On Ukraine

It’s a hot and humid Sunday morning here on Florida’s gulf coast; too hot to sit outside for long.  At least for me.  Since I wrote about the weather two days ag9o, today’s post will be about war.

Yesterday was the 500th day of the war in Ukraine.

Yesterday, Joe B. announced that we wil be sending $800 million worth of cluster bombs to Kiev.  Cluster bombs are banned in 120 countries.  You know.  Like poison gas.  We are not signatories to the agreement banning cluster bombs.  In fact, we make them here.

It has also been reported recently that the U.S. military has been having serious problems meeting its quota of enlistments for the past two years.   Numbers obtained by NBC News show both a record low percentage of young Americans eligible to serve and an even tinier fraction willing to consider it.

The pool of those eligible to join the military continues to shrink, with more young men and women than ever disqualified for obesity, drug use or criminal records. Last year Army Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville testified before Congress that only 23% of Americans ages 17-24 are qualified to serve without a waiver to join, down from 29% in recent years.  And among this elegible to join group, millions have n no interest in joining up.

I’m not surprised. I wrote about this issue years ago.  Ninety five percent of the population doesn’t know anyone in the military and has no contact with it.  Wars are for other people. Those who volunteered.  Doesn’t effect me or mine.

A Defense Department survey in 2022 found that only 9% of those young Americans eligible to serve in the military had any inclination to do so, the lowest number since 2007.

The survey sheds light on how both Americans’ view of the military and the growing civilian-military divide may also be factors in slumping recruitment, and how public attitudes could cause recruiting struggles for years to come.   Lt. General Thomas Spoehr of the Heritage Foundation said he does not believe a revival of the draft is imminent, but “2022 is the year we question the sustainability of the all-volunteer force.”

Of course, maybe one of the reasons is that we have been dragged from one military fiasco into another leading to volunteer soldiers being separated from their families for years at a time with one “tour” after another.

The drum-beat from the war-hawks is always the same.  Wh*ether Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and now Ukraine, freedom and democracy are threatened. Evil must be vanquished. Human rights must be protected. The fate of Europe and NATO, along with a “rules-based international order” is at stake. Victory is assured.

“The results are also the same. The justifications and narratives are exposed as lies. The cheery prognosis is false. Those on whose behalf we are supposedly fighting are as venal as those we are fighting against.”  Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were an abject failure.  Twenty years in Kabul made not one iota of difference.

But they did generate a lot of money.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was a war crime, but it came on the heels of a relentless NATO expansion.  It was universally understood in Eastern and Central Europe following the collapse of the Soviet Union that NATO expansion was unnecessary and a dangerous provocation. It made no geopolitical sense. But it made commercial sense. War is a business.

“Countries that joined NATO, which now include Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Albania, Croatia, Montenegro and North Macedonia, reconfigured their militaries, often through tens of billions in Western loans, to become compatible with NATO military hardware” This made the weapons manufacturers billions in profits.

And now Ukraine.  Thus far we have spent $40 billion in armaments for Kiev. NATO nations have provided another $100 billion.   You understand, of course, that we don’t send the money to Ukraine.  We send it to our own war industries, making jobs and profits for American companies.

As long as there is war, it’s big business.

So how about this Ukrainian democracy we are fighting to protect?  This is not a pluralistic democratic society.  Thirty percent of the population are ethnic Russians, speaking Russian.  U.S. backing of the 2014 “Maidan” coup ousted democratically elected Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych. Yanukovych wanted economic integration with the EU, but not at the expense of economic and political ties with Russia.

Nazi insignia on Ukrainian helmets.  All pictures were shown on German tv.

“Why did the Ukrainian parliament revoke the official use of minority languages, including Russian, three days after the 2014 coup?  Kind of like us banning Spanish. How do we rationalize the eight years of warfare against ethnic Russians in the Donbass region before the Russian invasion?

How do we defend the decision by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to ban 11 opposition parties, including the Opposition Platform for Life, which had 10 percent of the seats in the Supreme Council, Ukraine’s unicameral parliament?”

How can we accept the banning of these opposition parties — many of which are on the left — while Zelenskyy allows fascists from the Svoboda and Right Sector parties, as well as other extremist militias to flourish?

These neo-Nazi groups supported by Zelenskyy’s government harass and attack the LGBTQ community, the Roma population and anti-fascist protesters, and threaten city council members, media outlets, artists and foreign students.

It has been reported that Ukrainian military equipment has been seen bearing the insignia of the Nazi Balkenkreuz.  The Ministry of Defense says its just a nationalistic symbol.

IMHO, the Ukranian right wants a country with only Ukrainians, one language, no ethnic Russians and no Poles.  When the Nazis came to Ukraine, the locals marched their Jews to Babi Yar and killed 20,000 Poles living in Ukraine.  It was the ethnic Russian Ukrainians who fought the Nazis.

And how’s the war going?

“Wasn’t the nearly $140 billion in sophisticated military hardware, financial and humanitarian assistance pledged by the U.S., EU and 11 other countries supposed to have turned the tide of the war?   Wasn’t this latest Ukrainian counteroffensive, which was originally known as the “spring offensive,” supposed to punch through Russia’s heavily fortified front lines and regain huge swathes of territory?”

Weren’t the economic sanctions supposed to cripple Russia?   Wasn’t the severing of the Russian banking system from SWIFT, the international money transfer system, supposed to cripple the Russian economy?  Shouldn’t the Russian army have collapsed by now?

Ukrainian men are now fleeing the country if they can since conscription has been introduced.  Even our retired generals and former CIA, FBI, NSA and Homeland Security officials, who serve as analysts on networks such as CNN and MSNBC, can’t say the offensive has succeeded.

We like this war.  It makes money for our arms industry, weakens Russia and someone else if fighting and dying.

Do we really think Russia will sue for peace?  Nope.  Ukraine’s “victory” will be another lie.

“The war will only be solved through negotiations that allow ethnic Russians in Ukraine to have some autonomy and Moscow’s protection, as well as Ukrainian neutrality, which means the country cannot join NATO. The longer these negotiations are delayed the more Ukrainians will suffer and die. Their cities and infrastructure will continue to be pounded into rubble.

But then again, as far as the war mongers and weapons manufacturers are concern, what eventually happens to Ukraine is irrelevant.

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