I’ve been reading Raymond Chandler’s The High Window for the second time. The plot is convoluted. Somehow it got me thinking about Ukraine and Israel. Both countries are complicated crime scenes of U.S. foreign policy. They will never be objectively investigated and exposed.
Like The High Window, plots and subplots embedded with events in Ukraine and Israel are confusing and loaded with smoke screens. It is difficult to navigate. Unlike The High Window, this is not fiction.
The chief homicide detective tells Philip Marlow, “When it comes to murder cases, everybody lies….” The same could be said about official pronouncements from the White House and State Department. At this point, U.S. foreign policy amounts to a cover story.
Recently I informed a leftwing friend that every casualty of the Ukraine conflict since 2014 was the fault of Washington and not the Kremlin. Without a series of complots initiated in Washington, there would have been no civil war in Ukraine and no subsequent Russo-Ukraine war.
My friend blames everything on Vlad Putin, but that’s just the official N.Y. Times-CIA narrative. Misleading, superficial and too easy. From the start Putin played defense, reactive to Washington’s proactive meddling inside Ukraine where the Russian population was being denigrated and attacked. Finally, Putin was goaded into action.
Washington’s other sacrosanct adopted country, Israel, the final work-product of Zionism, requires some background. The enabler of this neocolonial enterprise was first England and later—when the British Empire predictably imploded after the Second World War—America.
What has transpired in and around Palestine since the First World War is truly an outrage. None of it could have taken place without British politicians subordinating themselves to the Zionist agenda in return for a favor advancing their own agenda. As should be obvious, the 1917 Balfour Declaration was a quid pro quo.
On the ground, Germany had all but won the war on the Western Front. Bolshevik Russia had made a separate peace with Germany on the Eastern Front. John Bull desperately wanted to drag President Wilson and America into the blood bath to turn the tide.
At this critical juncture, British Zionists offered their services to the British Foreign Office to make it happen. In return, they wanted England to transfer Palestine to them as a “national home” for the Jews. A business arrangement. What was the upshot?
The British War Cabinet played the Zionist card. In an era of unrivaled British colonialism where England dominated the high seas, Germany refused to roll over. David Lloyd George and Lord Arthur Balfour agreed to hand over Palestine to the Zionists to save England from having to negotiate a compromise peace settlement with Germany.
Because Field Marshal Allenby had captured Palestine from the Turks in December 1917, the British considered it their property to bargain away. Behind closed doors, Lloyd George and Balfour did just that.
American Zionists around Wilson were duly informed of developments in London and went into action. Their mission to put Wilson over the top was accomplished. The Yanks were coming to the rescue in Europe. The rest is history.
Lloyd George, that “acrobat and fox”, was therefore able to manage the Versailles Peace Conference of 1919-20 to his liking. He arranged for British “mandates” via the League of Nations (colonies in all but name) to humor the sanctimonious Wilson on the thorny matter of “self-determination”.
The Balfour Declaration was incorporated into the mandate for Palestine. Presto. The hypocrisy was truly astounding. Perfide Albion.
Putting a secularized Zionist Jew like Herbert Samuel in charge of British-mandated Palestine was not exactly “self-determination”. Just the opposite. Ninety percent of the indigenous population of Palestine at the time was non-Jewish. Wilson knew that of course, but he now had other problems.
The Arabs had fought for England to help defeat the Ottoman Empire, Germany’s ally. Remember Lawrence of Arabia? In return, the Arabs were rewarded by being double-crossed. This is perhaps understandable. The reality was, England owed more to the influencers working behind the scenes who propelled Wilson into the war in Europe.
British and American politicians have ignored their joint historical responsibilities. Lloyd George wanted to win a war in Europe in 1917. President Harry Truman wanted to win an election in America in 1948. Both felt compelled to play the same card. So the Palestinians were offhandedly thrown to the dogs in both instances.
All this is water under the bridge, of course. But far-reaching consequences remain with us and determine what passes for U.S. foreign policy. The British Empire self-destructed, and now U.S. primacy is headed for the exits thanks to similar high-handed policies promoted by America’s foreign policy elite, which elite includes more than a few genuine nut-cases.
To return to Ukraine, possibly the last hurrah. The recent over-the-top speech by Volodymyr Zelensky before a joint session of the U.S. Congress recalls the embarrassing experience of having to watch Benjamin Netanyahu’s three—count ‘em, three—performances before that same august body.
Mindless, hysterical ovations from grandstanding lawmakers acting like trained seals for dubious leaders of dubious regimes.
Conman Bibi is now back in power with a gang of incendiary ultra-Zionists keeping him from being arrested for corruption. Since Joe Biden proclaimed himself to be a Zionist years ago, it is safe to assume that Biden will continue to carry out Donald Trump’s Israel-first Mideast agenda.
After all, like Harry Truman, Joe Biden wants to win another election. He and Donald Trump will outdo each other in an unseemly quest for the same support. What a sorry spectacle it will be. Why should we believe anything they say?
Meanwhile, the mystery of Ukraine remains unsolved—why did Washington decide to thrust itself and NATO into the area in the aftermath of the Cold War when there was no reason to do so?
It was neither necessary nor beneficial. What Neocon numskull came up with the idea? Why are many European leaders evidently on board with it, to the detriment of their own countrymen? It’s puzzling.
Why stir up trouble by instigating an internecine conflict in the east which has the potential to escalate into a nuclear exchange on the European continent? Do we need this?
My suggestion is that the Yanks return home from Europe as soon as possible, taking their nuclear weapons with them, and that Washington prioritize its own urgent problems within its own borders. A hundred plus years of “American Exceptionalism” is enough.
NATO can be disbanded at a Europeans-only peace conference which includes Moscow. At the top of the agenda will be nuclear disarmament and free trade.
