Why is the U.S. risking what Joe Biden has termed nuclear armageddon . .

Cui bono? Dwight Eisenhauer had the answer:

More from the video notes:

President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s farewell address, known for its warnings about the growing power of the “military-industrial complex,” was nearly two years in the making. This Inside the Vaults video short follows newly discovered papers revealing that Eisenhower was deeply involved in crafting the speech, which was to become one of the most famous in American history. The papers were discovered by the family of Eisenhower speechwriter Malcolm Moos and donated to the Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum. Eisenhower Library director Karl Weissenbach and presidential historian and Foundation for the National Archives board member Michael Beschloss discuss the evolution of the speech.

[Added Feb 7 2023]

After receiving a comment that pushed back on FB, I responded:

A cease fire should have been taken extremely seriously by the U.S., but wasn’t. It’s really easy to sit back and click buttons as a member of the laptop class or to ship vast billions of $ of weapons into a war zone as a member of the military industrial complex, always looking for another country to take on as an enemy in order to keep those dollars flowing. In the meantime, more than 7,000 Ukrainians have been killed and more than 11,000 injured. This includes more than 400 children. Comparable numbers of Russian soldiers, many of them forcefully conscripted, have been killed and maimed. But most of the people I know treat this needless war like a computer game, devoid of any empathy for the tragedy that is hurting and destroying so many families.

Add to the mix 7.7 Million Ukrainians who have been made homeless because of this war. The U.S. is a key reason that this war occurred, yet we act nonchalant about it now. Our worries about this war consist of rooting for the “good guys,” failing to explore the history of the region and refusing to entertain Russia’s concerns about NATO expansion. I see this as a horrific ongoing tragedy that we have encouraged. And let’s see . . . nothing about Ukraine on the home page of the NYT or WaPo today. The “journalists” have had their fun and are now moving on, especially in light of brand new Rand Corporation study. Now that dead bodies have piled up on Ukraine’s scorched earth.

That’s how the U.S. does war. We beat the drums and make countries much worse and then we move move on to the next war . . . Iraq, Syria, Libya and of course Vietnam. Despite this abysmal track record, the bloodthirsty U.S. media has a long history of pushing the U.S. into war. Both of these topics were explored at length by Glenn Greenwald last night. But you won’t hear about these critically important facts and analyses in the “news” most people ingest.

Below, on Glenn Greenwald’s nightly show, System Update, a quote from the new Pentagon-funded Rand Report that shifts the goal posts. We are, once again, figuring out that our initial objectives were ridiculous and we are preparing to move on to drum up conflict with China, leaving behind piles of Ukrainian dead bodies and broken families. That’s who we are–we love war and we love pretending that our sophisticated bombs improve the quality of live for people we don’t give a shit about. Rinse and repeat.

And we make these god-awful decisions to deploy our military in a media environment that excoriates dissenting voices. For a lot more about that problem, watch the first hour of Joe Rogan’s recent interview with Kristal Ball and Saagar Enjeti:

All of this is the standard American playbook when it comes to war. This playbook was examined in detail in the book (and documentary), War Made Easy.