News - World: US Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell should be removed from office as “a threat to peace” and the survival of humanity by pushing the United States towards war with Russia, an American journalist and political commentator has said.

"He is, quite literally, summoning the demons of global war," said Don DeBar, a radio host based in New York.

"And," the analyst added, "the former Senate Majority leader is not the only one. The current Senate Majority leader, Chuck Schumer, should join him in being removed and criminally prosecuted, along with most of their colleagues in both houses of the US Congress, for advocating and enabling a war that is a potential extinction-level event.”

DeBar made the remarks in an interview with Press TV on Saturday after McConnell (R-Ky.) said that US aid to Ukraine is a “direct investment” in the country’s interests and against Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “war machine” on the first anniversary of Russia’s war with Ukraine.

He said that US national security is tied to stability and security in Europe and preventing Russian forces from advancing in the continent.

“As my fellow leading Republicans and I have explained, it is not an act of charity for the United States and our NATO allies to help supply the Ukrainian people’s self-defense,” he said. “It is a direct investment in our own core national interests.”

McConnell pointed out that the United States has largely been sending older weapons from its stockpile to Ukraine.

“If Putin were given a green light to destabilize Europe, invading and killing at will, the long-term cost to the United States in both dollars and security risks would be astronomically higher than the miniscule fraction of our GDP that we have invested in Ukraine’s defense thus far,” he said.

He urged the Biden administration to act more resolutely in ensuring that its military assistance to Ukraine and investments happen at the “speed of relevance.”

“The road to peace lies in speedily surging Ukraine the tools they need to achieve victory as they define it,” said the Kentucky Republican.

“It is difficult to parse where McConnell is consciously lying and where he is simply being delusional,” said DebBar.

“First, let's keep in mind that a good part of Ukraine has always been part of Russia, and all of it has been, from time to time, part of Russia. And the history of it is that Russia, Germany, Poland and the Baltics have fought over the western part in just the last couple of centuries. So whatever Russia does there has zero implications beyond Ukraine,” he stated.

“Second, the current situation is a direct product of the US sponsored, funded and directed (by recorded telephone) coup against the elected constitutional government in February of 2014 whose purpose was to place a government hostile to Russia on Russia's border to host additional US forces and weaponry to those already in Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, the Baltics, Turkey, Korea and Japan, among others. Here it is useful to remember that the US, when faced with the placement of a mere smattering of medium-range weapons and a tiny Soviet military force in Cuba - at the invitation of Cuba's legitimate government - was prepared to fight a nuclear war to force their removal,” he added.

For thirteen days in October 1962 the world waited -- seemingly on the brink of nuclear war -- and hoped for a peaceful resolution to the Cuban Missile Crisis. Many nuclear historians agree that October 27, 1962, known as “Black Saturday”, was the closest the world came to nuclear catastrophe, as US forces enforced a blockade of Cuba to remove Soviet missiles.

The US threatened to take out the missiles with an aerial attack. That would have risked a retaliatory strike with perhaps tactical nuclear weapons and even the possibility that some of the missiles would have been launched in a "use it or lose it" scenario.

“McConnell is aware of this history. Either he is deliberately ignoring it, or is too mentally addled to process and apply it to his understanding and presentation of the situation,” Debar said.

“In either case, he should be removed from office as a threat to the peace and, perhaps, the survival of our species,” he warned.

President Putin stated that nuclear tensions have risen because of the war in Ukraine. In December, he spoke about the risk of a nuclear war but added that Russia has not “gone mad” and sees its own nuclear arsenal as a purely defensive deterrent.

The Russian leader said Moscow would not transfer its nuclear weapons to anyone as Washington has stationed some of its nukes in NATO allies in Europe.

US President Joe Biden, however, has warned Putin against thoughts of using nuclear weapons in Ukraine, adding that it would “change the face of war, unlike anything since WWII.”

Russia began its “special military operation” in Ukraine on February 24, 2022 with a declared aim of “demilitarizing” Donbas, which is made up of the Donetsk and Luhansk self-proclaimed republics. Back in 2014, the two republics, which are predominantly Russian-speaking, broke away from Ukraine, prompting Kiev to launch a bloody war against both regions. The years-long conflict has killed more than 14,000 people, mostly in the Donbas.

Since the onset of the conflict between the two countries, the United States and its European allies have unleashed an array of unprecedented sanctions against Russia and poured numerous batches of advanced weapons into Ukraine to help its military fend off the Russian troops, despite repeated warnings by the Kremlin that such measures will only prolong the war.

Source: Press TV