Congressional aides take dictation from a seated Republican Senator. (IMG:lozierspeacefulvalley.wordpress.com ) Lost in the shuffle of dominating news stories about the crash of Germanwings flight 4U9525 into the southern French Alps with the loss of all 150 souls on board, as well as the gigantic merger of Heinz and Kraft in a move (orchestrated in part by Warren Buffet) that will create the third largest food corporation in the USA is the fact that the US Republican-led Congress passed a resolution urging President Obama to supply lethal aid to Ukraine. One would think that this was a simple move to to prop up Ukraine's defenses to make it more able to fend off Russian-backed attacks by the well-equipped rebels in the east . . . but the wording of the resolution (nonbinding, by the way) makes it very clear that the senators and reps want these weapons to be offensively used in the taking back of territory formerly under sovereign control of Ukraine in the east and down in the Crimea. The American Republicans in congress are brain damaged--they have lost sight, and all comprehension of their responsibilities individually and as a group, as well as the traditions built into the governing bodies of the House and the Senate. They have done three things over the past thirty days that expose a hubris-soaked mental illness that is practically unprecedented in the history of federal governance in the American modern era. First they invited a foreign leader who sharply disagreed with the President on a critical piece of foreign policy--the finer points of nuclear negotiation policy with Iran--to come address a full joint session of congress to promote his anti-Obama agenda. They allowed Benjamin Netanyahu a full congressional session, to command the floor of our most sacred hall of cooperative American governance, and to enjoy to the full benefit of full national media attention whereby television/radio content would be pre-empted as he made use of the federal system of governance to undermine the . . . (wait for it) current path of federal American governance. Secondly, in a move without equal in terms of induction of national nausea, 47 Republican senators sent a traitorous letter to the leaders of Iran regarding the same issue that Netanyau was allowed to chirp about when undermining the President in his own backyard: an Iranian deal to broker nuclear inspections and insure that enrichment of Uranium as well as all of the hallmarks of progress towards weapon-making are not carried out. The letter warned the Iranians that these 47 senators do not support the President, and that they (Iranians) should not sign an agreement with the President because they will do everything in their power to unravel whatever agreement is signed in its aftermath. Frankly, I think the Senators should be thrown out of office for such a hideous transgression and undermining of Presidential authority and stepping all over any remaining last vestige of the respect that the Office of the President of the United States is supposed to command, whether you like/agree with the present transitory occupant of that office or not. You disarm our entire nation now and in the future by eroding the power of this office on an international playing field. As for the reasons for the letter (outside of blatant disrespect and traitorous intentions versus their own leader) The Republicans want to strike a My Way Or The Highway pose of anti-diplomacy that will insure that no cooperation will be given-- via alienating the Iranians from jumpstreet. The letter is absurd: it cozies up to the Iranians and warns them that any cooperative agreement will be torn to tatters and replaced with bullying at first opportunity. While smart men keep their friends close and their enemies closer, Republicans would like to only keep their friends close, and alienate all of their enemies and keep them at a vast distance until, after whipping and chiding and punishing from that distance, the enemy screams UNCLE and decides to prove they are forthwith converted into fully obedient schoolchildren bowing to the concept of USA hegemony. A strategy which never works. The gulf between nations simply grows more and more bitter int hese circumstances. Lastly is this symbolic, unenforceable, nonbinding resolution issued during a moment of ceasefire trying to order the president to give powerful, lethal weaponry to the Ukranians not simply to defend themselves against any future acts of invasion by the Russians, but to break the ceasefire and redraw the national borders of Ukraine and Crimea back to their pre-conflict state. This is dangerous and shocking tinkering in a highly complex situation. Surely, nobody wants to see Crimea and Ukraine under anybody's control but their own sovereign governance--at the same time the United States has played a big part in the Ukrainian situation, and had a hand in the Maidan "revolution" which was without question a putsch engineered by deep cover foreign intelligence elements with very large checkbooks that could be traced back to Washington and London. Thus, what we are doing, in reacting to the reaction to our own subversive actions which triggered instability in the region, is extremely cheeky to put it mildly. The United States has to this point stood by observing the panicked scramble by a NATO and Western-paranoid Putin as he laid down a buffer zone to what he knew were his newly constituted, Western-infiltrated version of his old neighbors. Thus, this double-duty warmongering on behalf of the Republicans (with Democratic assistance) is an extremely dangerous game. Rather than war, a set of mutual, trust-building steps made in the clear light of day should be required to get both sides off of Ukraine's economically blasted shoulders. I'll leave the final comment to Ron Paul, who has published succinctly on the matter: Just weeks after a European-brokered ceasefire greatly reduced the violence in Ukraine, the US House of Representatives today takes a big step toward re-igniting -- and expanding -- the bloody civil war. A Resolution, "Calling on the President to provide Ukraine with military assistance to defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity," stealthily made its way to the House Floor today without having been debated in the relevant House Committees and without even being given a bill number before appearing on the Floor! Now titled H. Res. 162, the bill demands that President Obama send lethal military equipment to the US-backed government in Kiev and makes it clear that the weapons are to be used to take military action to return Crimea and parts of eastern Ukraine to Kiev's rule. Congress wants a war in Ukraine and will not settle for a ceasefire! The real world effect of this Resolution must be made clear: The US Congress is giving Kiev the green light to begin a war with Russia, with the implicit guarantee of US backing. This is moral hazard on steroids and could well spark World War III. The Resolution conveniently ignores that the current crisis in Ukraine was ignited by the US-backed coup which overthrew the elected government of Viktor Yanukovych. The secession of Crimea and eastern Ukraine were a reaction to the illegal coup engineered by US officials such as Victoria Nuland and Geoff Pyatt. Congress instead acts as if one morning the Russians woke up and decided to invade Crimea and eastern Ukraine. Preston Clive 3/25/2015***