By Douglas MacGregor

Diogenes, one of the ancient world’s illustrious philosophers, believed that lies were the currency of politics, and those lies were the ones he sought to expose and debase. To make his point, Diogenes occasionally carried a lit lantern through the streets of Athens in the daylight. If asked why, Diogenes would say he was searching for an honest man.

Finding an honest man today in Washington, D.C., is equally challenging. Diogenes would need a Xenon Searchlight in each hand.

Still, there are brief moments of clarity inside the Washington establishment. Having lied prolifically for months to the American public about the origins and conduct of the war in Ukraine, the media are now preparing the American, British, and other Western publics for Ukraine’s military collapse. It is long overdue.



The Western media did everything in its power to give the Ukrainian defense the appearance of far greater strength than it really possessed. Careful observers noted that the same video clips of Russian tanks under attack were shown repeatedly. Local counterattacks were reported as though they were operational maneuvers.

Russian errors were exaggerated out of all proportion to their significance. Russian losses and the true extent of Ukraine’s own losses were distorted, fabricated, or simply ignored. But conditions on the battlefield changed little over time. Once Ukrainian forces immobilized themselves in static defensive positions inside urban areas and  the central Donbas, the Ukrainian position was hopeless. But this development was portrayed as failure by the Russians to gain “their objectives.”

Ground-combat forces that immobilize soldiers in prepared defenses will be identified, targeted, and destroyed from a distance. When persistent overhead intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance assets, whether manned or unmanned, are linked to precision guided-strike weapons or modern artillery systems informed by accurate targeting data, “holding ground” is fatal to any ground force. This is all the more true in Ukraine, because it was apparent from the first action that Moscow focused on the destruction of Ukrainian forces, not on the occupation of cities or the capture of Ukrainian territory west of the Dnieper River.

The result has been the piecemeal annihilation of Ukrainian forces. Only the episodic infusion of U.S. and allied weapons kept Kiev’s battered legions in the field; legions that are now dying in great numbers thanks to Washington’s proxy war.

Kiev’s war with Moscow is lost. Ukrainian forces are being bled white. Trained replacements do not exist in sufficient numbers to influence the battle, and the situation grows more desperate by the hour. No amount of U.S. and allied military aid or assistance short of direct military intervention by U.S. and NATO ground forces can change this harsh reality.

The problem today is not ceding territory and population to Moscow in Eastern Ukraine that Moscow already controls. The future of the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions along with the Donbas is decided. Moscow is also likely to secure Kharkov and Odessa, two cities that are historically Russian and Russian-speaking, as well as the territory that adjoins them. These operations will extend the conflict through the summer. The problem now is how to stop the fighting.

Whether the fighting stops in the early fall will depend on two key factors. The first involves the leadership in Kiev. Will the Zelensky government consent to the Biden program for perpetual conflict with Russia?

If the Biden administration has its way, Kiev will continue to operate as a base for the buildup of new forces poised to threaten Moscow. In practice, this means Kiev must commit national suicide by exposing the Ukrainian heartland west of the Dnieper River to massive, devastating strikes by Russia’s long-range missile and rocket forces.

Of course, these developments are not inevitable. Berlin, Paris, Rome, Budapest, Bucharest, Sofia, Vilnius, Riga, Tallin, and, yes, even Warsaw, do not have to blindly follow Washington’s lead. Europeans, like most Americans, are already peering into the abyss of an all-encompassing economic downturn that Biden’s policies are creating at home. Unlike Americans who must cope with the consequences of Biden’s ill-conceived policies, European governments can opt out of Biden’s perpetual-war plan for Ukraine.

The second factor involves Washington itself. Having poured more than $60 billion or a little more than $18 billion a month in direct or indirect transfers into a Ukrainian state that is now crumbling, the important question is, what happens to millions of Ukrainians in the rest of the country that did not flee? And where will the funds come from to rebuild Ukraine’s shattered society in a developing global economic emergency?

When inflation costs the average American household an extra $460 per month to buy the same goods and services this year as they did last year, it is quite possible that Ukraine could sink quietly beneath the waves like the Titanic without evoking much concern in the American electorate. Experienced politicians know that the American span of attention to matters beyond America’s borders is so short that an admission of defeat in Ukraine would probably have little or no immediate consequences.

However, the effects of repeated strategic failures in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria are cumulative. In the 1980s, General Motors wanted to dictate the kind of automobiles Americans would buy, but American consumers had different ideas. That’s why G.M., which dominated the U.S. market for 77 years, lost its top spot to Toyota. Washington cannot dictate all outcomes, nor can Washington escape accountability for its profligate spending and having ruined American prosperity.

In November, Americans will go to the polls. The election itself will do more than test the integrity of the American electoral process. The election is also likely to ensure that Biden is remembered for his intransigence; his refusal to change course, like Herbert Hoover in 1932. Democrats will recall that their predecessors in the Democratic Party effectively ran against Hoover for more than a half century. Republicans may end up running against Joe Biden for the next 50 years.

Douglas Macgregor, Col. (ret.) is a senior fellow with The American Conservative, the former advisor to the Secretary of Defense in the Trump administration, a decorated combat veteran, and the author of five books.

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13 COMMENTS

  1. “News is any overt act which juts out of the routine of circumstance.… A good public relations man advises his client … to carry out an overt act … interrupting the continuity of life in some way to bring about a response”.
    Quote Edward Bernays, PR, double nephew of Sigmund Freud.

    A “”feeler” to test the current psychological decay state of the American people (relative to any protests received because of it) as well as a means of confirming us in our decay evermore, because the deadliest mind control can only be exerted with our consent. When mind control is publicly proclaimed with little or no protest, the cryptocracy gauges how far along Americans are on the path to being rendered totally mindless beasts, and escalates its soul-murdering agenda with corresponding boldness”.

    “one of the key masonic insights into human nature is the reaction of people to terrorism and serial ritual murders executed with great skill:
    “What a dirty trick but how skillfully executed! What a swindle, but how well and with what courage it has been done!””

    “the final excesses of a degenerate priesthood, whose altars demanded ever more sacrificial blood before they could evoke response” from the “earth energies.”
    Quotes from the book Secret Societies and Psychological Warfare
    Michael A. Hoffman Il

  2. Biden is being set up to fail by the Zionist cabal that runs the USA. Remember, the Fed is part of that cabal. The Fed is slowly wrecking the US economy just as sanctions on Russia are backfiring and sending inflation through the roof. This was all by design. Certainly before November the stock market will tank just like it did in 2008 and 2020. That will be cover for another huge transfer of wealth from the US treasury to the big banks and corporations. The war in Ukraine will have escalated into open conflict between the USA and Russia. It will only be the good sense of Putin that will stop this war from going nuclear. Ashkenazi neocons like Victoria “f-uck the EU” Nuland and 50 million US Christian Zionists will be praying for WWIII to happen… NOW! Heaven preserve us all from the wrath of the chosenites.

    • Biden is the POTUS and, unless he is a Manchurian Candidate, he is responsible for the recent string of blunders by his administration. But, he is not the first POTUS to make inexplicable decisions that didn’t favor the general population of the USA. His fumbling and stumbling just makes it more obvious. And Trump still lurks in the background feeding the fires of insurrection.

    • You are so right, Ferdinand. He is after all the President of the USA. This is what he should have done on his first day in office. It would take all of 5 minutes.

      1. Stop sending American warships into the Black Sea to provoke incidents.
      2. Stop free military aid to Ukraine and Georgia.
      3. Stop military exercises with non-NATO nations in Europe.
      4. Close the new American missile bases in Poland and Romania that can launch cruise missiles with nuclear warheads.

      The result will be peace and save billions of American taxpayer dollars each year. But, he would have been assassinated by the same Zionist cabal that killed JFK.

  3. The Washington Post reported the death of a US citizen in Ukraine.
    American Steven Zabelski died during the fighting in Ukraine . This is reported by The Washington Post, citing an obituary published by his family and a State Department statement . According to the publication, 52-year-old Steven Zabelsky died on May 15 during the fighting, becoming “at least the second American citizen” killed in Ukraine.
    Earlier, a video was published with captured US citizen Andy Huyn, who arrived in Ukraine as a mercenary. According to him, he was in a detachment belonging to a reconnaissance battalion called “Baguette”.
    Mostly French citizens, the American noted.

    • Did Mr. Zabelski serve in the official capacity of ‘battle faggot’, similar to what captured Ukrainian Khodyukov Ivanovich described doing? In other words, did that New Yorker end up dying from a Ukie porker?

      Did that Floribama Pole Zebelski die fighting Russians, or did he die behind allied lines while ‘taking it’ from his French and Ukrainian officers? In other words, did those Western and Ukrainian officers have him ‘under the tail’ prior to his death?

      Such events must be looked into in all cases of American ‘volunteers.’ One has absolutely no idea now whether deaths on the Western side are being caused by Russian shelling or by dropping the soap.

  4. Mr Macgregor makes several good points succinctly without bombarding the reader with an endless, repetitive stream. Thank you Mr Macgregor!

  5. If only Russia would have fought Likud in Syria as much as they are doing in Ukraine now, US would have made a full withdrawal from that region right after 2015 loss and maybe Soleimani would have still be alive.

    “During the war with Russia, Zelensky used the services of strategic advisors Srulik Einhorn, who ran a Likud campaign, and Jonathan Urich, Netanyahu’s spokesperson.”

    • Nir Barkat a Likud member of the Knesset has been working every politician in Washington lately to fight Russia and make sure that the Iran deal doesn’t move forward.
      He says “Israel is not going to be the next Ukraine” if Iran decides to follow through with its threats on the Jewish State. “We will retaliate in a way that it’s not going to be pleasant for the Iranians”

      I assume that the clown knows how to make a pleasant retaliation ….

    • NewtRallyt, as I failed to leave my comment there, I’d leave it here, my word the comments that are still waiting for mo-dera-tion after 2 days, is that there’s a difference between “Ju-dai-sm” and “Zion-ism”, as you know, no one in Iran has a problem with “Joos” or “Jud-aism”, the problem is “Zi-onism”, Zio-nists are evil, but not all Joos, as Joe says “You don’t need to be a Joo to be a Zi-onist”. (That’s how I bypass the cen-so-rship on the inte-rnet)

      I agree with your “doogh” point, however, I doubt if someone like Zarif who according to himself has lived in the US for more than 30 years has a problem with translation! It just doesn’t add up, the loop of New Yorkies has been “secretly” negotiating with the US since 2002, without the government’s advance knowledge, and suddenly Rouhani whose brother is Hossein Fereydoun and his best friend is Zarif (two secret negotiators) becomes the President in Iran, while no one knew him before he runs for the election?!!! and Hollywood creates a movie (2006) in which the USA and Iran come to an agreement while the name of the main Iranian negotiator is Hassan??!! (Lol, indeed!)

      And you can see that the Americans who were involved in those secrets negotiations (However that was secret for the Iranian party, not sure if it was for the Americans too) were all from those radical Zioni-sts, like the ones who ran the “Iran Project”, and “Foroshandeh” explains it well. Thanks.

    • It pays to add, that Rouhani never let the “Foroshandeh documentary” be televised on the TV! They wanted to sell all of Iran to America by the JCPOA….nuclear power, then missiles, satellites, drones, Quds force, and finally
      the US would have attacked us while it had already weakened us, America’s pulling out of the JCPOA was beneficial, IMHO!!
      Neither Obama wanted a deal with us, nor Trump, but the Democrats just wanted to weaken Iran by the JCPOA and then attack, but Republicans are idiots, if they dare, they would attack without any premeditated plan, the JCPOA was pretty good for America if they had wisdom.
      عدو شود سبب خیر اگر خدا خواهد. 😂

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