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"Just be quiet, Peter. You obviously don't know what democracy means...now."
Posted on 09/25/2022 3:58:12 PM PDT by AndyJackson
What is Britain’s interest in Ukraine? Why are we shovelling weapons and equipment into that country, despite the fact that our national budget is stretched to bursting and our own armed forces have for many years been starved of money, men and kit?
If we were a proper open society, surely this question would be asked all the time. But it is not. So I am asking it now, as the Ukraine war threatens to ignite the whole of Europe and has already brought us closer to actual nuclear warfare than we have ever been.
I ask as a British patriot, whose main concern, above all things, is the ‘safety, honour and welfare of this realm’ (as the old Articles of War say).
I would not shirk a necessary fight, or desert an ally. But why are we stoking this war instead of trying to bring about peace?
This would once have been a perfectly normal British view. Margaret Thatcher was far from keen on Ukrainian nationalism.
On June 9 1990, Mrs Thatcher (still then in power) spoke to what was then the Ukrainian provincial assembly in Kiev.
She briskly batted away a question about opening a British embassy in that city. This, she explained, was as likely as Britain opening an embassy in California or Quebec.
‘I can see you are trying to get me involved in your politics!’ she scolded her questioner, adding: ‘Embassies are only for countries which have full national status.
'Therefore, we have ambassadorial diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union, with the United States, with Canada, with Australia.
'We do not have embassies for California, for Quebec, for states in Australia.’
Once upon a time, the Americans, likewise, would have stayed out of it.
On August 1 1991, President George H W Bush delivered an oration which would later become known derisively (among American hawks) as ‘The Chicken Kiev Speech’.
Bush was not keen on an independent Ukraine. He told what was still Ukraine’s Soviet puppet parliament, ‘I come here to tell you: We support the struggle in this great country for democracy and economic reform.
'In Moscow, I outlined our approach. We will support those in the centre and the republics who pursue freedom, democracy and economic liberty.’
But when he used the phrase ‘this great country’ he was talking about the Soviet Union, not Ukraine.
He expected (and wanted) the USSR to continue to exist. During his visit he had refused to meet campaigners for Ukrainian independence.
After praising the reforms of the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, he warned against independence if it only changed a distant despot for a local one, suggesting that this was the outcome he feared.
What the Western democracies had wanted was a reformed, free version of the old Soviet Union.
They had never expected or calculated on an explosion of nationalism in the region and did not much like the look of it. It was only after the USSR fell to pieces in 1991 that the unthinkable became the unstoppable.
But some people in American politics wanted to push further. They feared that Russia would one day rise again and challenge American power.
Paul Wolfowitz, also one of the authors of the Iraq disaster, set out a policy of diminishing and humiliating Russia back in 1992, long before anyone had ever heard of Vladimir Putin.
While it found supporters in the Pentagon and elsewhere, many others, from the brilliant veteran Cold War diplomat George Kennan to the ultimate master of cynical diplomacy Henry Kissinger, opposed the resulting policy of Nato expansion.
Kennan prophetically said in 1998 (when Putin was an obscure politician) that ‘I think it is the beginning of a new Cold War’.
He warned: ‘I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies. I think it is a tragic mistake.’
He said it was an insult to Russia’s then fledgling democrats, arguing: ‘We are turning our backs on the very people who mounted the greatest bloodless revolution in history to remove that Soviet regime.’ And so it was.
Prominent Russian liberals, such as Yegor Gaidar, begged influential Western friends to challenge the Nato expansion policy.
But there is a lot of money in the making of weapons, and a lot of fame to be won in pursuing warlike policies, and so it went ahead, gathering speed and strengthening Russian nationalists and antidemocrats as it did so.
Then in 2008 George W Bush, a pathetic parody of his war veteran father, suggested Ukrainian Nato membership.
That was probably the moment at which conflict became inevitable. The prominent American neoconservative Robert Kagan has put the matter well: ‘While it would be obscene to blame the US for Putin’s inhumane attack on Ukraine, to insist that the invasion was entirely unprovoked is misleading.’
The point of all this is that the current policy, of militant and indeed military support for Ukraine, is a very old one, and a very controversial one.
There is a serious case against it, made by serious patriotic people in the West. Yet it is seldom heard. Nearly as important, there simply is no direct British interest here, though the fact is never discussed.
We have very little in the way of trade, political or cultural links with Ukraine (or with Russia for that matter).
We have no territorial conflict with Russia. Not since the long-ago Crimean War, now recognised by most people as a futile folly which achieved nothing, have British armed forces been active in that region.
As long as the war was a distant battle, this perhaps did not matter so much. But even before the Putin invasion those, like me, who opposed goading Russia were defamed as ‘Putin apologists’ (I have for years referred to him as a sinister tyrant) and falsely accused of ‘parroting Russian propaganda’.
Aren’t we supposed to live in a free democracy in which both sides of a question can be discussed, without one side being accused of treachery?
Surely it is Putin who regards dissent as treason? Once Putin had invaded, I was constantly accused of ‘justifying’ the action, even though I clearly, and without hesitation, condemned the invasion as barbaric, lawless and stupid, and have never deviated from this view.
Yet not a day goes by without someone smearing me as a traitor of some sort. Actually, anyone who has Russia’s best interests at heart is grinding his teeth in fury at Putin’s idiotic crime, which has done limitless damage to the peace and security of that country for decades to come and perhaps forever.
And now it has brought us closer to nuclear war than ever before. Surely that development – and it would be extreme folly to dismiss Putin’s words as bluff – compels us all to be more thoughtful, not less.
I would just like to make a plea for us as a people and a nation to start discussing this in a grown-up fashion, rather than by assuming the present policy is the only right or patriotic one.
Perhaps it isn’t. In which case it has never been more important to approach the subject with an open mind.
You just know that the pathetically stupid hatefully ideological left would be supporting ‘Russia’ if they were still totalitarian Communists. The left is the new evil empire that Reagan warned us about.
If he wasn’t a Putin Puppet, maybe we could debate Russia’s withdraw timetable.
(basically the Neocon position)
Neville Chamberlain logic.
McCarthyite intolerance? Yeah, I have an intolerance for commies. Is that a bad thing hitchins? Wanker!
"Just be quiet, Peter. You obviously don't know what democracy means...now."
Since 2000 I’ve been looking for the answer as to why the US is still in NATO?
“Since 2000 I’ve been looking for the answer as to why the US is still in NATO?”
Since the 2000s I’ve been looking for the answer as to why Russia keeps threatening and invading its neighbors.
Politicians like to waste American tax payer’s money.
One reason they took action in Donbas was due to the Obama/Soros gang taking Ukraine over in 2012. I know what you think of Putin. What do think about your big guy’s (Obama) actions in destroying any hope of peace in the country. You know, your same American good guys and their corrupt Ukrainian stooges who impeached Trump for turning over the rock they were conducting their business under? Other than that, what neighbors? You are obviously peddling your other American good guy, Hillary, and all her Russia, Russia, Russia BS lies. Bud, you’re in great company Hillary, Biden, Soros and Obama. I despise them all and that butcher, Putin. Why you think it’s a good idea to hang with that warmongering crowd, who knows? Again, we shouldn’t be within 5000 miles of that hole. Let me guess, for a little while you used to be MAGA.
You pro globhomo swarmbots are so predictable.
We would be a lot better off if we listened to George Washington’s farewell address.
Ah SOS from the commie/ lefties, they love to defame a great American hero who fought communism with every bone in his body.
Who are you referring to, someone discussed in the article?
> McCarthyite intolerance? <
McCarthy himself got somewhat of a bad rap, and he was more right than wrong.
But McCarthy is going to have to take one for the team here. It’s stings a liberal when he’s accused of trying to blacklist people just the way McCarthy did back in the 1950s. It’s a very effective argument. So we need to press forward with it. Like I said, Joe’s gonna have to take one for the team here.
Which American hero is that?
“What do think about your big guy’s (Obama) actions in destroying any hope of peace in the country.”
First off, you are assuming facts not in evidence, which is generally fatal to your argument ab initio. To wit: I have detested Obama since the early 2000s in Illinois. I saw him as a fraud and a grifter then and my opinion hasn’t changed.
“You know, your same American good guys and their corrupt Ukrainian stooges who impeached Trump for turning over the rock they were conducting their business under?”
Again, you are assuming facts not in evidence. I am unaware that Ukrainians impeached Trump. Which Ukrainians in the US House of Representatives voted to impeach Trump?
“Other than that, what neighbors?”
Uh, that would be Chechnya (twice) in the 1990s; Georgia in 2008; Ukraine in 2014 and again in 2022.
“You are obviously peddling your other American good guy, Hillary, and all her Russia, Russia, Russia BS lies.”
Again, you are assuming facts not in evidence. Clearly, you just make shit up. You’ve lost the argument the second you do that.
“I despise them all and that butcher, Putin.”
Have you condemned Putin for his actions? I haven’t seen any posts of yours where you did.
“Why you think it’s a good idea to hang with that warmongering crowd, who knows?”
Yet again, you assume facts not in evidence. Because I think the Ukrainians have a right to defend themselves against an unwarranted invasion by a larger and stronger country does not mean I “hang out” with “warmongers.” Because I want to see Ukraine repel that invasion does not mean I hang out with warmongers: To the contrary, the sooner Russia is repelled the sooner this war ends. Ukraine has no territorial designs or ambitions against Russia; but Russia most certainly has such designs against Ukraine.
“Let me guess, for a little while you used to be MAGA.”
Are you with Biden’s feds? FBI? DOJ? DHS? You sound like it.
Exactly.
“You pro globhomo swarmbots are so predictable.”
Nice try, Sparky.
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