October 24, 2022 at 11:21 a.m.
Asking the tough questions on Ukraine
Asking the tough questions on Ukraine
It's even more interesting how few so-called journalists are questioning the nation's deepening involvement in a proxy war with Russia, a fact that Democrats don't even deny any longer.
Bipartisan majorities and the media have lined up to support the administration's march to World War III, and many are joining the administration in drooling at the prospect.
So it's time that some major questions be asked.
Let us hasten to add from the outset that our own U.S. Rep Tom Tiffany (R-Wisconsin-7) is the exception to all that bravado and warmongering. While rightly condemning Putin's invasion, he voted against the Ukraine Democracy Defense Lend-Lease Act of 2022 (making it easier for the U.S. to send military aid to Ukraine) and voted no on nearly $40 billion in additional supplemental U.S. funding for Ukraine.
Correctly saying that American taxpayers cannot continue to finance an open-ended European conflict, Tiffany said it was time for Congress to put the interests of hardworking Americans first. Sadly, he was but one of 10 lawmakers to take a "no" vote on the lend-lease act and one of only 57 anti-war lawmakers to vote no on the supplemental aid.
In a time of reckless war that is as dangerous as it is pointless, those are courageous votes as the rest of the herd heads for the cliff. So the questions need to be asked, and the first is, just what benefits are Americans getting from this war? Name one.
It's certainly not international peace and security. Expanding NATO and bringing the Ukraine into the alliance is and has always been unacceptable to the Russians, and it is all by itself a saber-rattling invitation to war. There's nothing more destabilizing in world geopolitics than that, and yet here we are.
Not that U.S. leaders haven't long warned about just such harm, back when U.S. leaders were warmongers but still had an interest in self-preservation. In 1948, diplomat and historian George Kennan warned that eastward expansion by NATO would constitute a major strategic blunder. He was followed years later by others, including Henry Kissinger, who underscored Russia's historical ties with Ukraine.
"The West must understand that, to Russia, Ukraine can never be just a foreign country," Kissinger wrote in 2014. "Russian history began in what was called Kievan-Rus. The Russian religion spread from there. Ukraine has been part of Russia for centuries, and their histories were intertwined before then. Some of the most important battles for Russian freedom, starting with the Battle of Poltava in 1709, were fought on Ukrainian soil. The Black Sea Fleet - Russia's means of projecting power in the Mediterranean - is based by long-term lease in Sevastopol, in Crimea. Even such famed dissidents as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Joseph Brodsky insisted that Ukraine was an integral part of Russian history and, indeed, of Russia."
For many years, the Democratic Party followed that realistic line of thinking. In fact, President Obama bluntly declared that Ukraine was not and never should be a core American interest, emphasizing that it was a core interest for Russia instead. And he was frank about why the U.S. should not intervene there:
"The fact is that Ukraine, which is a non-NATO country, is going to be vulnerable to military domination by Russia no matter what we do," he said.
Democrats who have now moved so far way from that position need to clearly explain why battlefield realities - and likely outcomes - have suddenly changed, and why suddenly, just eight years later, Ukraine is a core national interest.
In our view, there is but one explanation. The U.S. does not need an armed behemoth on Russia's border to keep the peace - that destabilization will do the opposite, as is now obvious - it needs a strong and thriving, not to mention independent, western Europe committed to peace and to democratic institutions.
A war-torn and energy-dependent Europe is Putin's version of the Nobel Peace prize. Only he wins his peace through reckless war with likely millions dead and millions more suffering. A sad peace but peace nonetheless.
The only real benefit we can see to this strategy is that it benefits the global military-bureaucratic-corporate elite who count on forever wars to fuel their profits and power (and who are betting the house Putin won't go nuclear), and politically it serves the needs of the neoconservatives who have risen with their leader Liz Cheney to the top of the Democratic Party, and who salivate over the prospect of a proxy war with Russia that results in regime change.
If millions do end up dying in a tactical nuclear exchange, well, oops, but that's collateral damage.
In our conversations with Democratic candidates, we hear a common refrain. We must defend Ukraine's sovereignty and borders, and we must morally come to the aid of a democratic nation.
Well, one at a time. First, if protecting Ukraine's borders are so important, then why not protect ours. These same Democrats and Republicans yammering on about the integrity of national borders should take action first to secure our borders if they are to be taken seriously, and then maybe we can talk. After all, we thought one world and the elimination of borders was what the globalists wanted.
We agree on sovereignty, of course, and more about that in a moment, but what about morally defending a democratic nation?
There's a good argument to be made for that, if Ukraine were anything close to a democracy. It is not. Let's step back a bit. The Economist Intelligence Unit (the research and analysis division of the Economist Group, which publishes The Economist magazine), in its 2021 annual democracy index, didn't rate Ukraine as a democracy at all, not even a flawed one. It pointed to the military's influences in political decision-making and its lack of transparency.
Speaking of openness, Transparency International ranked Ukraine 122 out of 180 countries on its corruption index, primarily because of perceived public-sector corruption.
Not that President Volodymyr Zelensky has helped any of this. He signed a bill banning pro-Russian political parties, after Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council suspended 11 political parties it said were pro-Russian.
It's important to note what constitutes being pro-Russian in Zelensky's eyes. It's not just supporting the Russian invasion. You can oppose that and still be banned. Opposed to NATO membership for Ukraine? Banned. Opposed to membership in the European Union? Banned. A party centered in Ukraine's Russian-speaking population areas (30 percent of the country is Russian speaking)? Banned.
The bottom line is, Zelensky has banned practically all serious opposition political parties, and he warned: "Now everyone must look after the interests of the State. I want to remind all politicians from any camp: wartime shows very well the meanness of personal ambitions of those who try to put their own ambitions, their own party or career above the interests of the state, the interests of the people."
What about free speech? Just try it and see where it gets you. There Zelensky consolidated all national TV platforms - including all privately owned channels - into one state-run TV loyal to the state and devoid of criticism of the government. The purpose was to combat "misinformation."
Meanwhile, the mainstream media cheer him on as Churchillian, saying the poor sap was forced to "take extraordinary measures." Naturally they were supportive, because, after all, that same media supported the equally extraordinary measures of suspending civil liberties here during the pandemic, while Biden would love nothing better than to shut down media outlets such as Fox.
We are not defending a democracy in Ukraine but a corrupt little dictator with a brand new swag, calling for preemptive strikes inside Russia. Instead of cheering on such nonsense, the U.S. should use the leverage it has and tell Zelensky to shut up and sit down and reach a diplomatic end to the war.
That leads to our position on sovereignty. Yes, of course, we support any nation's sovereignty. Putin's invasion of Ukraine was wrong, even with all the military provocations going on near the Russian border prior to the invasion.
We have aided Ukraine will billions and billions of dollars. That was a bridge Zelensky could have used not to merely to fight the war that he has fought but to secure a diplomatic peace. He has squandered it at the behest of the U.S. government.
There is absolutely no indication that back channel efforts at diplomacy have been going on, and certainly there is no public pressure from the U.S for Ukraine to sit down with the Russians.
In fact, it's been just the opposite. Remember, just last march Zelensky signaled that he was open to talks with Putin and to an official neutrality for Ukraine. But that was before the U.S. truly ramped up the war talk. Indeed, administration figures from Anthony Blinken to press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre to Biden himself keep saying they are committed to the war "for as long as it takes."
But, as Tucker Carlson aptly asked last week: "As long as it takes to do what?"
If the answer is regime change, we can count on some real climate change along with it, and it's not likely going to end well for any of us. And if we really are at Armageddon's edge, do we want an angry old man who can no longer remember who is dead and who is living sitting with his fingers on the nuclear button?
The nation needs to ask these questions.
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