From the Chris Hedges Report, “Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb:”

If, as Joe Biden says, Putin is “not joking” about using nuclear weapons and we risk nuclear “Armageddon,” why isn’t Biden on the phone to Putin? Why doesn’t he follow the example of John F. Kennedy, who repeatedly communicated with Nikita Khrushchev to negotiate an end to the Cuban missile crisis? Kennedy, who unlike Biden served in the military, knew the obtuseness of generals. He had the good sense to ignore Curtis LeMay, the Air Force Chief of Staff and head of the Strategic Air Command, as well as the model for General Jack D. Ripper in “Dr. Strangelove,” who urged Kennedy to bomb the Cuban missile bases, an act that would have probably ignited a nuclear war. Biden is not made of the same stuff.

The following is the best brief summary I’ve seen recently of our relations with Russia since the end of the Cold War, by Vietnam War veteran and former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter. His narrative helps explain why Biden is so unwilling to engage in diplomacy or even to encourage Ukraine to pursue diplomacy. Ritter, along with Colonel Douglas Macgregor, is one of the most trustworthy and knowledgeable analysts of America’s proxy war with Russia in Ukraine.