Senator Tom Cotton seems to have lost his mind. He thinks Ukraine is part of the United States. Like many Americans, Senator Cotton has swallowed the “Putin bad” hysteria pill.

Here’s a portion of what he said today on Fox News:

They're still scared of Putin rather than seizing the advantage, brave and skillful Ukrainian army has gained and helped Ukraine win and make Vladimir Putin afraid of Ukraine and afraid of America and afraid of NATO. That's why we should be moving faster to provide the Ukrainians the weapons they need to defend their own territory and ultimately take that territory back from Russians.

Cotton went on to say repeatedly that “we can win this war” and “we need to talk about winning.”

Unless Senator Cotton knows something I don’t (and I am behind on my emails), the United States is not at war against Russia. Ukraine is neither a state in the union nor a signatory to a mutual defense treaty signed by the United States. Ukraine is simply a country in a dispute with its neighbor that escalated into full-blown warfare.

Tom Cotton, it seems, watches too much TV news. The news channels, including Fox News, have successfully bypassed the critical-though parts of the brain to manipulate human emotions directly. This is called hypnosis. Hypnosis works, and it’s working right now on the majority of Americans, including the Senator from Arkansas.

But there’s something even more sinister and frightening than a hypnotized Senator on the Armed Services committee.

Though he was reading Republican talking points like good GOPer and making sure to blame Joe Biden for all the world’s ills, Cotton was actually affirming what everyone thought Joe Biden said Sunday: the United States is engaged in a proxy war in Ukraine for the purpose of regime change in Russia.

Why do I suspect this?

Joe Biden is senile, and he accidentally (off-script) called for regime change in Russia.
Joe Biden is senile, and he accidentally (off-script) told US Army personnel in Poland they would soon be in Ukraine.
The US State Department and White House denied that the United States is seeking regime change in Russia.

You can tell what the United States is doing—whatever it denies it’s doing. If the United States says “we’re not doing regime change,” as Antony Blinken eloquently put it, bet your bottom dollar the United States is “doing” regime change.

And if you want to know how this regime change episode will end, Matt Taibbi is eager to tell you.

In the best bit of gonzo journalism since Hunter S. Thompson violently took his own life, Taibbi today provided the world with a brief history of America’s regime change disasters. It’s sort of a CV for the CIA.

TK News by Matt Taibbi

"Regime Change" Doesn't Work, You Morons

Not long ago, candidate Joe Biden’s most troubling behavioral tendency was the surprise outburst of belligerence. Campaigning, he’d challenge questioners to push-up contests, jam fingers in the sternums even of supporters, and plunge into rambling monologues about leg hairs and chain-fights…

a year ago · 818 likes · 827 comments · Matt Taibbi

The article is laugh-out-loud funny in places, but it’s also a dire warning: you and I are probably going to see nuclear war in the near future. And it’s probably going to come as a result of the United States government’s meddling in Russian internal politics.

Taibbi seems to have sources who confirm my conclusion that the United States is, indeed, “doing regime change” in Moscow:

Although administration mouthpieces Tony Blinken and Jen Psaki scrambled to reassure a nervous world that the U.S. is not intent on “doing regime change” in Russia, officials everywhere have been telling reporters the opposite on background.

Tom Cotton certainly thinks we’re doing regime change. And the US State Department is actively sabotaging peace negotiations for some reason. Regime change is the likeliest reason of since peace would effectively strengthen Putin.

(BTW, the fact that your country is prolonging the suffering and increasing the deaths of Ukrainians in the commission of an international crime should make you very reluctant to call yourself a “proud” American. Unless you, like me, have emotionally and morally divorced America from the United States of America. To me, they are two different and mutually-exclusive entities.)

Taibbi’s article includes the greatest description of the Afghanistan debacle ever written:

Our record is so bad, the standard for measuring “regime change” isn’t even success or failure anymore. It’s more like failure, or heads-on-sticks failure. As in, “Did the intervention end in American-allied locals hurling themselves at the landing gear of departing aircraft in an effort to flee World War Z-style crowds of bloodthirsty nationalists?” Any regime change effort that ends without Americans beheaded, barbecued, or castrated — even if it accomplishes nothing — now goes in the plus column by default.

Raoul Duke is smiling somewhere.

Taibbi points to the fact that every single US-sponsored regime-change exercise has left the target country, the United States, and the world worse off. But Matt missed one such example: Ukraine.

The Obama Administration’s CIA orchestrated a coup in Ukraine in 2014 to install a puppet regime. Everyone knew the US was behind it, including Russia. I wrote about it last week.

Hennessy's View

Victoria Nuland Was Key Figure in Plotting 2014 Ukrainian Coup (Transcripts)

Victoria Nuland screwed up. She was lobbed a softball question by Deep State Senator Marco Rubio while testifying to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and she whiffed. Worse. She seemed to verify the existence of bioweapon research labs in Ukraine—reportedly funded and operated by the United States Department of Defense. (We have the receipts…

a year ago · 3 likes · Bill Hennessy

That’s why Russia captured part of Crimea and assisted Russian-speaking rebels in Donetsk and Luansk. Russia realized that NATO was moving into Ukraine, and it wanted to create a buffer in the eastern half of the country. In my view, solidifying that buffer with all of the Donbas region, Crimea, and the land between them was Russia’s goal of the invasion from the get-go. It’s the only strategy that makes sense.

Both Russia and Ukraine now seem willing to settle for that outcome: Ukraine’s promise to reject NATO membership, the partitioning of eastern 2/5 of the country into an independent state or Russian protectorate, and the permanent recognition of Crimea as part of Russia (which it has been for most of history). So why hasn’t peace broken out?

Because the United States and NATO don’t want peace. They want regime change.

US policy was to provoke Russia into a quagmire using Ukraine as a proxy with the intent of destabilizing the Russian government leading to a coup. Glenn Greenwald put it best in a recent Substack:

The U.S. is, by definition, waging a proxy war against Russia, using Ukrainians as their instrument, with the goal of not ending the war but prolonging it. So obvious is this fact about U.S. objectives that even The New York Times last Sunday explicitly reported that the Biden administration “seeks to help Ukraine lock Russia in a quagmire” (albeit with care not to escalate into a nuclear exchange). Indeed, even “some American officials assert that as a matter of international law, the provision of weaponry and intelligence to the Ukrainian Army has made the United States a cobelligerent,” though this is “an argument that some legal experts dispute.” Surveying all this evidence as well as discussions with his own U.S. and British sources, Niall Ferguson, writing in Bloomberg, proclaimed: “I conclude that the U.S. intends to keep this war going.” UK officials similarly told him that “the U.K.’s No. 1 option is for the conflict to be extended and thereby bleed Putin.”

You should read the whole article. Here’s the link.

Glenn Greenwald

Biden's Reckless Words Underscore the Dangers of the U.S.'s Use of Ukraine As a Proxy War

The central question for Americans from the start of the war in Ukraine was what role…

a year ago · 1,003 likes · 845 comments · Glenn Greenwald

We’ve covered a lot of ground, so let’s make sure everyone’s still following:

Tom Cotton believes the war in Ukraine directly involves the United States.
The United States’ goal in Ukraine is to destabilize the Russian government, leading to regime change.
The United States is actively sabotaging the peace process in Ukraine to prolong the war.
And every US attempt at regime change has ended in abject failure, cost millions of lives, and made the world more dangerous.

To that, we must add one grim note: the deposition of Putin marks the first time in history the United States attempted to overthrow the government of a nuclear power.

Our regime change in Iran led to the rise of Islamic terrorism. Our regime change in Iraq led to the rise of Isis. Our regime change in Afghanistan led to the return of the Taliban, now as a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Chinese Communist Party. Our regime change in Libya, Syria, and everywhere else (over 100 and counting) has led to a regime more actively hostile to the United States than the regime we overthrew.

But none of those ungrateful regimes controlled the world’s largest nuclear weapons arsenal or advanced biological warfare programs. The next Russian regime will.

I have no doubt the United States has groomed a Soros-funded, Davos-approved puppet to replace Putin and surrender Russia to the World Economic Forum. But I doubt it will end so well, as horrible as that would be. If history is any guide—and it usually is—the guy or gal who replaces Putin will last less than two years before a civil war in Russia brings to power an angry, bitter, nationalistic regime seeking revenge.

And that is why I disavow the United States government and all its works and all its pomps. That’s why I keep the American Ideal and the US government in logic-tight compartments. When that third wave of Russian leadership comes to power, the object of its blood lust will deserve its comeuppance. Call me a wimp, but I don’t want to get nuked because of what Joe Biden, Victoria Nuland, Jake Sullivan, Antony Blinken, and Tom Cotton dreamed up in their millionaire Doomsday Bunkers. I’d much rather be collateral damage than the deserving victim of Russian revenge.

Thus, I rebuke, reject, and condemn regime-change policy, proxy wars, and the governments that conduct them.

I have exciting news to share: You can now read Hennessy's View in the new Substack app for iPhone.

Available for iOS and Android

With the app, you’ll have a dedicated Inbox for my Substack and any others you subscribe to. New posts will never get lost in your email filters, or stuck in spam. Longer posts will never cut off by your email app. Comments and rich media will all work seamlessly. Overall, it’s a big upgrade to the reading experience.

The Substack app is currently available for iOS. If you don’t have an Apple device, you can join the Android waitlist here.

Hennessy's View

Regime Change in Russia Is US Policy