Many Members Of The U.S. Congress Are Insane

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Written by Eric Zuesse

On April 29th, Scott Ritter headlined at the main anti-imperialistic Website, Libya360, “‘Ukraine Victory Resolution’ Act: A Delusional Suicide Pact”, and he opened:

A vote for the resolution is a vote for nuclear war with Russia. The resolution is a literal suicide pact with Ukraine. Hopefully the American people will wake up to this reality before it is too late, and let their representatives know that they chose life over death.

Two US Congressmen who sit on a bureaucratic relic of the Cold War have introduced the “Ukraine Victory Resolution” in the House of Representatives calling for the United States to support an outright victory for Ukraine in its conflict with Russia.

After the presentation of the resolution, it must then be approved by the Foreign Affairs Committee and then put to a vote in Congress, both at the House of Representatives and the Senate level, before becoming law.

While the “Ukraine Victory Resolution” faces an uncertain future in a Congress where enthusiasm for the ongoing conflict in Ukraine is waning, one should not count out the potential for the resolution becoming law, especially given the track record of its sponsors. Wilson, Cohen and McCaul last collaborated on the “Ukraine Democracy Defense Lend-Lease Act”, which was signed into law on May 9, 2022, by President Joe Biden. That law enhanced Biden’s authority to simplify bureaucratic barriers with regards to military equipment for Ukraine or other Eastern European countries affected by the Russian Special Military Operation in Ukraine.

Since the start of Russia’s Special Military Operation, the Helsinki Commission has worked closely with the Ukrainian government to craft legislation that supports Ukrainian goals and objectives when it comes to its conflict with Russia.

To call the Helsinki Commission a de facto adjunct of the Ukrainian government would not be an exaggeration. Indeed, the Ukrainian Ambassador to the US, Oksana Markarova, was the person chosen to make the official announcement regarding the presentation of the “Ukraine Victory Resolution” to the House of Representatives.

The text of the draft resolution “affirms that it is the policy of the United States to see Ukraine victorious against the invasion and restored to its internationally recognized 1991 borders.”

Wilson and Cohen both have stated that the territorial integrity of Ukraine must be preserved, meaning that the conflict in Ukraine could not be ended until the territories of Kherson, Zaporozhye, Donetsk, Lugansk, and Crimea are returned to Ukrainian sovereignty.

While the resolution introduced by Wilson and Cohen accurately reflects both current US policy objectives and Ukrainian government desires, it ignores two critical realities. First, it is Russia that is winning the conflict, not Ukraine, and as such any termination of the current conflict will reflect this hard truth.

Moreover, to tie both the US and Ukraine to unrealistic expectations creates obstacles to any possible negotiated end to the conflict, meaning that the conflict will drag on to its inevitable conclusion — a strategic Russian victory — in a manner which will only increase the human, material, and financial cost to Ukraine.

Indeed, as senior Russian officials such as former President Dmitri Medvedev have noted, if the crisis does not reach a negotiated end, Ukraine itself may cease to exist as a sovereign entity. The irony of a piece of US legislation purporting to defend Ukrainian sovereignty serving as the foundation of the death of Ukraine as a nation seems to have escaped the sponsors of the resolution.

But the resolution also lays the groundwork for the possibility — indeed, if the resolution accomplished its goal, probability — of a general nuclear war between the United States and Russia. ...

Here is why that is true: The 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, which until now was the closest that the world came to a world-ending global nuclear war between the USSR and USA, was about the possibility that Soviet nuclear missiles might become placed in Cuba only a 30-minute missile flight (1,131 miles) away from a blitz nuckear attack beheading America’s central command in Washington DC. The present version is instead about the possibility that American nuclear missiles might become placed in Ukraine only a 5-minute missile flight (317 miles) away from blitz-beheading Russia’s central command in Moscow. John Fitzgerald Kennedy was serious about his intention to launch a nuclear war against USSR if USSR would continue in its plan to place missiles there, and Vladimir Putin is serious about his intention to launch a nuclear war if America will continue in its plan to place missiles in Ukraine. Passing the “Ukraine Victory Resolution Act” would be the U.S. Government’s declaration that, whereas the Soviet Union had backed down from its plan for a World War III, today’s America won’t. Actually: the USSR defensively wanted to place missiles in Cuba because America already had placed missiles near Moscow, in both Turkey (1,091 miles from The Kremlin) and Italy — removed from both places as a result of the Khrushchev-JFK negotiations. But America is refusing to negotiate with Russia; today’s America won’t back down from its plan for a WW III. What is Russia to do about that? America has already surrounded them with NATO. Ukraine has the nearest of all borders to Moscow. That is why America is determined to get Ukraine into NATO. America’s plan is clear.

On April 25th, Yahoo News headlined “Senators join House lawmakers in pushing for bold Ukraine victory resolution”, and reported that:

Yesterday, Chairman Rep. Joe Wilson (SC-02) and Ranking Member Rep. Steve Cohen (TN-09) introduced the Ukraine Victory Resolution in the House of Representatives. Commissioners Sen. Richard Blumenthal (CT) and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (RI), along with Sen. Lindsey Graham (SC), introduced the resolution in the Senate. The resolution affirms that it is the policy of the United States to see Ukraine victorious against the Russian invasion. …

Original cosponsors of the resolution in the House of Representatives also include: Mike Lawler (NY-17), Richard Hudson (NC-09), Emanuel Cleaver (MO-05), Brian Fitzpatrick (PA-01), Sheila Jackson Lee (TX-18), Mike Quigley (IL-05), Doug Lamborn (CO-05), Bill Pascrell (NJ-08), Maria Elvira Salazar (FL-27), Brendan Boyle (PA-02), Lloyd Doggett (TX-37), Deborah Ross (NC-02), Jim Costa (CA-21), David Trone (MD-06), Joe Morelle (NY-25), Susan Wild (PA-07), and Marcy Kaptur (OH-09). 

At the article’s end was a Yahoo Poll: “Should the US only accept an outright Ukrainian victory?” Results from 2,253 votes were: 70% Yes, 24% No. This bill will have legs in Congress. The U.S. public have been presented only the U.S. Government’s side — the side of firms such as Lockheed Martin, which profit from it — about this war. Is that a democracy? How is democracy even possible under such circumstances? What percentage of the U.S. public have any realistic idea of the actual stakes in this matter? Do they not care what the implications of it, for themselves, will likely be?

This bill, in Congress, if passed into law, will commit the U.S. Government to never backing down from its right to place U.S. nuclear missiles 317 miles away from The Kremlin. If Russia refuses to accept that and instead continues its defensive war against the U.S. in the battlefields of Ukraine, then this Resolution will effectively serve as a U.S. declaration of war against Russia, and WW III will be the inevitable consequence of that.

To see my history of how the war in Ukraine came about, see my article “History of the Ukraine War”. To see the proposals by Russia that the U.S. and its NATO anti-Russian military alliance refused even to negotiate about the problem and which refusals then forced Russia to invade Ukraine on 24 February 2022 in order to address the matter militarily, click here.

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s new book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.

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