U.S. weapons now killing Russians instead of Ukrainians

Most Americans likely think we first provided Ukraine with the $1 billion in weapons swiftly provided since the February 24, Russian war started. What were not told by our government and mainstream media is that the U.S. has long been providing Ukraine with several billions in weaponry and warfare training by CIA paramilitaries to fight against the separatist forces in the breakaway Donbass provinces. Over 13,000 Russian speaking and leaning Ukrainians lay dead from the new Ukraine government we midwifed into existence in February, 2014.

U.S. support for the coup which ousted Russian leaning Ukraine president Victor Yanukovych represents a crime against the Ukraine people. The deaths of Ukrainians in the resulting civil war were totally avoidable. No coup, no civil war, no 13,000 dead if only the U.S. kept its imperialist nose out of Ukraine affairs. More importantly, there would be no criminal Russian invasion 8 years later to keep a NATO armed Ukraine off Russia’s doorstep.

Once the war began, the U.S. and NATO again did the wrong thing; flooding Ukraine with weaponry which cannot defeat Russia, merely prolong a war in which neither side can prevail. That will result in thousands more dead on both sides, millions more refugees, and further driving the poorest country in Europe deeper into failed state status.

The first right thing the U.S. and NATO should have done was negotiate the December 17, 2021 Russian security demands a full 2 months before the invasion. The second right thing? Once the war started, was to put the full weight of diplomacy at work to obtain a prompt settlement, saving thousands of lives and massive physical destruction.

But 23 days later the U.S. and NATO continue to denigrate negotiations while endlessly filling the pipeline of weaponry.

When it comes to criminal war, whether started by the U.S. or Russia, the U.S. is consistent. They always get it wrong.

‘Preventive’ wars, 19 years apart, both illegal, immoral, criminal

In August, 2002, after a 35 year absence from the peace movement, following the Vietnam War. I re-upped. Why? I read an article buried deep in the Chicago Trib about America’s multi-billion dollar buildup in the Middle East to attack Iraq over their presumed but fictitious WMD program. It strongly implied it was too late to stop America’s advance to pre-emptive war regardless of what the ongoing UN inspectors found.

Sure enough, 7 months later the U.S. did attack, 19 years ago this day. Hundreds of thousands of dead people and trillions of wasted U.S. treasure, the U.S. still has soldiers defiling Iraq. They still encounter attacks from Iraqi militia who, along with the Iraqi government, want us out.

President George W. Bush and his war cabinet sold our citizenry the Iraq war with lies, propaganda and fear tactics. It worked perfectly to garner support for a murderous war that should never have been fought.

And on this sorrowful anniversary of a war that should never have been fought, America is involved, indirectly, in another preventive war that should never have been fought. But this time it is Russia that started, what it calls a preventive war, against its neighbor Ukraine.

While America is working mightily to aid Ukraine short of direct involvement, it has never come to terms with its own illegal, immoral and criminal war in Iraq. Nineteen years on it’s virtually forgotten. If mentioned at all, it’s simply to call it a mistake.

Nineteen years from now Russia, like the U.S., may still be in Ukraine…and simply calling its tragic consequences a mistake.

To paraphrase Gertrude Stein in her 1913 poem ‘Sacred Emily’, ‘A criminal war is a criminal war…is a criminal war.’

Robert Frost sure got that poem wrong

“I never dared be radical when young

For fear it would make me conservative when old”

I dared be radical when young

And have gotten more radical with age

Only way to push the ball of progress over the top

And time is short