Author: Jack Stevenson

One of the most infuriating lines parroted by apologists of Israel’s aggressive campaign on Gaza is “should the Americans have accepted calls for ceasefire after Pearl Harbor or 9/11?” Never mind the fact that the US reaction to Pearl Harbor ended with the use of nuclear weapons, and that the US reaction to 9/11 has been nothing short of disastrous, few people if any are actually calling for a ceasefire with Hamas militants. Instead they’re calling on Israel to take a responsible approach to rooting out Hamas and end its brutal bombardment and siege of the Gaza Strip.

Many fewer people would be using the language of ceasefire if the Israelis were conducting targeted ground operations on individual terrorists, but their approach to “dismantling” Hamas, much like the US approach to combating al-Qaeda after 9/11, has been disproportionate to the point of overkill. Israel would do well to learn from America’s experience with the calamity that is the so called war on terror. US politicians sadistically calling for Israel to “finish them” and for America to increase its involvement clearly don’t care to take any lessons from the last 20 years. They should from their mistakes, and the Israelis should too.

Continue reading “Israel Could Learn From America’s Mistakes”

Commander in Chief of Ukraine’s armed forces Valery Zaluzhny admitted last week in the pages of The Economist that the war with Russia has become a stalemate and there will “most likely” be no breakthrough. It has been clear for months that Ukraine’s much hyped summer offensive has been a massive failure, and military leadership is finally acknowledging the reality. But at a press conference days later Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky sternly rejected Zaluzhny’s assessment. Evidently he’s still hanging on to the notion that victory is just around the corner.

He pointed to the fact that talk of stalemate was widespread last year before the Kharkiv offensive. “A few military tricks, and you remember, the Kharkiv region was liberated,” he said.

Continue reading “Ukraine’s Military Leadership Admits the Obvious”

On Sunday September 3rd, Ukrainian president Volodomyr Zelensky replaced Defense Minister Alexei Reznikov with a 41 year old former lawmaker named Rustam Umerov. Since Russia’s invasion of February 2022 Ukraine’s military and Ministry of Defense have been “dogged by corruption allegations,” and Reznikov’s dismissal was a supposed signal to the United States that the Ukrainian government takes reform seriously and is deserving of continued aid.

But Zelensky’s move to calm concerns invites a lot of uncomfortable questions.

Continue reading “A Revealing Few Days in Ukraine”