“The use of war for political gain was evident at last night’s State of the Union. However, Joe Biden’s insistence on prolonging the meat grinder in Ukraine and the genocide in Gaza is not meant so much to win votes directly from voters, the percentage of the electorate supporting these wars gets smaller as they continue, as it is to stay in the good graces of the American military-industrial complex and the Israeli lobby.

As much as $40 billion of the more than $60 billion the president wants to provide for the unwinnable Ukraine war will go to American weapons companies. At best, this support will only keep the war on life support, allowing the slaughter, destruction, and suffering to continue while serving as an annual bonus to the profits of the arms industry. 

Meanwhile, the cynicism of building a port to assist Gazans while the food, water, medicine, and other forms of aid are sitting on thousands of trucks on the border, blocked by Israel, is breathtaking. How many more people will die while the port is being built is the apparent question anyone would ask with more than a second or two of contemplation. 

The US can end both the Ukraine war and the genocide in Gaza through negotiations with the leverage it has via its arms and munitions supply to Ukraine and Israel. Choosing not to do so to keep campaign finance support from the military-industrial complex and a foreign lobby dooms tens of thousands more to their deaths, continues great suffering to hundreds of millions, and prolongs strategically unsound wars that make whole regions of the world unstable, threatens dangerous escalation and continues an American decline.”