Official White House Photo by Adam Schultz
Mr. President,
The ongoing wars in Gaza, the West Bank and Ukraine raise serious questions about American foreign policy, questions that call for honest answers.
1. Gaza
Why do you continue to enable Israel’s genocide against Palestinian civilians in Gaza? The death toll from IDF bombs and missiles has reached more than 40,000 (not counting untold numbers buried in the rubble). Following the declaration of siege by extremist members of the Israeli war cabinet last October, Israel has deployed starvation as a war tactic. It has drastically reduced humanitarian deliveries of food and medicine; and it has destroyed both clean water sources and sewage disposal facilities. As a result, Gazans (especially children) are dying of malnutrition and disease– this on top of the enormous stress of repeated evacuations under fire.
Your oft-repeated calls for a ceasefire and a two-state solution have fallen on deaf ears. Prime Minister Netanyahu has firmly refused to change course. For both political and personal motives, he clearly wants to prolong the war. Yet you continue to supply him with a wide assortment of lethal weapons that fuel Israel’s genocide How do you reconcile your professed desire for a ceasefire and the return of hostages with your continuing and unconditional deliveries of arms that kill and maim Gazans?
Compelling videos on Democracy Now record Israel’s daily atrocities against Palestinian civilians in both Gaza and the West Bank. Foreign physicians returning from voluntary assignments in Gaza recount scenes of dead and bloodied children, many with missing limbs; and of malnourished babies dying of disease.
Why do you fail to respect the recent opinions of the ICJ and the ICC, which condemn war crimes by both Hamas and Israel? Are you familiar with “complicity” under Article III (e) of the Genocide Convention?
2. The West Bank
Why do you appear to tolerate house demolitions and unrestrained violence against Palestinian residents of the West Bank; and forced displacements of Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem?The West Bank has begun to look like Gaza, with bombings, tank and sniper attacks, executions, home invasions and the wholesale destruction of village infrastructure. In both Gaza and the West Bank (and in East Jerusalem), the extremist government of Israel appears determined to ethnically cleanse Palestinian areas from what they envision as a Greater Israel “from the river to the sea.”
How do you justify your refusal to insist upon an independent investigation of the recent assassination of Turkish-American Citizen Aysenur Eygi and your seeming indifference to dual-American citizens still held hostage by Hamas? Do you still share Israel’s stated goals of eradicating Hamas and forcing Palestinians out of the Gaza Strip, West Bank, and East Jerusalem?
3. Ukraine
Why, after almost three years, do you continue to provide arms (increasingly sophisticated weapons) to Zelensky’s outnumbered forces; and why do you still discourage diplomatic efforts to negotiate a ceasefire? When Russian tanks rumbled toward Kiev in February 2022, the U.S. and NATO rightly defended Ukrainian sovereignty. However, Russia’s second war, on Ukraine’s eastern and southern borders, transformed an ongoing secessionist conflict into a bloody trench war. Having lost over 40,000 soldiers and t10,000 civilians, Ukraine now faces a serious shortage of troops as well as weapons. Its army’s surprising aggressive incursion into western Russia, has now apparently stymied, while Russian forces make slow but steady land gains in southern and eastern Ukraine.
You seem convinced that Putin’s aim is to revive the old Soviet Union after Ukraine is subdued. Yet NATO’s encircling of Russia with bases and rockets seems a more compelling reason for that country’s attacks on a Ukraine wanting to join NATO. Recall how America reacted during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.
News reports suggest that you and the Brits are ready to agree to Zelensky’s request for long range missiles that could reach far into Russia’s interior. How provocative that would be! No surprise that Putin would regard NATO -furnished weapons landing in Russia as a casus belli. The Russian leader may be bluffing, but the risk of a nuclear WWWIII is too horrible to contemplate. Even if such risk of war is small, the magnitude of the danger is simply overwhelming. Are you willing to gamble with American lives?
The continued supply of weapons by the U.S. and Europe prolongs the war and encourages Zelensky in his vain hopes of expelling Russian soldiers and recovering Crimea. The withholding of weapons would likely force Ukraine’s leaders to admit that their retreating troops cannot defeat an adversary four times its size. They might then conclude that diplomacy is the only way to achieve peace.
Mr. President, only you and Vice President Harris can transform your war party into a Democratic peace party. The time to do so is now.
The post Some Whys? An Open Letter to President Biden appeared first on CounterPunch.org.
This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by L. Michael Hager.
L. Michael Hager | Radio Free (2024-09-18T05:55:30+00:00) Some Whys? An Open Letter to President Biden. Retrieved from https://www.radiofree.org/2024/09/18/some-whys-an-open-letter-to-president-biden/
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