The U.S. and Ukraine would have been way ahead if they had taken the deal on the table a month after Russia invaded. That deal certainly isn’t on the table now that Bahkmut has fallen and the Russians are in a position to drive a much harder bargain. From Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies at consortiumnews.com:
Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies amplify upon a full-page ad in The New York Times on Tuesday calling the war an “unmitigated disaster” and urging Biden and U.S. Congress to help bring it speedily to an end.
On Tuesday, The New York Times published a full-page advertisement signed by 15 U.S. national security experts about the war in Ukraine. It was headed “The U.S. Should Be a Force for Peace in the World,” and was drafted by the Eisenhower Media Network.
While condemning Russia’s invasion, the statement provides a more objective account of the crisis in Ukraine than the U.S. government or The New York Times has previously presented to the public, including the disastrous U.S. role in NATO expansion, the warnings ignored by successive U.S. administrations and the escalating tensions that ultimately led to war.
The statement calls the war an “unmitigated disaster,” and urges President Joe Biden and Congress “to end the war speedily through diplomacy, especially given the dangers of military escalation that could spiral out of control.”
This call for diplomacy by wise, experienced former insiders — U.S. diplomats, military officers and civilian officials — would have been a welcome intervention on any one of the past 442 days of this war. Yet their appeal now comes at an especially critical moment in the war.
On May 10, President Volodymyr Zelensky announced that he is delaying Ukraine’s long-awaited “spring offensive” to avoid “unacceptable” losses to Ukrainian forces.
Western policy has repeatedly put Zelenskyy in near-impossible positions, caught between the need to show signs of progress on the battlefield to justify further Western support and arms deliveries and, on the other hand, the shocking human cost of continued war represented by the fresh graveyards where tens of thousands of Ukrainians now lie buried.
STRAIGHT LINE LOGIC 