Re: Pelosi pledges war "until victory is won"

[Gay Socialists Party]

In article <t311hr$3u1ia$1...@news.freedyn.de>
<governo...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Nancy Pelosi built her political career supporting homosexual pedophiles.
>

Over the weekend, Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the US House of
Representatives and second in the line of presidential
succession, traveled in secret to the war zone of Kiev, Ukraine
and pledged a commitment by the United States to ensure
“victory” against Russia.

Repeating the false premise that the United States’ involvement
in the war with Russia is about helping Ukraine, an embattled
ally, Pelosi told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, “Our
commitment is to be there for you until the fight is done.” She
added, “We stand with Ukraine until victory is won.”

Democratic Representative Jason Crow, who accompanied Pelosi on
her trip to Ukraine, was even more emphatic in asserting that
the United States is a party to the war, declaring at a press
conference in Poland, “The United States of America is in this
to win, and we will stand with Ukraine until victory is won.”

Pelosi’s pledge, coming just one week after similar assurances
by Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Secretary of State
Antony Blinken, amounts to an unlimited commitment of treasure
and blood to the pursuit of sweeping, open-ended war aims that
threaten to draw the United States into what Biden called “world
war.”

What does “victory” in Ukraine mean? In the span of just one
week, Biden, Austin and leading members of the president’s
political party have all given conflicting and irreconcilable
answers as to what the United States is trying to achieve in
Eastern Europe.

On one hand, Biden claimed that it is “not true” that the United
States is engaged in a proxy war with Russia. On the other,
Austin said at a press conference in Poland last week that the
United States is seeking to “weaken” Russia. The New York Times
has raised the prospect of “bringing Russia to its knees,” while
former US Army Europe Commander Ben Hodges called for “breaking
the back” of Russia.

To which of these goals is Pelosi committing the United States?

If one accepts Pelosi’s statements in the most limited and most
literal sense, they mean that the United States will assist
Ukraine in achieving its military aims in regard to Russia. But
Ukraine’s own military goals, developed in close cooperation
with US military planners, are sweeping.

On March 24, 2021, Zelensky signed a document pledging to
“implement measures to ensure the de-occupation and
reintegration of the [Crimean] peninsula.” This means that
Ukraine is formally committed to the seizure of Crimea,
territory that Russia claims as its own, through military means.

If Ukraine succeeds in breaking the Russian offensive in the
Donbas, routs the attacking Russian forces, and pushes into
Russian territory, would the United States be “committed” to
support Ukraine in this “fight”?

In another scenario, what will the United States do if Russian
forces continue their advance toward Western Ukraine, encircling
pockets of the Ukrainian army and leading to its disintegration?
What does Pelosi’s open-ended commitment to “victory” against
Russia mean if Ukraine is threatened with strategic defeat?

Pelosi’s statement makes clear that, forced to choose between
the prospect of reneging on its “commitment” and the deployment
of troops—or even the use of nuclear weapons—the United States
will choose the latter.

Last week, Democratic Senator Chris Coons called for a
“conversation” about sending US troops to fight against Russia
in Ukraine.

Asked about Coons’s statements, Senator Tim Kaine, Hillary
Clinton’s running mate in 2016, merely called the measure
“premature”—effectively an admission that plans are already in
the works. On Sunday, Republican Congressman Adam Kinzinger
announced that he has introduced an Authorization for Use of
Military Force that would allow Biden to deploy US troops in a
full-scale war with Russia.

In the course of the Vietnam War, the United States was drawn
into an ever more bloody and brutal war that followed the logic
of the military commitments it had made.

The Pentagon Papers, first published in 1971, revealed that in
the early 1960s, under President John F. Kennedy, American
imperialism transformed its involvement in Vietnam, which had up
to that point been called a “limited-risk gamble” into a “broad
commitment.”

One of the most damning components of the Pentagon Papers was an
internal Defense Department memo, drafted in 1965, that
concluded that the main reason for US involvement was to uphold
the United States’ “commitment,” the breach of which would lead
to a “humiliating U.S. defeat.” The United States’ goals were
ranked as follows:

70% – To avoid a humiliating U.S. defeat (to our reputation as a
guarantor).
20% – To keep [South Vietnam] (and the adjacent) territory from
Chinese hands.
10% – To permit the people [of South Vietnam] to enjoy a better,
freer way of life.
NOT – To help a friend

<https://www.wsws.org/asset/16f6560b-fbb1-4b38-98a5-
bf338a907d28?rendition=image1280>

In pursuit of enforcing the global position of the United States
in the post-war period, 58,220 American soldiers lost their
lives, hundreds of thousands were physically and psychologically
destroyed, and over 1 million Vietnamese men, women and children
were killed.

The Pentagon Papers revealed the extent to which American
foreign policy is made in secret. The public is presented with a
set of facts and arguments that bear no relationship to the
actual goals that are propelling the conflict. The aim of media
discussion is not to allow the people to democratically control
the conduct of foreign policy, but to condition public opinion
to accept the outcome desired by the American state apparatus.

The stakes in the present war are vastly higher than they were
in Vietnam. From its origins as a US proxy war aiming to “bleed
Russia white,” the conflict over Ukraine is rapidly spiraling
into a full-scale war between two nuclear-armed states.

Within the entire US political establishment, there is no
serious attempt to explain what the war is about. There simply
exists no opposition to a reckless and insane policy that
threatens to end human civilization through the eruption of a
nuclear third world war.

The real aims of US imperialism in the war against Russia were
spelled out by WSWS International Editorial Board Chairman David
North in his opening report to the May Day 2022 Online Rally,
“The NATO-Russia war and the tasks of the international working
class”:

Russia has become a target of US imperialism not because of the
Putin regime’s autocratic character, but because, first, its
defense of the interests of the Russian capitalists collides
with the drive of the United States for global hegemony, which
is centered on its preparations for war with China; and, second,
the vast expanse of Russian territory is the source of immensely
valuable and strategically critical raw materials, metals and
minerals—gold, platinum, palladium, zinc, bauxite, nickel,
mercury, manganese, chromium, uranium, iron ore, cobalt and
iridium, to name only a few—that the United States is determined
to bring under its control.

US officials are admitting with increasing candor that American
imperialism wants to “break the back” of Russia and “bring
Russia to its knees.” In pledging to wage war to complete
“victory,” the United States is creating the conditions for
catastrophe.

The social force that must be mobilized to stop the mad drive to
world war is the working class. As North concluded his report,
“The international working class must declare war on imperialist
war.”

The May Day Rally, addressed by representatives of the
International Committee of the Fourth International throughout
the world, detailed the international socialist perspective upon
which this struggle must be waged.

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/05/03/pers-m03.html