Antiwar.com Blog

‘As Long as It Takes’

Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author’s permission.

Russia launched its “special military operation” against Ukraine on February 24th, 2022. Russia and Ukraine had been feuding since 2014, with U.S. meddling in Ukraine exacerbating the tensions. NATO expansion to Russia and Ukraine’s borders, along with calls to incorporate Ukraine into NATO at some future date, also led to increased tensions with Russia. The result has been a costly and enduring war in which Ukraine has lost roughly 20% of its territory in the east; both sides have suffered high casualties in horrendous conditions that recall the trench warfare of World War I.

At the moment, Russia appears to have the edge. Ukraine recently lost the city of Avdiivka. Manpower in Ukraine is stretched thin. The average age of troops at the front for Ukraine is 43 even as I’ve seen stories touting the recruitment of young women for the front as well as 17-year-old teenagers. Artillery ammunition is in short supply; $60 billion in weapons, munitions, and other military aid from the United States is frozen in Congress. A path to military victory for Ukraine is unclear.

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Robert Lipsyte: What Kind of Jew Am I?

I grew up in the least-Jewish Jewish family around in the 1950s. We celebrated Christmas every year in a big-time fashion: tree, decorations, and all. And despite the desires of my dear grandmother, there would be no temple, no Sunday Hebrew school, no religion of any sort. I actually went to a Quaker school and I suspect that the first temple I ever entered was at 13 for a friend’s bar mitzvah. I did have one Israeli buddy for a few years, a neighbor who got a black-and-white TV before we did and so I spent as much time as I could in his apartment until his family went back to the Middle East. Yes, sometime in those early years, I was on the street with my own father when a passing stranger made an antisemitic slur and, being a tough, no-nonsense guy (“Major” Engelhardt as he liked his friends to call him from his years in World War II), my dad went right after him. And yes, one of my first roommates at Yale (which had only removed its Jewish quotas a year or two before I arrived in 1962), someone I grew to like, later told me that his dad, undoubtedly a Yale alumni, had specifically warned him to watch out for any Jew at Yale whose father was in the insurance business. (Consider that a knife through the heart!)

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Biden Casts 3rd UN Veto Allowing Israeli Genocide in Gaza To Continue

No surprise President Biden cast his third veto in the UN Security Council to prevent a full, permanent ceasefire in Gaza. Biden’s depraved support of Israeli genocide in Gaza has no limits. Over 25,000 tons of US weapons have contributed to over 100,000 deaths and injuries, displacement of nearly 2,000,000 Palestinians and destruction of nearly all medical, educational and cultural institutions. The appropriate word for all that? Genocide.

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Conflicts of Interest: Biden Refuses to Reverse Support for Israel

On COI #544, Kyle Anzalone discusses the war on Gaza.

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Another Indefensible US Veto at the United Nations

The U.S. used its veto at the UN Security Council for the third time in this war to block a call for an immediate ceasefire:

The U.S. vetoed an Algerian proposal at the United Nations Security Council that called for a humanitarian cease-fire in Gaza, saying that a cessation of hostilities without securing the release of hostages in Hamas’s captivity would only prolong the conflict.

The U.S. circulated a draft resolution ahead of the vote calling, instead, for a temporary cease-fire in Gaza “as soon as practicable” and in tandem with the release of all hostages taken on Oct. 7, as the Biden administration increasingly clashes with the Israeli government over the conduct of the war.

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The US ‘Solving World Problems’ Is Increasingly Reminiscent of Kafkaesque Stories

The United States is investing into the Ukrainian economy amounts equal to the budgets of some states. In return we, taxpayers, who have become unwitting sponsors of this support, receive only news about high-profile defeats and the loss of strategically important territories by Kyiv. This time, the fallen “bastion of Ukrainian defense” was Avdiivka. The news is painfully familiar after loss of Mariupol, Bakhmut and other cities extolled by the media as key elements of Ukrainian military power. Russia is moving inexorably towards its goal, despite all the efforts of the United States, its partners and Ukraine.

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