A bill to prolong death and destruction

I am speaking of a $95-billion foreign military aid package that includes $61 billion for Ukraine.

Speaker Mike Johnson’s turnaround from opponent to supporter of the war in Ukraine raised many eyebrows.  His meeting with Donald Trump in advance of this announcement added intrigue and speculation regarding his sudden change of heart.

Most likely, both men decided that it would help Trump and the GOP to win votes in November, and how many more Ukrainians would die in the process was of no particular concern to them.  Instead, Johnson used the same Lindsey Graham and Co. language that financing this war is the best investment ever made, since no Americans are dying.  The only new element is that the speaker added his son into the equation.  “To put it bluntly, I would rather send bullets to Ukraine than American boys,” Johnson told reporters last week.  “My son is going to begin in the Naval Academy this fall.  This is a live-fire exercise for me, as it is for so many American families.  This is not a game; this is not a joke.”  

Well, nowadays it is useless to ask whether such statements correspond to moral, ethical, or any other values that U.S. and E.U. politicians claim to adhere to.  (There are exceptions, but so far, their numbers are not enough to change the course.)  But Ukrainian president Zelensky surpasses their cynicism by thanking Congress, saying, “The vital U.S. aid bill passed today by the House will keep the war from expanding, save thousands and thousands of lives.”  He is talking about saving American, not Ukrainian lives.

Such statements and actions from Washington or Brussels, and from Zelensky, confirm what was known anyway.  The West found a foreign leader ready to serve its interests of weakening Russia by sacrificing the Ukrainian people and their country for money and glory.  In the Western media, Zelensky is now George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Winston Churchill together.  I doubt that any of them or his heirs would be thrilled being compared to someone who converted his own country into a foreign mercenary legion. 

As for the media, Ashley Rindsberg in The Spectator called the West’s anti-Russian hysteria the “media’s Vietnam.”  She bitterly writes that the crusade against Russia has become “the raison d’être of the mainstream, so important that it has forced some of the most famous publications in the country to openly renounce cherished journalistic values such as objectivity and neutrality.”

Historians might correct me, but, searching through the endless list of “United States War Crimes” from the 1889–1913 war in the Philippines to the 21st century’s wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and Libya, I couldn’t find a similar example.  When it comes to the current U.S. proxy war in Ukraine, the crime reaches another level, which not only denigrates the politics of the supposedly democratic country, but also contradicts the basic spirit and soul of America itself.

Provoking, funding, and prolonging the war between the two Christian nations who lived together for over three centuries and who are bound by close historical, religious, economic, cultural, and family ties was never meant to promote democracy, but rather to use Ukrainians as cannon fodder to preserve the geopolitical advantage of the hegemon.  Of course, there is an additional incentive to make money for the military-industrial complex, and all those with whom it shares its huge profits, including many members of Congress, think-tanks, and lobbyists.

Despite constant use of the word “unprovoked,” the current war was indeed provoked by the U.S. and NATO.  As with any other nation, Russia does want to take its security interests seriously — in this particular case, to insist that the pledge given to Gorbachev “not to expand NATO one inch east” be honored.

One phone call from Biden to Putin before February 24, 2022, with a pledge to guarantee Ukraine’s neutral status, would have ensured no war.  Russia’s other security concerns could be then negotiated in a calm working atmosphere.

Finally, this bill will not change the outcome of this war, which is now turning in Russia’s favor.  According to Richard Sakwa, professor of Russian and European politics at the University of Kent, “[t]his decision will only prolong the agony of Ukraine and Europe.”  Furthermore, “[i]t also raises the stakes, and pushes the world one step further towards a cataclysm the likes of which we have never seen.  Now is the time to start de-escalating, and to outline what it would take to start a diplomatic process of some sort.”

Image: The Presidential Administration of Ukraine via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0.