OMNI
US, NATO, RUSSIA, UKRAINE war ANTHOLOGY, #22: peace
June 10, 2022
Compiled by Dick Bennett for a Culture of Peace, Justice, and Ecology
CONTENTS: WAYS TO PEACE, June 10, 2022
Art Hobson. “The Irrationality of War.”
US Peace Council. “A Manufactured Crisis In Ukraine Is Victimizing The World’s Peoples”
Col. Lawrence Wilkerson and Reiner Braun. “NO to NATO, YES to Peace with Russia.”
Voices from Donbass.
Kristine Melnikova
Alexey Albu
Ted Snider. Diplomacy.
Jeffrey Sachs. Negotiated Settlement.
Yanis Varoufakis. Negotiated Settlement.
Deb Sawyer. Steps to Peace v. Nuclear War.
Black Liberation Movement. Dismantle NATO.
Katrina vanden Heuvel. “We Need a Real Debate.”
Ryan Costello. Build a renewed antiwar movement.
Borowitz. Dark Comedy
TEXTS: PREVENTING ANDSTOPPING THIS WAR and All Wars, And Building Back in Peace and Justice. US-NATO-Ukraine-Russia Anthology #22
THE WAR COULD HAVE BEEN PREVENTED BY THE US, THEN IT COULD HAVE BEEN STOPPED, AND CAN BE STOPPED NOW, BUT THE US SUPPORTS WAR (the USA of War, the Republicans and Democrats the WAR PARTY). These writers would change the US, and they suggest how.
“The Irrationality of War: Why is cooperation so difficult?”
Art Hobson, ahobson@uark.edu. NWADG, 17 May 2022
This is my sixth, and hopefully last, consecutive column about Ukraine.
War, in particular the irrational (on both sides) conflict in Ukraine, is the most depressing topic I can think of. Imagine: Humankind devotes its marvelously evolved brainpower to figuring how to kill large numbers of its own species, plundering national economies and Earth's resources to make clubs, spears, arrows, crossbows, catapults, knives, swords, pistols, muskets, bayonets, cannons, rifles, machine guns, poison gas, grenades, mines, mortars, tanks, bazookas, flame throwers, artillery, bombs, torpedoes, rockets, atomic bombs, and thermonuclear weapons.
Recently, I attended one of the always wonderful concerts by the
Symphony of Northwest Arkansas at Fayetteville's Walton Arts Center. At the beginning of the performance it was announced that the concert would open with Ukraine's National Anthem. As the stirring hymn rang through the
auditorium, the crowd spontaneously rose to its feet. I remained rooted in my seat. From my restricted vantage point, I could see no others who remained seated. Suddenly I understood how Colin Kaepernick might have felt as he "took a knee" in protest during the U.S. national anthem.
National anthems, flags, and patriotism are exhilarating, and can be
positive influences in connection with national goals such as peace, education, ending poverty, or health care. But is it necessarily good to stir up nationalist passions? Was it beneficial for rebel states to spark southern pride with the unofficial anthem of the Confederacy, "Dixie"? Since many Americans still cherish it, should this song be performed today at public events? Is it a good thing for the human race when Russian pride is bolstered by their national anthem in honor of their heroic suffering during World War Two and, by the way, in support of the Russian invasion of Ukraine? What about the patriotic fervor leading up to America's invasion of Vietnam and Iraq and then Iraq once more? The all-time epitome of national pride probably occurred in connection with the Nazi national anthem, "Die Fahne hoch" (raise the flag high).
Today the world stands on the precipice of nuclear war. We are armed
with enough nuclear weapons--six thousand on each side--to destroy
civilization many times. A single U.S. missile-carrying Trident submarine
would probably be sufficient to end what we are pleased to call "civilization."
Over millennia, warfare has destroyed myriad cities and nations but we are
speaking here of something qualitatively different, the destruction of the
happiness and well-being of all people on Earth, including you and your
family, today and perhaps forever. It's all too easy to imagine Russia
launching tactical nuclear weapons against Ukraine. What if Russia launches a nuclear demonstration over the Black Sea, or a "small" nuclear weapon against NATO transportation hubs carrying U.S. armaments to our Ukrainian allies? Will we respond in kind? And what then?
Please pause.
The human race has "progressed" from hand-to-hand combat to rifles
and machine guns to massive air raids such as the U.S. firebomb raid that
incinerated100,000 civilians in one terrible night in Tokyo that was the single most destructive bombing raid in human history, and finally to nuclear weapons that can ruin everything for all of us forever. Will we never learn the real lesson: That humankind is one family, and that differences within this family must always be treated with kindness, understanding, and rational diplomacy on behalf of the future happiness of the entire human race rather than in service of narrow national interests or patriotic anthems?
I supported U.S. aims during World War Two (I was 7 to 11 years of
age) and when we went to war following the 9/11 attack. But today I distrust
even those allegiances because militarism itself has become the threat,
especially in America. All nations, including our own, must get beyond
nationalism and see that our true allegiance is to the planet. All nations must treat all other nations with kindness, dignity, self-restraint, and respect, even when--or rather especially when--we disagree with them.
Where is Senator J. William Fulbright when we need him? The great
Arkansas Democrat led congressional opposition to America's misadventure in Vietnam. His leadership helped build popular resistance to the war, leading to America's departure and saving untold lives on all "sides." I have frequently argued in these pages that the Ukraine war is even more dangerous than our previous mistakes. Instead of shipping weapons that will only prolong the killing, we should work to end this war on terms that both sides can live with.
Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Tokyo.
Art Hobson is professor emeritus of physics at the University of Arkansas. He worked at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute and coauthored "The Future of Land-Based Strategic Missiles" (Am. Inst. of Physics, 1989). Email ahobson@uark.edu
“A Manufactured Crisis In Ukraine Is Victimizing The World’s Peoples”By US Peace Council. PopularResistance.org (5-14-22). With the conflict in Ukraine entering its third month, the likelihood of a successfully negotiated peace — an immediate necessity — is becoming ever more remote. This proxy war by the United States is designed to use the Ukrainian people to mortally disable Russia. Those who profit from war benefit, while those most vulnerable suffer: Ukrainian civilians, but more broadly working people internationally and especially in the Global South. It was expected that the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 would put an end to the first Cold War and the threat of world nuclear annihilation. -more-
Col. Lawrence Wilkerson and Reiner Braun. “Ukraine Crisis: NO to NATO, Yes to Peace with Russia.” March 1, 2022 @ 5:00 pm - 6:30 pm
On Tuesday, March 1, 2022, join CODEPINK Congress& Massachusetts Peace Action for the third event in the group’s Special Series on Foreign Policy. This event is also co-sponsored by the Campaign for Peace, Disarmament and Common Security.
Tensions between the U.S. and Russia are higher than they’ve been in many years. The U.S. insists that Ukraine may join NATO in the future while Russia insists that it should not. NATO has become a worldwide military alliance as the U.S. pursues its policy of a new Cold War against Russia. Will Ukraine be recognized as a neutral nation or will the U.S. maintain its goal of integrating Ukraine into NATO? Can Europe turn towards a common security policy before NATO’s June summit in Madrid?
RSVP for the continuing CODEPINK Congress and Massachusetts Peace Action series here
Featured Guests: Col. Lawrence Wilkerson is an adjunct professor of government and public policy at the College of William and Mary and the former Chief of Staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell (2002 to 2005). He is a critic of U.S. foreign policy surrounding the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars, Iran, and the new Cold Wars with China and Russia, and asserts that the U.S. is not a democracy but a war state that forces its will on the global community. In 2020, Wilkerson worked on bipartisan projects to prepare for the possibility that a defeated Donald Trump would refuse to leave office.
Reiner Braun is the executive director of the International Peace Bureau, the founder of the No to NATO Network, and is active with the International Network of Engineers and Scientists for Global Responsibility (INES) and the International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms (IALANA). He is also the author of several books, including “Einstein and Peace” and a biography about the Peace Nobel Laureate Joseph Rotblat.
Voices from Donbass speak to U.S. anti-war movement
Editor. Mronline.org (3-25-22).
On March 27, the Socialist Unity Party and Struggle-La Lucha newspaper hosted a webinar called “Stop the War Lies: Voices from Donbass.” This was a unique opportunity for the U.S. anti-war movement to hear directly from people in the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics (DPR and LPR), whose voices are silenced by the Western mass media’s pro-Ukraine war propaganda.
Kristina Melnikova, journalist in Donetsk
Melnikova has covered Ukraine’s war on Donbass for several years.
Heavy shelling of the Donetsk People’s Republic continues. There are wounded people every day among civilians. There are civilian deaths. I think it’s very important that you get to hear about this, because this is something that is not covered in Western media.
The most civilian casualties are happening in the territories that are being liberated from the Ukrainian military by the army of the Donetsk People’s Republic, such as Mariupol. But in spite of this, shelling of front line cities and villages continues. . . . MORE https://mronline.org/2022/04/09/voices-from-donbass-speak-to-u-s-anti-war-movement/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=voices-from-donbass-speak-to-u-s-anti-war-movement&mc_cid=ef7ec05f00&mc_eid=ab2f7bf95e
Alexey Albu, political refugee, Lugansk
Albu is a coordinator of the Marxist organization Borotba (Struggle), banned in Ukraine. He is a survivor of the May 2, 2014, massacre at the Odessa House of Trade Unions.
I’m pleased to have the opportunity to speak to you, comrades.
In the Lugansk People’s Republic, life has changed a lot since the beginning of the joint military operation by Russia and the Donbass republics. The shelling of cities and towns has been stopped. Terrorist actions have been stopped.
I remember the days when the Ukrainian military was trying to place as many of their forces as possible near the LPR’s borders. And I also remember how, when that happened in January and February, the republic tried to bring it to the world’s attention that the Kiev regime was bringing more and more forces and weapons to the frontline.
The situation reached the point where the army and nazi regiments like Azov Battalion brought their reserves of artillery shells, explosive devices and fuel for their military vehicles to the closest point to the LPR and Lugansk, the capital city. This was clearly preparation for a major assault. It was at this point that the people of the republic began to evacuate their families abroad, to safety. . . . MORE same link
Is the US hindering much-needed diplomatic efforts?
Washington appears to be absent from the process, seemingly holding out for a preferred outcome while the violence rages.
APRIL 9, 2022, Ted Snider, Responsible Statecraft
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2022/04/09/is-the-us-hindering-much-needed-diplomatic-efforts/
Next to starting a war, the most reprehensible act would be keeping one going when more people will die with little hope the outcome will improve.
Yet, there are several lines of evidence that suggest that the U.S. is inhibiting a diplomatic solution in Ukraine.
Years prior to the war, when diplomatic avenues were open to prevent war, the United States already seemed to be setting up roadblocks.
In 2014, Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych was faced with the choice of economic alliance with the European Union or with Russia. In a country that was nearly evenly split, the choice of either partner was divisive and dangerous. But there was a way out of the dilemma: compromise was possible. Ukraine doesn’t have to choose, Putin offered. Both Russia and the EU could work economically with Ukraine.
There didn’t need to be a dangerous dilemma. But Washington and the EU rejected Putin’s peace offering. The late Stephen Cohen, Professor Emeritus of Politics and director of Russian Studies at Princeton, reminded in a 2014 interview that “it was the European Union, backed by Washington, that said in November to the democratically elected president of a profoundly divided country, Ukraine, ‘You must choose between Europe and Russia.’” There was a diplomatic solution to the catalyst of today’s crisis. The U.S. rejected it.
That rejection led to the coup that led to the civil war between Western Ukraine and the Donbas region in the east and set the stage for the current crisis.
In 2019, VolodymyrZelensky was elected on a platform that featured making peace with Russia and signing the Minsk Agreement. The Minsk Agreementoffered autonomy to the Donetsk and Lugansk regions of the Donbas that had voted for independence from Ukraine after the coup. It offered the most promising diplomatic solution.
Facing domestic pressure, though, Zelensky would need U.S. support. He did not get it and, in the words of Richard Sakwa, Professor of Russian and European Politics at the University of Kent, he was “thwarted by the nationalists.” Zelensky stepped off the road of diplomacy and refused to talk to the leaders of the Donbas and implement the Minsk Agreements.
Having failed to support Zelensky on a diplomatic solution with Russia, Washington then failed to pressure him to return to the implementation of the Minsk Agreement. Sakwa told this writer that, “as for Minsk, neither the U.S. nor the EU put serious pressure on Kyiv to fulfill its part of the agreement.” Though the U.S. officially endorsed Minsk, Anatol Lieven, senior research fellow on Russia and Europe at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, told this writer, “they did nothing to push Ukraine into actually implementing it.”
The Ukrainians gave Zelensky a mandate for a diplomatic solution. Washington did not support or encourage it.
Having inhibited diplomatic solutions prior to the war, the United States has been absent from negotiations since the invasion last month. The empty U.S. seat at the table is striking. Sakwa said that, “in the Cold War the U.S. would have taken the lead on diplomacy in a situation of the sort that we have today. Instead, now the U.S. is clearly not interested in peace negotiations — it is waiting for a Russian defeat, however many Ukrainian lives are lost in the process.”
In the direct talks between Russia and Ukraine, and even in the Turkish mediated talks, the United States seems invisible. Ambassador Chas Freeman, who served 30 years as a U.S. diplomat, told me that “it is the opposite of statecraft and diplomacy that the U.S. is not involved in any negotiations.”
“At best,” he said, “the U.S. has been absent and, at worst, implicitly opposed.”
Ukraine has delivered a proposal for a diplomatic settlement, including neutrality, but, according to Lieven, the U.S. has neither endorsed nor supported it, nor have they offered any proposals of their own. “The U.S.,” Lieven said, “has done nothing to facilitate diplomacy.”
JEFFREY D. SACHS. “Ukraine Needs a Negotiated Peace Because Everyone Will Lose This War of Attrition.” Project Syndicate. May 11, 2022.
“Despite the brutality of Russia's assault, Ukraine should intensify the search for a negotiated peace of the kind that was on the table in March . . . . the case for negotiations remains urgent and overwhelming. The alternative is not Ukraine’s victory but a devastating war of attrition. To reach an agreement, both sides need to recalibrate their expectations . . . .”
“The reality of the nuclear threat means that both sides should never forgo the possibility of negotiations. That is the central lesson of the Cuban Missile Crisis, which took place 60 years ago this coming October. President John F. Kennedy saved the world then by negotiating an end to the crisis—agreeing that the US would never again invade Cuba and that the US would remove its missiles from Turkey in exchange for the withdrawal of the Soviet missiles from Cuba. That was not giving in to Soviet nuclear blackmail. That was Kennedy wisely avoiding Armageddon.
It is still possible to establish peace in Ukraine based on the parameters that were on the table at the end of March: neutrality, security guarantees, a framework for addressing Crimea and the Donbas, and Russian withdrawal. This remains the only realistic and safe course for Ukraine, Russia, and the world. The world would rally to such an agreement, and, for its own survival and well-being, so should Ukraine.” For the whole article go to: https://www.commondreams.org/views/2022/05/11/ukraine-needs-negotiated-peace-because-everyone-will-lose-war-attrition
Jeffrey D. Sachs is a University Professor and Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, where he directed The Earth Institute from 2002 until 2016. He is also President of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network and a commissioner of the UN Broadband Commission for Development. He has been advisor to three United Nations Secretaries-General, and currently serves as an SDG Advocate under Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.
“The Urgent Peace Those Who Support Ukraine Must Demand”
With the world teetering on the edge of recession and the developing world facing a spiral of hunger and forced migration, it would be a grave error to dismiss those calling for a negotiated peace.
YANIS VAROUFAKIS May 25, 2022 by Project Syndicate. Here is the conclusion to the article. To read its entirety go to: https://www.commondreams.org/views/2022/05/25/urgent-peace-those-who-support-ukraine-must-demand
. . . .A fair deal, we must agree, should leave everyone somewhat dissatisfied, while constituting a great improvement over every feasible alternative. Both sides must make gains that far exceed their losses, without losing face. To honor the Ukrainians' aspirations and valiant resistance to Putin's aggression, the envisaged peace treaty must decree that Russian troops withdraw to their pre-February 24 bases. To deal with sectarian clashes in the Donbas and surrounding areas, the Good Friday Agreement (which ended the "Troubles" in Northern Ireland) can offer tangible guidance on conflict resolution and governance. And, to assuage fear of military re-engagement, a wide demilitarized buffer zone around the Russian-Ukrainian border ought to be included.
Would Putin agree? Possibly, if the treaty offers him three things. Putin will want most sanctions lifted. He will also want the issue of Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014 to be kicked into the long grass, to be resolved at some undefined time in the future. And he will want security guarantees that only the US can provide, including the lure of a seat at the top table where new security arrangements in Europe must be hammered out. Ukraine needs similar security guarantees from both the US and Russia, so Ukraine's friends should be planning such arrangements, under the auspices of the United Nations, and involving the US and the EU.
There are, of course, no guarantees that a negotiated peace will work. What is certain is that not trying, owing to the delusion of a final victory, would be unforgivable.
“Steps to Encourage Peace in Ukraine.” (and prevent nuclear war)
This war could devolve into a nuclear war which could destroy civilization.
DEB SAWYERMay 17, 2022. https://www.commondreams.org/views/2022/05/17/steps-encourage-peace-ukraine
I am more afraid of this war in Ukraine than I have been of any war in my life, and I'm 72. This war could devolve into a nuclear war which could destroy civilization. We need to be creative, thoughtful, and move forward with humility, knowing that we all have areas of ignorance and that we need one another.
Sawyer recommends two first steps that would significantly reduce the nuclear danger.
Dismantle NATO Now!
Rescind the $16B US Allocations to the Ukraine War!
US Imperialism is the Main Danger to Peace, Sovereignty, and Justice for Peoples all Over The World!
The ongoing crisis and war in Ukraine threatens to pull the world into a disastrous nuclear confrontation. Disinformation, lies, and propaganda from the US and other western media are aimed at confusing millions of people inside the US and around the world to view Russia as the aggressor, while hiding the US role in the evolution of this conflict. One major example of this manipulation is that western media have not been honest about the massive role that the US played in facilitating a 2014 coup in Ukraine that overthrew the country’s democratically elected president, and funneled support to neo-Nazi forces who were favorable to US/EU interests, helping them rise to power in Ukraine.
We, the undersigned organizations and individuals of the Black Liberation Movement and the various mass organizations and movements fighting for justice inside the US, call on all peace loving, Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities to condemn and oppose US involvement in the Ukraine and across Europe through its various corporate and political interests and its military arm, The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
We, Black people living in the United States, are a people of African descent oppressed inside the United States. We have been barred from the right to housing, to food, to medicine, to clean air, healthy environments, education and livable wages. Our grandmothers make difficult decisions monthly between keeping on the lights or being able to afford insulin. As 13% of the US population, we face disproportionate levels of violent police repression and make up 40% of US prisoners. Those corporate and elite ruling class forces in the US who are making the policies to expand NATO across the 12,500 miles of Russia’s borders from Central Asia to Eastern Europe, including Ukraine, are the same ruling elites that maintain the oppressive policies inside the US that leave our communities in the racist economic and political peril we have suffered here for hundreds of years.
We further condemn the blatant hypocrisy of the US government as a capitalist, imperialist, patriarchal predator power that has invaded and undermined numerous countries for regime change and other schemes, in order to control the politics, wealth, and natural resources of those nations. The United States is the strongest and largest imperialist power in the world and has repeatedly invaded other nations such as Grenada (1983); Afghanistan (2001); Iraq (2003); Libya (2011); and at least 21 others since 1945. The US military arm on the African continent is known as AFRICOM, a force that breeds violence and instability in maintaining US corporate interests across Africa.
In these imperialist wars, it is the Black, Brown, Indigenous, working and poor families who suffer the losses of dislocation, the deaths of loved ones, and other forms of agony. Black people in this country have fought in every US war while our families and communities continue to suffer the ravages of hatred, discrimination, poverty, disease, and death. In the Ukraine conflict, racism is showing its ugly face in the denial of immigration rights to African and other non-white people’s seeking to escape the degradation and violence of this conflict, like all others living in Ukraine.
We join with Black and Brown people in other countries in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, and Latin America who uphold the right of all nations to sovereignty and security, including Russia, who has historically been invaded by the forces of imperialism and fascism across its borders several times in the 20th century. The Russian people lost millions of lives to defeat fascism during WWII, fighting Hitler’s Nazi invasion of the USSR in 1941. This history of invasions of Russia also lies at the root of the Russian concerns about its security and the Ukraine/NATO expansion scheme that has provoked this war.
We call upon every community and organization fighting for justice and peace to adopt and sign this statement calling for the Dismantling of NATO, an end to US Support of the War in Ukraine, and to rescind the billions of Dollars in military aid to Ukraine. Those military funds sent to Ukraine should be reallocated to the needs of people inside the US for universal healthcare, universal childcare, affordable housing, education, liquidation of all student loan debt, minimum incomes and other human needs.
Signed by:
- NBLM National Unity Initiative
- New African People’s Organization
- Black Workers for Justice
- Mapinduzi
- Black Alliance for Peace
- All African People’s Revolutionary Party
- New African Independence Party
- Lowcountry Action Committee
- Spirit of Mandela
- Cooperation Jackson
- Pan-African Community Action
- Hood Communist
- Imam Jamil Action Network
- Parable of the Sower Intentional Community
“We Need a Real Debate about the Ukraine War.” IN FOCUS, 30 May 2022 Katrina vanden Heuvel.| The Washington Post - TRANSCEND Media Service.
https://www.transcend.org/tms/2022/05/we-need-a-real-debate-about-the-ukraine-war/
Bringing the war in Ukraine to an end will demand new thinking and challenges to the orthodoxies of this time.
24 May 2022 – It’s time to challenge the orthodox view on the war in Ukraine.
As Russia’s illegal and brutal assault enters its fourth month, the impact on Europe, the Global South and the world is already profound. We are witnessing the emergence of a new political/military world order. Climate action is being sidelined as reliance on fossil fuels increases; food scarcity and other resource demands are pushing prices upward and causing widespread global hunger; and the worldwide refugee crisis — with more international refugees and internally displaced people than at any time since the end of World War II — poses a massive challenge.
Furthermore, the more protracted the war in Ukraine, the greater the risk of a nuclear accident or incident. And with the Biden administration’s strategy to “weaken” Russia with the scale of weapons shipments, including anti-ship missiles, and revelations of U.S. intelligence assistance to Ukraine, it is clear that the United States and NATO are in a proxy war with Russia.
Shouldn’t the ramifications, perils and multifaceted costs of this proxy war be a central topic of media coverage — as well as informed analysis, discussion and debate? Yet what we have in the media and political establishment is, for the most part, a one-sided, even nonexistent, public discussion and debate. It’s as if we live with what journalist Matt Taibbi has dubbed an “intellectual no-fly zone.”
Those who have departed from the orthodox line on Ukraine are regularly excluded from or marginalized — certainly rarely seen — on big corporate media. The result is that alternative and countervailing views and voices seem nonexistent. Wouldn’t it be healthy to have more diversity of views, history and context rather than “confirmation bias”?
Those who speak of history and offer context about the West’s precipitating role in the Ukraine tragedy are not excusing Russia’s criminal attack. It is a measure of such thinking, and the rhetorical or intellectual no-fly zone, that prominent figures such as Noam Chomsky, University of Chicago professor John Mearsheimer and former U.S. ambassador Chas Freeman, among others, have been demonized or slurred for raising cogent arguments and providing much-needed context and history to explain the background of this war.
In our fragile democracy, the cost of dissent is comparatively low. Why, then, aren’t more individuals at think tanks or in academia, media or politics challenging the orthodox U.S. political-media narrative? Is it not worth asking whether sending ever-more weapons to the Ukrainians is the wisest course? Is it too much to ask for more questioning and discussion about how best to diminish the danger of nuclear conflict? Why are nonconformists smeared for noting, even bolstered with reputable facts and history, the role of nationalist, far-right and, yes, neo-Nazi forces in Ukraine? Fascist or neo-Nazi revivalism is a toxic factor in many countries today, from European nations to the United States. Why is Ukraine’s history too often ignored, even denied?
Meanwhile, as a former Marine Corps general noted, “War is a racket.” U.S. weapons conglomerates are lining up to feed at the trough. Before the war ends, many Ukrainians and Russians will die while Raytheon, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman make fortunes. At the same time, network and cable news is replete with pundits and “experts” — or more accurately, military officials turned consultants — whose current jobs and clients are not disclosed to viewers.
What is barely reflected on our TVs or Internet screens, or in Congress, are alternate views — voices of restraint, who disagree with the tendency to see compromise in negotiations as appeasement, who seek persistent and tough diplomacy to attain an effective cease-fire and a negotiated resolution, one designed to ensure that Ukraine emerges as a sovereign, independent, reconstructed and prosperous country.
“Tell me how this ends,” Gen. David Petraeus asked Post writer Rick Atkinson a few months into the nearly decade-long Iraq War. Bringing this current war to an end will demand new thinking and challenges to the orthodoxies of this time. As the venerable American journalist Walter Lippmann once observed, “When all think alike, no one thinks very much.”
Build a renewed antiwar movement.
Ryan Costello (and Chris Hedges and Howard Zinn). “$40 Billion more for the Ukraine war: a wakeup call for those who still believe in lesser-evilism.” Editor. Mronline.org (5-18-22). https://mronline.org/2022/05/17/40-billion-more-the-ukraine-war/
Originally published: Antiwar.com on May 16, 2022 by Ryan Costello (more by Antiwar.com) (Posted May 17, 2022)
Imperialism, Movements, Strategy, WarAmericas, Europe, Russia, Ukraine, United StatesNewswiremilitary "aid" package, Russia-Ukraine War, Ukraine Support
The U.S. House of Representatives just approved another massive military “aid” package for the Ukraine War. The Biden administration had initially requested $33 billion in new money for the war, but leaders of both parties in Congress, eager to support the war, quickly said this was not enough, and raised the total for this package to $40 billion, a truly staggering total. The administration had already spent $14 billion before this latest weapons package. The latest spending spree (at a time when many Americans are struggling with crushing debt loads, lack of baby formula and other key supplies, and skyrocketing inflation) brings the total spent in Ukraine in 3 months to $54 billion on the books (not counting all the dark money for the spy agencies). The official annual budget for the War in Afghanistan averaged $46 billion… The sum the U.S. has already spent on this war in a few months is quickly approaching the annual military budget of the entire Russian military.
This money goes to companies like Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, etc. These merchants of death make up the military industrial complex; they promote the permanent war economy, and have a vested interest in ensuring the U.S. continues to engage in and support devastating wars abroad that destroy whole countries and societies, lead to millions of deaths and untold horrors like what we have seen in Yemen over the past few years. These same corporate and state ghouls are salivating over the profits to be made in a new cold war with China. In this conflict for global dominance they see a shining opportunity to bleed the taxpayers of this country dry, looking to get blood from a stone in our country where the rich pay and big corporations no real taxes, but the middle class and poor are bled dry, being pushed deeper and deeper into debt-peonage and wage slavery by rising tax rates, shrinking paychecks, and red hot inflation (itself a result of the Federal Reserve’s reckless money printing to bailout the banks numerous times since 2008).
And yet not one of the so-called progressive Democrats could find a spine to stand against this weapons package. Not AOC, not Ilhan Omar, not any of them. This is not so surprising when one considers their spinelessness on Yemen (introducing a War Powers Resolution under Trump, knowing he would veto it, bur refusing to do so now that Biden is president), their posturing around Palestine (where they consistently rotate turns supporting more military funding for Israel), and countless other betrayals and hypocrisies.
Of all the “squad” only Cori Bush has released a statement justifying her vote for the bill. The others have remained silent and refused to respond to requests for comment on why they voted to fund the war machine after so many promises (clearly hollow) to end “the forever war.” Bush’s statement, like the entire legacy of the Squad, is a pathetic excuse for progressive politics. First, she claims that this $40 billion in military funding is about “strengthen[ing] the Ukrainian people’s fight against oppression and tyranny.” She makes no mention of the fact that key U.S. leaders from Hillary Clinton to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs have made it clear that they want this war to drag out as long as possible to bleed Russia. In the course of such a prolonged conflict, we can only imagine the cost the people of Ukraine will pay. In short, this bill is both about padding the pockets of the military industrial complex and also about sacrificing Ukraine to weaken Russia as a rival to the U.S. and NATO. As many have noted, the U.S. elite are more than happy to fight Russia to the last Ukrainian.
At the end of her statement, Bush includes a hollow note that “The sheer size of the package given an already inflated Pentagon budget should not go without critique. I remain concerned about the increased risks of direct war and the potential for direct military confrontation.” This is akin to helping someone pour gasoline on a fire, and then saying that one remains concerned about the risk of the fire spreading! This is what we can expect from Bush, the squad, and the entire so-called progressive wing of the democratic party.
With “allies” like this in Congress, who needs enemies? Chris Hedges–a great American public intellectual who was forced out of his job as the Middle East Bureau Chief at New York Times for his opposition to the Iraq War–has often emphasized that the only way to get any meaningful change in this country is not by lobbying/begging the Democrats or the Republicans, but through mass movements, protests, and acts of civil disobedience which scare the elite. From the powerful movement of the Bonus Marchers (WWI veterans protesting the government’s refusal to pay them their bonuses) in the 1930s, to the great coal strikes, and acts of civil disobedience in the Civil Rights Movement, change in this country has always been driven by the common people, the salt of the earth, not the decadent and corrupt elite in Washington.
The time has come to cast aside illusions about our so-called representatives in Washington, to stop believing in the lie of the Democratic Party as the supposed lesser of two evils, and to redouble our efforts to build up a renewed antiwar movement. Likewise, while a few dozen Republicans voted against the $40 billion, this is no reason for optimism that the Republican Party can be a vehicle for real change. During the Iraq War, once the protests swelled in size, many Democrats made court theater by feigning opposition to the war when Bush was president, only to support continued escalations and drone strikes once Obama was elected. As Howard Zinn notes over and over again in A People’s History of the United States, the two parties are part of one unified system of corporate monopoly rule. They exist to co-opt, mislead, and ultimate destroy movements that seek to change this system of oligarchical control of nearly every aspect of our country.
As long as we remain beholden to the Democrat or Republican Party politics, our movements will be gobbled up, defanged, and spat back out; regurgitated as pliant pawns of the corporate state and the military industrial complex, able to offer only the mildest of criticisms, and utterly impotent and unable to stand against the machinations of the megalomaniacs who run this country and are driving us all towards the brink of WWIII.
GUNS WILL BRING PEACE!
“Biden and Zelensky Reach Agreement to Send Americans’ Four Hundred Million Guns to Ukraine.”
WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—In a move that could tip the scales in the war against Russia, U.S. President Joe Biden and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky have reached an agreement to ship Americans’ four hundred million firearms to Ukraine.
“The Second Amendment calls for a well-regulated militia necessary to secure a free state,” Biden said. “I can’t think of a better description of what’s going on in Ukraine right now.”
Zelensky said that he welcomed the transfer of armaments to Ukraine, but expressed surprise that the cache included more than twenty million assault rifles.
“We, of course, could really use military-style weapons, because we were invaded by Russia,” he said. “But why on earth did so many Americans have them? Were theyafraid of being invaded by Canada?”
Andy Borowitz
Contents of US-NATO-UKRAINE-RUSSIA ANTHOLOGY #21
WAR
Marius Trotter. The Russian Perspective, The Crucial History:
FROM WWII TO 2022
The US-NATO-UKRAINE-RUSSIA WAR BEGINS IN 2014
The Maidan Coup against Elected Pro-Russian President.
J. Kuzmarov. 2014 Odessa Massacre.
John Walsh. Coup Against Elected Pro-Russian President and Attacks on
Donetsk and Lugansk (Donbass) Pro-Russians.
Fergie Chambers. Neo-Nazi Aidar Battalion Torture vs. Donbass Pro-
Russian Rebels.
Statement from Black Liberation Movement.
MR Editors. From 2014 to Present.
Samir Amin. Large Geo-Political Context. Triad of Western Control.
Anatol Lieven. Dangers of US Proxy War.
NATO Expansion
Global Times. Now Finland and Sweden and Risk of European War.
Glenn Greenwald. US Bipartisan (the War Party) Support for War $$.
Richard Ochs. US Biggest Lies for War.
PEACE
Jeremy Kuzmarov. US and Russian Tradition of Friendship.
Nancy Spannaus. “U.S. and Russia Have a Long History.
END US-NATO-UKRAINE-RUSSIA ANTHOLOGY #22