The MAGA faction of the Republican Party has made clear that it does not want to defend Ukraine. It does not see the point of helping Ukraine resist a Russian takeover. As foreign policy expert and national security specialist Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene has said, “Ukraine is not our 51st state.” Like Trump, the “Freedom Caucus” does not want to pay to repel Putin’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. Trump thinks that Putin might be our ally if only we give him whatever he wants. (He has said he wants to restore the USSR.). You need only look at any photo of Trump and Putin together to see how Trump looks at Putin with a deferential and adoring expression.
Timothy Snyder, Professor of History at Yale University, published this powerful article in the Kyiv Post. He should have published it in The Washington Post.
He writes:
Imagine that freedom was in decline around the world. Imagine that things had gotten so bad that a dictatorship actually invaded a democracy with the express goal of destroying its freedoms and its people. And yet… imagine that this people fought back. Imagine that their leaders stayed in the country. Imagine that this people got themselves together, supported and joined their armed forces, held back an invasion of what seemed like overwhelming force. Imagine that their resistance is a bright moment in the history of democracy this whole century. We don’t have to imagine: that attack came from Russia and those people are the Ukrainians. Would you sell them out?
Americans have an alliance in North America and Europe which has existed for more than seventy years, with the goal of preventing an attack from the Soviet Union and then from Russia. Imagine that, when the Russian attack came, the hammer fell on a country excluded from that alliance. Ukraine indeed took the entire brunt of the invasion, resisted, and turned the tide: a task assigned to countries whose economies, taken together, are two hundred fifty times larger than Ukraine’s. In so doing, Ukraine destroyed so much Russian equipment that a Russian attack on NATO became highly improbable. With the blood of tens of thousands of its soldiers, Ukrainians defended every member of that alliance, making it far less likely that Americans would have to go to war in Europe. Would you sell them out?
(If there is anyone out there who still thinks that NATO had anything to do with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, consider this: invading Ukraine made Russia far more vulnerable. If Russia actually feared NATO, invading Ukraine would be the last thing it would do. Russian leaders are perfectly aware that NATO will not invade Russia, which is why they can pull troops away from the borders of NATO members Norway and Finland and send them to kill Ukrainians.)
For this whole century, American politicians and strategists of all political orientations have agreed that the greatest threat for a global war comes from China. The scenario for this dreadful conflict, in which hundreds of thousands of American soldiers could fight and die, is a Chinese offensive against Taiwan. And now imagine that this can defused at no cost and with no risk. The offensive operation the Chinese leadership is watching right now is that of Russia against Ukraine. Ukrainian resistance has demonstrated how difficult a Chinese offensive operation in the Pacific would be. The best China policy is a good Ukraine policy. Will we toss away the tremendous and unanticipated geopolitical gain that has been handed to us by Ukraine? There is nothing that we could have done on our own to so effectively deter China as what the Ukrainians are doing, and what the Ukrainians are doing is in no way hostile towards China. Ukrainians are keeping us safe in this as in other ways. Would you sell them out?
Imagine, because it’s true, that the whole world is watching the war in Ukraine. From everyone else’s point of view, whether they like us, hate us, or don’t care about us, Ukraine seems like an obvious ally and an easy win for the United States. Anyone around the world, regardless of their own ideology, knows that Ukraine is a democracy and America is supposed to support democracies. Anyone around the world, regardless of the state of their own economy, knows that our economy is enormous, far larger than Russia’s, and that economic strength wins wars. Anyone around the world can easily see that Americans are not at risk in Ukraine, and that Americans draw extraordinary moral and geopolitical gains from Ukrainian resistance. From the point of view of all observers, in other words, defunding Ukraine would demonstrate enormous American weakness. Is that the face we want to show the world? Do we want to tell everyone that we are unreliable and unaware of our own interests? Ukrainians, with American help, make Americans look sensible and strong. Would you sell them out?
Imagine that this is a winnable war, because it is. Russia’s main strategic objective, the seizure of Kyiv, was not achieved. Ukraine won the Battle of Kyiv. Russia was forced to retreat from Kyiv and Chernihiv and Sumy oblasts. Imagine the Russia’s campaign to take Kharkiv failed. Ukraine won the Battle of Kharkiv. Imagine that Kherson, the one regional capital Russia has taken in this war, was taken back by Ukraine. Ukraine won the Battle of Kherson. Snake Island, lost early in the war, has been taken back by Ukraine. Ukraine has taken back more than half of the territory seized by Russia in this invasion. Knowing that all is this is true, imagine that Putin knows it too. Russia’s main offensive instrument, the paramilitary Wagner Group, staged a coup against Putin and that Putin had to kill its leader. Imagine that Putin knows he cannot really take much more Ukrainian land — not without American help, anyway. Ukraine has a theory of victory that involves gains on the battlefield. Putin has a theory of victory that involves votes in the US Congress. Putin thinks that he has a better chance in the Capitol than he has in Kyiv. Should we prove him right?
Imagine a world food system with Ukraine as a major node. In normal times Ukraine can feed four hundred million people, and usually the UN World Food Program depends upon Ukraine. Ukrainian exports feed some of the most sensitive parts of the Middle East and Africa. Much of the instability in those regions is related to shortages of food. Russia has destroyed a major dam to destroy Ukrainian farmland. And mined Ukrainian farms on a huge scale. Russia targets ports and grain storage facilities with its missiles, and claims the piratical right to stop all shipping on the Black Sea with its navy. And yet… Imagine that Ukrainians resist here as well. Ukrainians farmers are hard at work. Ukraine still supplies food to the World Food Program. Ukrainians, through their own innovative weapons and clever tactics, managed to intimidate the Black Sea Fleet and open a lane for commercial shipping. That they are feeding the people who needed to be fed. Would you sell them out?
Imagine that we were a country that cared about war crimes. And imagine that there was a law, an international genocide convention, that defined five actions that constitute genocide, and that Russians have committed every one of these crimes in Ukraine. I cannot keep on writing about “imagining” when I have seen some of the death pits myself. I cannot say “imagine” when writers I know have been murdered because they represent Ukrainian culture. I cannot stay with my device when I read that the Russian state boasts of having taken 700,000 Ukrainian children to be russified, when every day Russian propagandists make clear that Russian war aims are exterminationist. And yet Ukrainians resist and persist. This is a genocide that can be stopped, that is being stopped. We are living within the scenario, the one we say that we have been waiting for, when American actions can stop a genocide, simply by helping the people who have been targeted, simply by paying their taxes. Whenever the Ukrainians take back land, they rescue people. This is how they think of their liberated territories: as places where no more children will be kidnaped, no more civilians will tortured, no more local leaders will be murdered. Would you sell out a people to a genocidal occupation? A people that has done nothing but good for you?
I have heard the excuse that Americans are “fatigued.” I have been in Ukraine three times since the war began. I have been in the capital and in the provinces. I have seen almost no Americans, fatigued or otherwise, in the country. And that is for the simple reason that we are not in Ukraine. How can we be fatigued by a war we are not fighting? When we are not even present? This makes no sense. It causes no fatigue to give money to the right cause, which is all that we are doing. It feels good to help other people help themselves in a good cause.
If we stop supporting Ukraine, then everything gets worse, all of a sudden, and no one will be talking about “fatigue” because we will all be talking about disaster: across all of these dimensions: food supply, war crimes, international instability, expanding war, collapsing democracies. Everything that the Ukrainians are doing for us can be reversed if we give up. Why would lawmakers even contemplate doing so?
If you happened to know lots of Ukrainians, as I do, you would know people who have been wounded or who have been killed. You would know people who get through their days with dark circles around their eyes, because everyone has dark circles around their eyes. You would know people who have lost someone, because everyone has lost someone. You would know people who are grieving and yet who are nevertheless doing what they can do. You would not know anyone in Ukraine who believes that fatigue is a reason to give up. Would you sell such people out?
I have heard the other excuse: that we need to audit the weapons we send to Ukraine. The expenses are minimal and the gains are great: a nickel on our defense dollar, achieving what we cannot ourselves do with all the rest. And here’s the thing: the weapons we send to Ukraine are the only ones in our stockpiles that are being audited. They are being audited not by accountants in suits and ties but by men and women in camouflage. They are being used and used well by people whose lives are at stake and whose country’s future is at stake. Ukrainians have used American air defense more effectively than anyone knew that it could be used.
Ukrainians are using American missiles that we consider outdated to destroy the most advanced Russian assets. Ukrainians are taking American weapons built in the last century and using them to defend themselves and the rest of us in this one. In large measure they are literally using arms that we would otherwise be paying to disassemble because we regard them as obsolete.
If that battlefield audit done by the Ukrainian army is not good enough: well, then, by all means, American lawmakers, come and visit Ukraine and see for yourself. You and your staffers would be very welcome. Ukrainians want you to come. It would be a very good thing if more of us visited Ukraine.
I will tell you what I witnessed in Ukraine: when Ukrainians see American weapons systems, they applaud. Would you sell them out?
Reprinted from @tashecon blog. See the original here.
If you want to see a well-argued point, study this example. You can disagree about specifics if you like, but you must give the author credit for rhetoric at its best
“The best China policy is a good Ukraine policy.”
“How can we be fatigued by a war we are not fighting? When we are not even present?” Hard to argue with so sharpened a pencil.
I saw Lindsey Graham’s defense of holding up aid to Ukraine for deportations of immigrants. It went like this: “The U.S. is full.” As if the United States is just a yard and people bricks. Hard to understand how one could sit on so wobbly a chair.
Lindsay Graham has no principles whatever.
His main job is to find a Big Man that he can cling to. First, McCain, then Trump (who hated McCain.)
The U.S. is far from full. We need immigration very badly and it’s a good thing so many want to come here.
Exactly right, Flerp. And a Happy New Year to you and yours! You too, LCT!!!
Timothy Snyder is extraordinarily bright and profoundly learned. I highly, highly recommend his gripping online Yale course on the history of Ukraine, which can be found on Yale Open Courses or on Youtube for free.
My uncle through marriage was Ukrainian. He married my Aunt Hazel, and he worked in my grandfather’s real estate business for many years. He was an affable fellow with a likeable personality. He arrived from Ukraine as a young man in the 1930s. During WW II he joined the US Air Force and had one of the most dangerous jobs. He was a ball turret gunner and flew numerous missions for the US during the war. The ball turret gunner sat in a glass cage beneath the plane where he was totally exposed to the enemy. He didn’t even have a parachute as there was no room for it in the bubble into which he was wedged. He was shot twice, but the miracle is that he survived. He never liked to talk about the war, but he once showed me a scar on his leg where he had been shot. After the war he managed to work, but according to my grandmother, he often woke up at night with nightmares. I would hate to see a “fatigued” US abandon the brave Ukrainians and any remaining family members related to my Uncle John who fought so bravely for us in WW II.
RT, I hope you know the story of the famine that killed millions of Ukrainians in the 1930s. Ukraine has always been known as the breadbasket of Europe. Stalin sent troops to commandeer the grain and the farmers who grew it died of starvation.
I know Stalin stole their crops and starved them. I also know they are resilient, resourceful people that do not want to be considered Russian. I taught a number of Ukrainians over the years. Their number one demand was, “Don’t call me Russian.”
We have jumped into so many pointless, hopeless wars that my biggest fear is that it’s made us literally gun shy.
But I look at Ukraine and think, how could we not help? Anyone with eyes to see knows that Ukraine is deserving of our help, and that if we put blinders on, the Baltic states will be next.
We cannot let Trump back in. He cares nothing about the United States. He adores Putin, and thinks being a homicidal bully is strength. He thinks the poor and those going through bad times are weak, of no value other than cannon fodder, to be spurned and mocked. In this, he is a perfect Republican.
If we abandon Ukraine, we abandon America.
yes
A vote for the GOP in 2024 is a vote to abandon Ukraine and turn the US into a paper tiger.
yes
If you need any further proof that indicted international war criminal Tsar Vladimir Putin the Defenestrater is a sick and dangerous creep, consider this: At least 22 times in 2023, he threatened to nuke the UK.
Who’s that fighter
Vlad the defenstrater
A fighter does not hire thugs to sneak up on people and shoot or poison them or throw them out of windows. However, mobsters do that all the time.
What Traitor Trump loves, his fascist loving, loyalist MAGA RINOs love, too.
80 times Trump talked about Putin
Throughout the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump consistently broke from political orthodoxy in his effusive praise of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“His glowing statements on Putin have become central in stoking the suspicion that he and his campaign were somehow connected to Russian interference in the election.”
https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2017/03/politics/trump-putin-russia-timeline/
Donald Trump just can’t stop praising Vladimir Putin
https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/28/politics/trump-putin-ukraine-russia-smart/index.html
Trump says he’s pleased by Putin’s praise:
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-pleased-putins-praise-ukraine-russia-meet-the-press-rcna105298
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/09/17/donald-trump-vladimir-putin-praise-00116414
And Traitor Trump’s MAGA RINO loyalists distrust the lying media because Trump told them the media lies all the time. And they heard that from the Emperor of Lies!
That’s why most of the traitor’s MAGA RINO loyalists will never read any of this and if they did, they wouldn’t believe it even though those stories are reporting facts about what Trump publicly says that can easily be fact checked.
Personally any question or wonder about this conflict (and how righteous it is or is not) went COMPLETELY out the door when I saw this—
As a human I’m appalled and as an educator myself— I’m ashamed.
The web is full of Russian misinformation and lies.
How do you know this is not from the Russian Internet Agency?
We have a serious problem in the United States. Russia is committed to full-scale disinformation warfare, and an entire political party in the United States now, because of Trump, sucks it all up. Anything Moscow puts out is picked up and amplified by the Reich-wing media here. This is extremely serious and is one reason why Trump absolutely cannot become president of the United States again. The guy needs to go to jail. Half the country almost, now, believes this river of bullshit from Russia, and our social media are rife with these bad actors. I have blocked six of them on my Facebook site in the last week alone.
I deleted a video claiming that Ukraine was sending men with severe mental disabilities to the front lines. A perfect Russian claim to discredit their enemies. Russia is sending hardened criminals to the front lines; probably their men with severe mental disabilities. Nothing like projecting.
Like Trump, they accuse others of doing whatever truly ugly thing they are doing. But everyone knows that Russia has been emptying its prisons to supply barely trained cannon fodder for its illegal war.
This story comes from the Twitter feed of Ian Miles Cheong, who is identified in Google as a contributor to far-right sites like Human Events.
He was also mentioned as a far-right provocateur in an article in The New York Times about Russian disinformation on the web. I suspect that the contributor of this video clip, who has never commented before, is either Mr. Cheong or a friend.
A Bible Burning, a Russian News Agency and a Story Too Good to Check Out
In December of 2015, I was listening to an NPR call in show on the radio in my car as I was out doing errands. One call has always stuck in my mind; it was from a woman who said she was from Minnesota, and who had an accent that certainly sounded authentic.
She extolled the virtues of Russia, as having religious freedom and went on to explain that in Russia, people were free to celebrate Christmas, much more than in the US. We had lost our bearings as a nation and we should follow more closely the example laid out for us by Russia.
The host was speechless. This disinformation campaign has gone on for a very long time.
Throughout our society, everywhere you look. This really needs to stop. It’s poisoning our discourse. Half the populace has no idea what is true anymore.
This swimming in the cesspool of Russian disinformation is not a sufficiently salient topic in our public discourse. It needs to become one.
Bob, here’s a website that will energize you: emptywheel.net. I freely admit that I can only follow about half of what Marcy Wheeler lays out in her posts, given my lack of a legal background, but I do learn A LOT everyday. It’s that rare blog, like Diane’s, where you learn as much from the comments as from the original posts.
I find it indispensable.
Wow, Christine. I see why you find this site so interesting and useful. Thanks for the recommendation!
“Would you sell them out?”
Indeed, MAGA has sold us out, as well as the world order since the peace accords of WWII. In so doing, Trump and his band have chosen to align themselves with authoritarians across the globe.
It would be a great service to the country if, on January 6, the tv stations were to re-broadcast their coverage from that day in 2021. It’s pretty hard to have a revisionist view of what happened while looking at a live feed.