THE ZELENSKY-TRUMP MEETING IN THE WHITE HOUSE, FEB 2024 -- 2 ANALOGIES

     This morning on America's usual left-wing National Public Radio, they had an interview with a foreign policy expert, a Republican, to analyze the Trump-Zelensky White House shouting match.  Normally, PBS invites liberal Democrats and quizzes them with soft-ball questions so they can present their views at length.  When interviewing a populist Republican, the questions are hostile, and when the guest tries to answer, the NPR reporter interrupts often so you may never hear the full reply.

     This morning, the NPR guest was a Republican, for mer American Ambassador to the UN, and an official during the first Trump administration, John Bolton.  Bolton thought the White House spat was a disaster.  He thought Zelensky was trying to defend his country, while Trump is on a mission to sell it our.  Trump is simply repeating Putin propaganda.  In effect, what Trump is planning is a new 1938 Munich conference, in which Chamberlain allowed Hitler to carve up Czechoslovakia in a way so it could no longer be defended from the growing German military under Hitler.  Trump is planning a sell out of Ukraine in the same way.  The West did not stand by Czechoslovakia, the democratic state, so Hitler swallowed it in pieces.  Chamberlain's Peace in Our Time led directly to WWII.  Bolton, a Republican, is a known war-hawk, and some have quipped , there has never been a war he disapproved.  Like Lynn Cheney and the J-6 Committee, Bolton is no fried of  Trump?

     But is Trump the new Chamberlain?  Is Trump a modern appeaser of a dictator, betraying a democratic ally?  Is his Peace in Our Time another mirage?  Should Trump be waving an umbrella?  Is he a Putin puppet?

    A BETTER ANALOGY.  In 1950 Kim Il Sung, leader of the New North Korean Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea, got permission from Soviet leader Josef Stalin to invade South Korea.  So began the Korean War.  Or was it a war?  Soldiers and civilians died.  In America, pressure mounted on Dem. Pres. Harry Truman.  South Korea, surprised by the attack, was losing.  Would the war be lost before America could decide? To intervene or not?  Truman decided to intervene, but not alone.  He asked the UN to do so too.  The only way the resolution passed was because the USSR was boycotting because the UN Security Council because the seat for China was still occupied by he Republic of China (Nationalist) and not the new Peoples Republic of China (Mao's Communists who had control of the mainland and proclaimed the PRC from a Beijing balcony in 1949.)  Gen. Douglas Mac Arthur would lead the American effort and any smaller efforts by our allies.)

     In South Korea, only a small south-east corner round Pusan was still free from the invaders.  Mac Arthur ordered naval invasions around Inchon, near the middle of the peninsular cutting supply lines to the North, and the Communists began their retreat.  Some Brits, Filipinos, and other American allies joined the fray, and the anti-communists now invaded the North.  Suddenly the North was crumpling. retreating toward the Yalu River, the border, mainly with China, and a little bit with the USSR.

     If the Communists were surprised by the naval invasion of the center of the 2 nations at Inchon by Mac Arthur's counter attack, now Mac Arthur was caught off-guard.  Mao had called for a mass of Chinese volunteers to help the comrades in Korea against the capitalist imperialists.  Vast numbers of Chinese were suddenly crossing the Yalu, pushing back the Americans, in extremely cold winter conditions.  America had almost won, and victory was now being snatched from them by the masses of Asia and the bitter cold.  Mac Arthur had a plan to steal back the victory form the Chinese "volunteers" - he would up the ante of the war by using a nuclear bomb.  Truman had played the international card; this was not an official war; it was a police action, with the UN.  Truman decided, no nukes, and no more Mac Arthur.  He fired the general.  The war dragged on with more and more casualties.  Korea was the first of America's No Win Wars.  The fighting, and casualties continued.

     For the Presidential election of 1952, Truman's polling was dismal, about 25%.  He chose not to run again, but Adlai Stevenson, who sounded like a liberal elitist became the Democratic candidate.  Gen. Eisenhower led the Republicans with Richard Nixon as his VP candidate.  In the campaign, Ike announced he would go to Korea to END THE WAR.

     Officially, Ike failed.  Officially, North and South Korea are STILL at war.  But, with difficulties, which POWs should be returned, etc., still, the fighting generally came to an end.  Without Ike's promise, the fighting war might still be going on in Korea, with killing Koreans AND Americans.  Was Ike a weakling for pushing peace?  Was Ike like Chamberlain encouraging Hitler?  Or was Ike a very wise man?  Ike was not perfect, no one is.  But he was wise in ending a no-win war (police action).  Trump is not like Chamberlain bringing on WWIII; Trump is like Ike.  Bolton is wrong.  So are the European leaders: Macron, Starmer, King Charles, et al.  By contrast, Trump is a wise leader, trying to find a way to peace and prosperity for most.

     ANOTHER QUESTION - How many foreign prime ministers and presidents actively campaign in American Presidential elections?  In the campaign of 2024, Zelensky actively campaigned for Kamala Harris and the Democrats, against Republican Trump.  Was this not an example of foreign influence on the campaign?  Trying to sway America to keep up the flow of dollars and arms?  Was this not also an example of "foreign collusion" in our affairs?  When Zelensky arrived at the White House in February 2025, Pres. Trump should have met him at the door, "If you are here to request help, I suggest you go instead to the offices of Kamala Harris.  You campaigned for my defeat.  Ask her for help instead." 

     Bottom line - Trump is for peace, but he is not an appeaser.  He follows the tradition of Pres. Eisenhower, who did not want never ending, no-win wars that were detrimental to our nation, (but profitable for some in the military-industrial complex.  Ike had courage to use Operation Wetback to round up illegal aliens, and send them back to Mexico.

    Is Trump a puppet of Moscow?  It was Bill Clinton who received $500,000 for a speech in Moscow.  It was the Biden family that received special deals, getting millions of dollars from Chinese firms, and even getting Hunter on the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian energy firm.  And the American corrupt deep state *remember the 51 American intelligence agent leaders, who without seeing the Hunter laptop, but at the behest of then Democratic Party operative Anthony Blinken, LIED to the American public signing their names that the Hunter laptop was Russian disinformation.  Doing this just before the 2020 election to help corrupt Biden and help defeat Trump.  But when Hunter finally went to trial, no one challenged ther validity of Hunter's laptop.  It shows that the head of CIA, and other agencies were Deep State, liars, not to defend America, but to defend their private intersts and harm their personal foes.  One more reason for Trump to have a clean sweep of the swolen government.

     In the end, all we are saying - is give Trump a chance!          

HUGH MURRAY

AMERICA'S BIG MISTAKE IN UKRAINE AND TAIWAN///pART 2

By Hugh Murray 

 China just signed a deal with the Solomon Islands in the Pacific, not long after surprising America by signing another deal with Samoa.  China has cash to help build infrastructure, pay of bribes to politicians, and do other things, like perhaps construct a Chinese naval base located there.  The UP reports today that China is negotiating with 7 other island nations in the Pacific right now.  Well, it is a good thing the Hawaiian Islands are already American territory or perhaps China might soon have a base there.  Is Pearl Harbor up for sale now?  These new treaties will give China room to get to the other side of the Philippine Islands, possibly interfere with American shipping to Australia, Philippines, Vietnam, and if war comes, restrict our plans to defend Taiwan. 

 

     China was once the world's premier naval power.  But first an aside: during the American Revolutionary war, a young Andrew Jackson fought beside his brother against the British.  They were captured.  When a British officer commanded the 13-year-old Andrew to polish the gentleman's boots, the young Andrew refused.  The officer drew his sword, slashed Andrew's left hand to the bone and hit him on the head - leaving scars on both head and hand.  In the late 1300s, there were wars in China a leader of a Mongolian group killed in fighting the Chinese, and when his young son was questioned by his dad's opponents, the youth spoke defiantly.  He too was punished.  But there are cultural differences.  This youth was castrated, became a servant in the court of the victor's, and rose in rank.  By the early 1400s, this boy grown to manhood, becomes Admiral to the largest fleet ever to sail - some 28,000 sailors sailing from near Suzhou down the South China Sea, the Spice islands, India, Sri Lanka, even Arabia (Admiral Zheng He is a Muslim and goes to Mecca), and to East Africa.  They return to China with many goods and animals like giraffes that were unknown in the Middle Kingdom.  The Admiral, with several major expeditions to the Indian Ocean and Africa, may give the Chinese a claim to the South China Sea.  Compare his huge expeditions with those that came later: Magellan fewer than 300 men\; da Gama 170;  and Columbus, a mere 90 men.  Yet, which voyages changed the world?

     (One more aside: it is interesting to note that both He in China and Jackson in America begin on the bottom rungs of society, and in both lands, both rise to the top or near the top.  Andrew Jackson defeated the British in the Battle of New Orleans and was later elected American President; He in China fought in the military there and became the most famous Admiral or one of the largest fleets on  several successful expeditions.  But he never became emperor.  Both societies may have been more open to talent than we are aware of.) 

 Moreover, by 1433 China had a new emperor, and soon he decreed that there should be no more ocean-going ships to sail, or to be built, and all those in existence and all their plans should be destroyed!  Surely China did not dominate the South China Sea after 1450.  China ceased to be a naval power.  There are cultural differences, and often these have huge consequences.  In the 1890s China even lost a war to Japan, a nation only "opened" to the world by the American navy's Commodore Perry in 1853.  Japan then quickly sought to catch up with the west, learning from imported military figures from Prussia and naval ones from Britain.  When China lost to Japan, it had to cede Formosa (Taiwan) to the Japanese.  The island remained Japanese until 1945, when Japan lost WWII.

     Formosa, no longer Japanese would go to the official Chinese government, the one recognized by the new UN organization and all major powers, the Nationalist government headed by Chiang Kai-shek.

      In 1944 there was no A-bomb, and even as Nazi Germany seemed destined for defeat, America faced the huge problem of invading the Japanese home islands.  FDR made promises to Stalin in order to get him to declare war on Japan.  It was agreed he would do so within 3 months of the German surrender.  In August 1945 the US dropped 2 A-bombs on Japan, the Soviets entered the war against Japan, quickly over-running the depleted defense forces in Manchukuo,  Japan surrendered.  Soviet troops were in Manchuria, dismantling factories to bring them to the USSR, but taking the Japanese weapons, and instead of giving them to the "official" Chinese government, gave them to the Communist rebel regime of Mao Zedong.  A Nationalist faction under Wang Jingwei, that had collaborated with Japan was totally discredited, but civil war increased between the "official" Chiang Nationalists and Mao's Communists, now supplied with weapons by the Soviets.  American Pres. Truman sent Gen. George Marshall to end the conflict, and he demanded Chiang form a coalition with Mao, or Marshall said there would be no aid.  This policy allowed the Communists to conquer more of China.  Finally, Marshall okayed help for Chiang, but Communists in the FDR Administration, like H D White in Treasury, obstructed any real aid to Chiang.  The result - in 1949 Mao broadcast from Beijing the creation of the Peoples' Republic of China.  Chiang, with the remnants of his defeated army, fled to Taiwan, protected by the US Navy.  Taiwan became what was left of the Republic of China.  This was the origin of the 2-China policy.

      In 1950 North Korea invaded its southern neighbor; Truman decided to send American troops to aid the South, and the war was on.  Gen. Douglas Mac Arthur was able to land forces behind the lines of the invaders, encircling the North Communists, and soon the whole peninsula was in anti-Communist hands.  Then in cold winter, the Chinese Communist "volunteers" crossed the Yalu using their large numbers and enduring heavy losses, but pushing the anti-communists back to the approximate border of before.  And so it remains.

     Having been unofficially at war with the PR China, there were few relations between the 2 nations.  Then, the Vietnam war, found America in a difficult war.  Even though there were now many reports of a rift between the USSR and the PRC, America was on the outside.  Diplomat Henry Kissinger got Pres. Richard Nixon, a Republican, to try to put a wedge between those 2 Communist lands  Ping pong diplomacy.  The US urged less Chinese support for the Vietnamese, which did occur.  Under Pres. Carter, the US formally recognized a 1-China policy, and the Rep. of China was now simply Taipei.  The US overthrew the royal leader of Cambodia, Prince Sihanouk, who was soon replaced by the radical Khmer Rouge.  Both China and the US seemed happy with that, while Communist Vietnam (ally of the USSR) was furious that the Cambodians were murdering Vietnamese.  The Khmer Rouge then began a great extermination policy of its own people too, killing up to 2 million.  Anyone who had glasses was suspect.  To what extent did the US secretly work with the PRC in Cambodia?  As Vietnam was trying to overthrow the leaders of Cambodia?  China and Vietnam also had their own small war against each other along their common border.

      The late 80s, Tiananmen - the CP will continue to rule China.  But deals with the west for trade, very cheap labor assured will mean low prices in America.  Under Clinton and Bush, more trade deals, and China joins World Trade Organization, keeping its home market safe by requiring foreign corporations to  form partnerships (where Chinese can steal secrets on manufacturing).  When in the 1990s China cannot get missiles off the ground, the Clintons make deals, receive campaign "donations," and Chinese rocket problems are solved.  PRC makes honey deals with high ranking American politicians, the Biden family, the Clintons, Feinstein, Republican Senate leader McConnel.  The CPR leadership learns a weak link of democracy - corruption.

      Kissinger worked to separate Russia and China.  Biden, with his reaction to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, has made the Russo-Chinese relation ever closer.  Just as the Biden economic war against Putin may be making the US far weaker, the the ruble stronger today with the dollar than when Biden announced his policy.  Worse, the Biden, Democrats and Rhino Republican policies of giving Zelensky all he wants, simply keeps the war going in Ukraine.  Inflation is a problem in the US.  Now we just voted $40 billion more for that war.  UKRAINE IS NOT A DIRECT AMERICAN INTEREST.  Worse, we are facing a battle about Taiwan, which we need to win.  Will we have sufficient weapons?  Money?  Manufacturing capabilities for continued weaponry?  (Remember, we are dependent on Taiwan for the chips so necessary in the new weaponry.  If China attacks Taiwan, or merely surrounds it and blockades it, will the USA  be able to manufacture anything??  China has built up its navy so it is powerful.  Untested, yes, but are we up for the test ourselves?  China was testing hypersonic missiles last year - Gen. Milley called it a "near Sputnik moment."  The other day the US Air Force reported we too have had a successful test (after some failures).

       China ignores the World Court's decision on the South China Sea; the court denied it is China's.  China rejected the court's judgement and instead built up islands in the sea, then broke its word and militarized those islands.  China has signed contracts with 2 island groups in the Pacific since April 2022, and is trying for 7 more deals.  Will the Pacific be China's new lake??

     Some maintain that the recent virus lockdowns in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Xian, and even Beijing have nothing to do with any virus, but they are exercises in control in case there is a major war (with the USA).

If China were to strike first, and not just in Taiwan, but hit our shores too, Would we be able to respond AND WIN?  What about Chinese money near the Panama Canal?

      Instead of bowing to Zelensky's demands, we should tell him to make a deal and end the war, while we prepare for our own defense.  To the Chinese we seem at a weak point - an elderly, maybe senile leader, high crime rate, inflation, instability, and general confusion, more worried about proper pronouns than how effective is your missile.  They want Taiwan by 2049, but why wait?  Especially if the balance of power has changed, if the most advanced nation is the Middle Kingdom, which rests between heaven and earth?  Perhaps they will conclude this year is the time for the Middle Kingdom to take its rightful place.  Are we prepared to shatter that "cultural difference," and prove that their proper place is NOT a superior one to all the rest of the earth.  Are we prepared to prevent a modernized, 1984 one-party state from becoming a modernized one-party world?  Our democratic republic has its flaws, but it is the last best hope for humanity. 

 

     To prepare for the big one, let us end the Ukraine war now.

AMERICA'S BIG MISTAKE IN UKRAINE///TAIWAN pART 1

   RFLECTIONS ON THE WAR AND THE BIGGER ONE COMING by HUGH MURRAY

 Ukraine's Vlod Zelensky is the well known leader who heads his nation in time of war.  The former television comedian is transformed into the new Churchill, urging his nation to fight on against the foreign invaders.  The media shows him as the man of the hour, the man of courage.  Or, is he simply the Greta Thunberg of Ukraine?

      Greta Thunberg began her activism for the environment at age 15, and her demands that adults see the necessity of protecting the environment, as she sees it, made her into a media spokes girl in the left wing media.  Her demands that governments do as she says is almost laughable, but since her message is that of the left, the media promote her, and legislators throughout the world listen to her and try to accommodate her demands.  If she were not presenting the left-wing message in a new package, the left-leaning media would never have promoted her.  She is the same old green message in a new, Swedish wine bottle.  Still trying to shame, insult, bully nations into doing what she wants.  Even in failure, she gets the publicity for her left-wing message.

     Zelensky is the latest version of Thunberg, accusing, shaming, demanding, that nations support his nation financially, legally, and militarily.  He is very popular in the US with Democrats and Rhino Republicans.  No matter his packaging, is Zelensky correct in his message?

     Ukraine was one of the provinces of the Czarist Russian Empire.  Allied with Britain, France, and the other allied nations in "the Great War" (WWI), Russia did poorly, and in early 917 there was a revolution that brought a Western type government to power, until the fall when Lenin and the Bolsheviks seized control.  German armies continued to invade while the Reds sought to expand their internal control in a civil war.  Forced to sign a peace treaty, Red Russia ceded chunks of territory to newly independent countries, like Ukraine, which were to become German satellites.  Half year later, Germany and the Central Powers surrendered to the Allies, and Germany had to withdraw from all its gains in the East.  Soon after, the Communist led Ukraine requested to join the Soviet Union.  Under Stalin the Reds sought to collectivize agriculture, and use crops to get funds to industrialize.  Ukraine, the traditional "bread basket" of Europe, became the center of a war against the successful farmers (kulaks), whose crops were taken, and whose family members starved or were sent to Gulags (to freeze or starve).  The policy led to the deaths of millions of Ukrainians, the first of many Communist experiment in economics that led to millions more deaths under Mao and the Khmer Rouge.  But as the left reasoned, to make an omelet one has to break a few eggs.

    During WWII, when the Germans invaded the Ukraine, many natives were happy to see the end of Stalin's rule.  The choice was between Hitler and Stalin, 2 monsters.  For the Jews of Ukraine, Hitler meant death, so they had no choice.  Others did; and there were those who sympathized with and even fought along side the German invaders during WWII.  For a movie depiction of the division, see "Europa, Europa," for Poles fleeing the German invaders.  Then news that the Soviets have invaded Poland from the East, and many Poles turn around to run toward the Germans, while others were still running away.  In the West it is easy for us to condemn those who chose one or the other, but we did not have to choose between 2 monsters, one worse than the other.  Our leaders, far from perfect, have generally avoided such savagery on such mass scales.

      After WWII, there was a kind of civil war in Poland and Ukraine for a few years before the Communists could regain complete control.

     After Stalin's death, Khruschev became the next leader of the USSR.  A Ukrainian, he changed to border of Ukraine, giving it Russian territory.  This made little difference as they were all part of the USSR.  Then Reagan and Gorbachev, the Wall falls, and so does the USSR.  The enlarged Ukraine becomes independent, with a large Russian speaking population.  Indeed, in all ot the break-away nations of the USSR, Russian minorities were suddenly stranded in places like Turkmenistan.  Ukraine was close to Russia, and had a corrupt, pro-Russian elected government, until a Western led coup in 2014.  To protect the Russian naval bases, Putin invaded the Crimea, and some eastern parts of the Ukraine declared their independence from that nation and looked to Russia.  Kiev has never recognized these Russian enclaves, even though a Minsk Agreement was supposed to do so.  The new Ukraine government continued some aspects of the old - like corruption.  But now US military sponsored scientific labs in Ukraine and other former Soviet lands.  The US was very worried that these labs would fall to Russian troops with the invasion this year.  Russia alleged they were scenes of biological and chemical warfare.  The US denied the allegations.  But why was the US military sponsoring these labs?

      Why is the US subsidizing the war in the Ukraine?  Without American backing, Zelensky would have to go to the negotiating table and make a deal.  Without the support of the Democrats (and its media) and the UniParty Republicans (mainly Rhinos), (and major support from most of Fox News) Ukraine would sue for peace.  America mobilized all its allies to get on board the train to Ukraine.  NATO (North Atlantic?), and for the economic war against Russia, even Japan.  India and a few others have resisted America's attempt to isolate Russia, diplomatically, and especially economically.

     Democrats and Rhino Republican maintain that the border of Ukraine is sacrosanct and must be maintained against the Russian invasion.  Yet, Democrats and many Rhino Republicans support the invasion of the border of the US by those crossing in from Mexico.  Pres. Biden and his Administration collude with pro-invasion organizations who teach foreigners how to lie so they will seem like legitimate refugees.  Groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and various NGOs and religious organizations all partake in this fraud.  Some gain considerable US federal dollars by "helping" the refugees.  Lately, I think it is near a thousand a day who come across the border.  Some have links to drug cartels, some are returning after having been deported, a few are potential terrorists.  It is clear that neither Democrats nor Rhino Republicans care at all about America's southern border, but they are cheerleading the efforts to defend that of Ukraine.

      The Ukraine is corrupt, and according to Panama Papers Pres. Zelensky has many off-shore accounts too.  More important, American weapons manufacturers can make a mint if the US subsidizes the war in Ukraine, as it did in Afghanistan, as it did in Iraq, as it did in Vietnam, etc.  So left-wing ideas about flooding the US with refugees (and the donor class Republicans favor cheap labor which comes with the thousands of illegal aliens(, and Uniparty (Dems and Rhinos) may get a% of the military contracts so they cheeer the blue and yellow flag and are delighted when Zelensky "speaks truth" that he needs more money and military aid.  Why, Zelensky is better than Thornberg in shaming us into doing what we already want to do.

       The problem is - the US has no real national interest in Ukraine.  Worse, a war is on the horizon in which we have vital interest, and we are ruining our own economy, sending military materiale to Ukraine, forcing Putin into China's arms, when we are about to face a conflict with the People's Republic of China. 

              END OF PART 1