PETER HITCHENS: Ukraine’s stuck in a stinking trench-warfare brawl. Why is there no push for peace?

Ukraine now has powerful new American missiles that can travel almost 200 miles. Funnily enough, Washington and Kiev were not so keen to make this fact public. But at least two have already been deployed against targets in Crimea.

A year ago, the Americans refused to send the very same missiles to Ukraine, under the excuse that they had none left, although the real reason was that they were afraid of how they might be used. This is also why Germany is not giving its 300-mile range Taurus missiles to President Zelensky (for now).

Look back to the months after the Russian invasion two years ago and you will see that NATO powers have steadily loosened their original limits on what they would give to Ukraine.

If Vladimir Putin were to fall, writes Peter Hitchens, I wouldn’t count on him being replaced by someone nicer

Now, with the release of the US $60 billion aid package, we can expect a river of weapons and ammunition to flow into the bleak battlefields of the Don Basin. I think we can also be sure that there will be more attacks on Russian territory, even if Ukraine says it won’t. Russia will continue to respond by destroying what is left of the Ukrainian economy and power grid.

Three outcomes are possible. The first is that in a year’s time things will be about the same as they are now, but there will be many more men dead or terribly maimed on both sides, and more houses destroyed.

The second is that the front line has shifted slightly one way or the other, plus the deaths and destruction already mentioned. And the third, which cannot be ruled out just because “experts” say it is unlikely, is that Ukraine’s greatly increased firepower will cause a Russian collapse and defeat.

This would lead to the fall of Vladimir Putin. If this happens, I wouldn’t count on him being replaced by someone nicer. Rather the opposite. In that case, Europe will be more unstable than it has been for almost a century. Who wants this?

What are our war aims? What would be a good outcome? If you listen to the BBC, you would think that a negotiated peace would be a terrible thing. The Corporation’s reporting on this lacks any attempt at balance or reflection. The dissent has disappeared from the airwaves. Because liberal leftists in the West have become fervent warmongers over the past twenty years.

Why? Despite their general vegetarian appearance, leftists have good reasons to like wars. War increases state power and centralization, imposes discipline and censorship, and has made Europe – over the past century – far more socialist than it would otherwise have been.

Leftists are also utopian idealists, ready to kill and destroy for some shining cause at a distance. Utopia can only be approached through a sea of ​​blood, and you never arrive.

The mystery is why political conservatives today are so keen on war, their enemy. The correct conservative (and mature) view of war is that war is a regrettable necessity, expensive and destructive, and that it must be ended through compromise as quickly as possible. The only thing we learned from the conflict in Ukraine is what the simplest citizen knows in his personal life: that deliberately annoying a powerful neighbor will get you into trouble, and that a shabby compromise is cheaper and safer than a fight till the end.

The war in Ukraine is the result of the wishes of a small American foreign policy faction. These are the same people who got us into the 2003 Iraq War, who turned Libya into an anarchist cauldron, and who cheered on the disastrous ‘Arab Spring’ that ultimately led the West to a horrific massacre in Cairo tolerated and supported the army. junta there.

They also completely destroyed Syria, because they were so obsessed with overthrowing the despot that they allied with Al Qaeda to do so. They think they can remake the world. All they can do – over and over again – is destroy it. They seem to have gotten their idea of ​​how the world works from comic books, not history books. Yet they are there.

Others in Washington said, “Don’t expand NATO,” and advised against the years of bear baiting that ended with Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. They were pushed aside by these geniuses. And here we are, embroiled in a stinking trench war that has lasted half as long as the First World War.

Wise people (conservatives, as it happened) also tried to end that war with a deal. But politicians and many in the media of the time were too proud and haughty to do that. And so we got more massacres, and Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini and World War II as a result. The same damn fools are in charge again.

What is Labor keeping secret this time?

My brilliant Daily Mail colleague Alex Brummer revealed last week how Labour’s big fist Gordon Brown suppressed Alex’s scoop on Labour’s secret 1997 plan to plunder and destroy this country’s once-stellar private pension sector.

Alex recalled working for the pro-Labor Guardian newspaper at the time. When Brown learned that the paper intended to publish, he “put intense pressure on the publication to keep the heat or face dire consequences when New Labor came to power.”

To his eternal shame, the Guardian retracted the story. At about the same time, a broadcast of the April 1997 Labor election stated, without qualification, that if the Conservatives won the general election the following month they would abolish the state pension. This lie still goes unpunished. Why wouldn’t they try again? These people lie, hide and cheat. If they didn’t, they could never win elections. Would so many middle-class people have voted for New Labor if they had known what Alex was trying and failing to publish?

What don’t you know about Labour’s undisputed secret plans to tax the middle class? And which left-wing media know about this and suppress it?

Honesty is not always rewarded

Leonie Benesch plays a teacher who fights against unfairness at a school in The Teachers’ Lounge

I would love to see a British film, made in one of our supposedly modern, ‘excellent’ state schools, that honestly shows what they are really like. In the meantime, you and I can make do with a compelling German film called The Teachers’ Lounge, in which Leonie Benesch plays an idealistic, honorable teacher who discovers and tries to combat dishonesty in a German high school (yes, they still have it). . in most places). I encourage you to see how she is doing. The film is difficult to find in this country, but it is worth persevering.