I agree with Glenn Greenwald's reasons for why no one at the White House is initiating contact with Russia.
The WH should appoint Obama as Secretary of State so that they would have someone competent to pick up the phone and call Russia to defuse this dangerous situation.
Aaron Maté gives us context you won't hear from most legacy news outlets:
Russia's invasion of Ukraine has presented the White House with a geopolitical crisis that it played a critical role in creating. In February 2014, Victoria Nuland, a current senior State Department official and former Dick Cheney advisor, was caught on tape plotting the installation of a new Ukrainian government – a plan, she stressed, that would involve Biden and his then-top aide, and current National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan. Weeks later, the democratically elected Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych was ousted and replaced by Washington-backed leaders – including a prime minister selected by Nuland.The regime change in Kiev made Biden the most influential US political figure in Ukraine, as underscored by the lucrative Burisma board seat gifted to his son Hunter. While the Biden family and other well-connected players profited, Ukraine fell into civil war. In the eastern Donbas region, Kremlin-backed Ukrainian rebels took up arms against a fascist-infused coup government that cracked down on Russian culture and countenanced murderous assaults on dissidents. Rather than promote the 2015 Minsk II accords -- the agreed-upon formula for ending the Donbas conflict – the US fueled the fight with a weapons and training program that turned Ukraine into a NATO proxy. Influential US politicians left no doubt about their intentions. As the Donbas war raged, lawmakers declared that they were using Ukraine to “fight Russia over there” (Adam Schiff) and vowed to “make Russia pay a heavier price,” (John McCain). In February of this year, Russia invaded to bring the eight-year fight to an end, leaving Ukraine to pay the heaviest price of all.
The Biden administration shunned multiple opportunities to prevent the Russian assault. When Russia submitted draft peace treaties in December 2021, the White House refused to even discuss the Kremlin’s core demands: a pledge of neutrality for Ukraine, and the rollback of NATO military forces in post-1997 member states that neighbor Russia. At the final round of talks on implementing Minsk II in early February, the “key obstacle,” the Washington Post reported, “was Kyiv’s opposition to negotiating with the pro-Russian separatists.” Siding with Ukraine’s far-right, which had threatened to overthrow Volodymyr Zelensky if he signed a peace deal, the US made no effort to encourage diplomacy. Emboldened to escalate its war on the Donbas, the Ukrainian government then massively increased shelling on rebel-held areas in the days immediately preceding Russa’s February 24th invasion.
Looking back at the pre-invasion period, Jack Matlock, the US ambassador to the Soviet Union under Bush I, now concludes that “if Ukraine had been willing to abide by the Minsk agreement, recognize the Donbas as an autonomous entity within Ukraine, avoid NATO military advisors, and pledge not to enter NATO,” then Russia’s war “probably would have been prevented.”
Why would we be so stupid? Why would put all the citizens of the US and of the world at risk over the Donbas, which most Americans don't care about and had never even heard of?
This might be the answer, which makes total sense given that we blew hundreds of billions of dollars on Afghanistan with no credibly articulated metric of success (until we unilaterally pulled out). The White House is starting to admit that neither side can "win" this war in the Ukraine. That, not a problem, because the goal is endless war, as Julian Assange explained:
Why would a person who ran as a anti-war progressive vote for massive military expenditures in a far corner of the world, a war with no benefit to Americans? Why, indeed? Their votes are in lockstep with almost every Democrat and Republican Glenn Greenwald.
As Carlson points out, Twitter user Samirah had it right in 2018 when she wrote:
How long will we be moaning on and on about single-payer while there's bipartisan support for nuclear Armageddon?
In the video, note the "rude" protest by two of AOC's constituents, who she betrayed.
The Ukraine war began Feb 24, 2020. Based on the above estimates, in only 8 months, the risk of nuclear war has increased somewhere between 400% and 2500%. Shouldn't this threat of annihilation be on the headline of every newspaper every day? Shouldn't the cost-benefit analysis of U.S. involvement have been discussed in open hearings in Congress before the U.S. jacked up the risk that we will all die for a territorial dispute involving a country most Americans couldn't have located on a map one year ago?
Is the problem that I'm in my 60s and I remember the terror we all felt during the Cuban Missile crisis? Is it that we are now a generation hooked on video games and violent movies, such that things always work out in the end (or if not, we hit the reboot button or wait for the next episode)?
Here are Tulsi Gabbard's reasons for leaving the Democrat Party, based on a mass emailing I received:
I can no longer remain in today’s Democratic Party that is now under the complete control of an elitist cabal of warmongers driven by cowardly wokeness, who divide us by racializing every issue and stoke anti-white racism, actively work to undermine our God-given freedoms enshrined in our Constitution, are hostile to people of faith and spirituality, demonize the police and protect criminals at the expense of law-abiding Americans, believe in open borders, weaponize the national security state to go after political opponents, and above all, are dragging us ever closer to nuclear war.I believe in a government that is of the people, by the people, and for the people. Unfortunately, today’s Democratic Party does not. Instead, it stands for a government of, by, and for the powerful elite.
I’m calling on my fellow common sense independent minded Democrats to join me in leaving the Democratic Party. If you can no longer stomach the direction that so-called woke Democratic Party ideologues are taking our country, I invite you to join me.