It seems months of negotiations took place for 30 U.S. House members (not including Bernie Sanders) to produce and submit a very mild request to Biden to negotiate an end to the U.S. proxy war with Russia in Ukraine. But Democratic Party leaders weren’t having it and, within hours, forced the House members to withdraw the letter, as if it never happened, and to back off and apologize.
It’s outrageous that this very polite request got slapped down so harshly. But it’s also frankly criminal that the “progressive” people in Congress took 8 months to even raise questions about – much less opposition to – the apparent determination of the U.S. to fund and instigate a long-term slaughter and apparently to block negotiations by Ukraine.
Yesterday, at a gathering of peace activists who have bodily and firmly acted against U.S. wars from Vietnam to Yemen, in frustration with the lack of even a Barbara Lee to raise a lone voice against U.S. war-making, the point was made that so many people in the United States see Ukrainians as “white,” and therefore worthy of protection, as opposed to the millions of people from the global south who have been targets of U.S. wars. True. That’s how people are being led.
But I contend the problem is even more basic. These members of Congress are signed up for U.S. supremacy. They fund the world’s largest military in service of empire. The “American way of life,” and the global system of imperialist exploitation that makes it possible, are what they defend in their letter.
A mass rejection of this war, and the system promoting it – from people in the imperialist countries here, in Russia and Europe – is the only way the interests of global humanity and the planet can be realized. The alternative, the existential threat of nuclear war, is now not unthinkable.
Some of what I’ve been reading:
- Democratic Party Slaps Down a Polite “Progressive” Plea for Negotiations in Ukraine War: … The Democrats are not the “party of peace”—they are the party of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Face the facts: from Hiroshima to Vietnam to Obama’s drone strike campaign, they have demonstrated to you over and over again that they have no hesitation at all when it comes to killing millions of people in the interests of the U.S. empire. And now, under Democratic Party leadership, this country is bringing the world to the brink of nuclear war—and their self-described “progressives” are on board with that!
- Never Withdraw a Demand for Diplomacy, David Swanson: … As in most wars, both sides of the one in Ukraine have predicted total victory month after month — with no evidence that either side has ever been remotely right about that. The U.S. is establishing a seemingly permanent infrastructure for a forever war, the two most likely eventual endings of which are nuclear apocalypse or negotiated peace. Is it really going to be unacceptable to have a preference for peace? Must it be forbidden to want life on Earth protected from nuclear war?
- Video: Jeffrey Sachs, Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University is very angry at the U.S. government for its prosecution of this proxy war and opposition to a negotiated settlement, which he argues for.