EIR LEAD EDITORIAL FOR WEDNESDAY FEBRUARY 8, 2023

Stop This Drive Towards a Two-Front Global War!

Feb. 7, 2023, 2022 (EIRNS)—The national rally against “the war machine” being organized for Feb. 19 before the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., is coming none too soon.

War against one nuclear power is not enough. The State Department announced this week that it is busy organizing a “coalition of like-minded countries” to work in “lock-step” to confront China, citing the example of the “coalition of like-minded countries” which Press Spokesman Ned Price bragged again that the Biden administration organized against Russia—which has brought us already to the brink of nuclear war.

And now we are to prepare to confront a second nuclear power over high-altitude balloons, which the U.S. government raves are floating “over five continents”?

Look for a moment at how the situation looks through China’s eyes. Russia and China are treated in U.S. strategic policy documents as adversaries to be contained or derailed. The Chinese hear U.S. military and civilian officials repeat that the goal of the war in Ukraine is the “strategic defeat” of Russia. The pace of U.S. naval sorties near China picks up. Neighboring Japan is welcomed as a partner of NATO, and Japanese media now report that the U.S. is discussing an agreement to install long-range, even hypersonic missiles on Japanese territory. High-level Pentagon officials publicly report that they are preparing for war with China, and an Air Force general sends a memo to his troops advising them to get their family and legal matters in order, because they will likely be fighting China by 2025—and he is not cashiered. China sees such U.S. diplomats as Victoria “Maidan coup” Nuland deploy, one after the after, to organize provocations and opposition to China from the countries along China’s Himalayas border.

There was cautious hope in China that the November 2022 agreement between Presidents Biden and Xi Jinping, that differences between the United States and China should be handled carefully through hard diplomatic work so as to avoid conflict, was a counter policy to the “war machine.” Now that agreement is “on hold,” while an international anti-China coalition is hyped up around a Chinese high-altitude balloon which Gen. Glenn VanHerck, head of NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, admits that the Pentagon was aware of days before the scare propaganda started, and that it was his assessment “that this balloon did not present a physical military threat to North America.”

This is a policy in search of an incident—and that policy is gambling on provoking and winning showdowns with two nuclear powers.

This insanity comes at the same time that the devastation in Türkiye and Syria from two back-to-back earthquakes cry out for humanity to join together and cooperate on saving lives! And what does the U.S. government do? President Biden and the State Department refuse to lift the brutal sanctions the U.S. has imposed for years on Syria—and any nation which seeks to help or trade with that nation—in the name of protecting the Syrian people.

These crimes against humanity are too much. The Schiller Institute has issued a call, demanding that the sanctions be lifted. The Middle East Council of Churches, representing all the various Christian denominations in that region, urge that sanctions be lifted. From within the United States, former state senator Col. (ret.) Richard Black issued a biting statement today against this criminal policy.

Statements—and actions—from other Americans must follow, demanding that this policy end. People from some 50 countries who participated in the Schiller Institute’s Feb. 4 conference, “The Age of Reason or the Annihilation of Humanity?,” showed the fighting spirit which is beginning to break out in the United States as well, to overturn this genocidal policy of unending war, leading to nuclear war. Join us, in building the upcoming Feb. 19 rally at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, and sister rallies in numerous cities across the United States, Europe, and Ibero-America..