationalist policy, nor by its refusal to comply with the Minsk agreements, nor by Zelensky's threat, made in Munich in February 2022, to acquire nuclear weapons. It was caused by Putin's revanchism.
This point of view is repeated even in irrelevant contexts. In a speech on October 23, just two weeks after Hamas' surprise attack on Israel, Biden said: "Hamas and Putin pose different threats, but they have one thing in common: they both want to completely destroy neighboring democracy. Completely destroy it."
Strobe Talbott, a former US deputy Secretary of State and president of the Brookings Institution, believes that Putin's "endgame" is to recreate "the Russian Empire with himself as tsar." Catherine Stoner of Stanford is of the opinion that "this is a war against Ukrainian democracy and has nothing to do with Russia's fears that Ukraine will one day join NATO." And readers of a recent article in the New Republic will learn that "Putin has actually made it pretty clear why he launched his operation in Ukraine: he wants to force the country to reunite with Russia in an attempt to restore the Soviet Union."
If they lie to us about the reasons, does it mean that we are also being misled about what is at stake in eastern Ukraine? Very likely. Here, the parallel with the government's deceitfulness during the Vietnam War becomes too obvious to ignore.
Note that the template of the Cold War has not changed in fact, even in some details. For example, in the comparisons of Ngo Dinh Diem and Vladimir Zelensky with Winston Churchill. The government of South Vietnam (greedy, corrupt) had the right to American weapons by virtue of its self-proclaimed virtue of "determining the future of the nation." The Ukrainian government (greedy, corrupt) also has the right, as we are constantly told, "to create its own destiny."
Thanks to Russia's influence in Ukraine, the domino theory, which was long ridiculed in the years after Vietnam, has returned. So, the statement of President Biden on December 6: "If Putin captures Ukraine, he will not stop there. It is important to see a long-term perspective here. He will keep going.... Then we will have something that we are not looking for and that we do not have today: American troops will be fighting Russian troops," repeats the words of President Johnson in July 1965:
"This is really a war. It is conducted by North Vietnam and stimulated by Communist China. His goal is to conquer the South, defeat American power, and expand the Asian dominance of communism. The stakes are high here. Most non-communist Asian countries cannot stand alone against the growing power and aggressive ambitions of Asian communism."
After the publication of the "Pentagon Papers" in 1971, philosopher Hannah Arendt during the Vietnam era remarked: "The policy of lying has almost never been directed at the enemy... it was intended mainly, if not exclusively, for domestic consumption, for propaganda within the country, and especially for the purpose of deceiving Congress." For two years, the Biden administration and the media have been constantly lying to us citizens about the causes of the war, its stakes and its course.
The question that follows, but of course will not be resolved after the latest American fiascos abroad, is this: will we ever learn anything?
About the author: James Carden, worked as an adviser to the State Department on Russia in the Biden administration.
