[Peace-discuss] Fwd: [ufpj-activist] The US Antiwar Movement and Ukraine

Tue Mar 4 16:02:53 UTC 2014

There's a lively ongoing discussion on the United for Peace and Justice 
mailing list - among other questions, How should the Peace Movement 
respond to what's happening in the Ukraine?   Some comments I especially 
liked - Joseph Gainza's jiu-jitsu, holding the US and UN security 
council to act as if our ideal motives were our real ones; David 
Swanson's comment that we need to chew gum & walk at the same time, 
acknowledging that both the US/NATO and Russia are at fault in this 
proxy war; and a well written review of the situation by Frank 
Brodhead.  All three are below.  -- Stuart

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-------- Original Message --------
Subject: 	Re: [ufpj-activist] The US Antiwar Movement and Ukraine
Date: 	Mon, 3 Mar 2014 16:42:43 -0500
From: 	<jgainza at vtlink.net>
To: 	Michael Eisenscher <m_eisenscher at uslaboragainstwar.org>, 
<ufpj-activist at lists.mayfirst.org>

Normally I would agree completely with Michael's suggestion. But I think 
we are at a vary volatile moment and that the UN, or any other 
international body able to do it, would not be empowered to find the 
duplicities of one or more of the permanent members of the Security 
Council. My suggestion is for a politically possible move by the UN to 
forestall what may well be a build-up to war; Russia would be hard 
pressed to veto a commission looking into the safety of ethnic Russians. 
Ukraine would welcome a chance for temperatures to cool a little. The 
U.S. loves to see itself as the peacemaker (while it does otherwise) and 
bringing this proposal to the UNSC would enable it to be in the 
limelight as such.  When we have a commission in place, we can then call 
for it to dig deeper into the role played by the US and other EU 
countries. The object here, I repeat, it to prevent bloodshed. We use 
the (false) narratives about Ukraine which the US and the Russians are 
promoting to stop them from completing their strategies. I think it is 
worth a try.
Joseph Gainza
Vermont Action for Peace
Producer & Host - Gathering Peace
WGDR 91.1 FM WGDH 91.7 FM
www.wgdr.org
802-522-2376
jgainza at vtlink.net

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-------- Original Message --------
Subject: 	Re: [ufpj-activist] The US Antiwar Movement and Ukraine
Date: 	Mon, 3 Mar 2014 13:35:41 -0500
From: 	David Swanson <davidcnswanson at gmail.com>
To: 	Joseph Gainza <jgainza at vtlink.net>
CC: 	ufpj-activist <ufpj-activist at lists.mayfirst.org>

I don't think the disagreement here is over the priority of saving lives 
but over the separability of the topics. The threat that Russia feels 
from NATO expansion and U.S. influence over a coup on its borders, a 
coup to unseat a president unwilling to join NATO -- just as the people 
of Ukraine are unwilling to join NATO -- is a part of the problem that 
cannot be ignored in its solution. The most frustrating thing about this 
crisis, it seems to me, is the great moral demand to completely ignore 
either the U.S. or Russia, but never both.  I taped a show called 
Crosstalk on Thursday for Monday (today). I denounced the U.S. at great 
length, but the minute I said Russia should stop threatening military 
action the host shouted me down.  Then what I warned of happened before 
the show could air, and they taped a whole new one with other guests so 
as not to look like complete idiots.  Somewhere somehow someone must 
find a way to walk and chew gum on this: we must acknowledge that it is 
possible for more than one actor to be at fault.

*========================================================================================

*
*From:* fbrodhead at aol.com <mailto:fbrodhead at aol.com>
*Sent:* Sunday, March 02, 2014 7:45 PM
*To:* ufpj-activist at lists.mayfirst.org 
<mailto:ufpj-activist at lists.mayfirst.org>
*Subject:* [ufpj-activist] The US Antiwar Movement and Ukraine
> *The Antiwar Movement and Ukraine*
> By Frank Brodhead
> During the run-up to the war against Iraq, the US antiwar movement 
> maintained that a US invasion of Iraq would be illegal â?? would 
> constitute a â??crime of aggressionâ?? â?? if it did not have the UN 
> Security Council approval, or if it did not constitute a short-term 
> defensive war against an attack from Iraq or a â??pre-emptiveâ?? 
> attack against an imminent threat from Iraq.As neither of these 
> requirements was met by the US attack against Iraq, we rightly decried 
> the war as (among other things) an illegal war, a crime of aggression.
> Though the situation in the Ukraine today is admittedly very complex, 
> surely we should hold the Russians and their military action in 
> Ukraine to the same standard.Did it receive the approval of the UN 
> Security Council?Does it constitute self-defense against a Ukrainian 
> attack on Russia, or a pre-emptive strike against an imminent 
> attack?In both cases, the answer is No.
> It is, of course, bizarre to hear President Obama and Secretary of 
> State Kerry going on about the Russian violations of international law 
> in regard to Russian military action in the Ukraine.Do they have no 
> shame?And yet, on the basis of the standards of the world antiwar 
> movement that rose up in 2002-2003, the Russian attack /is /a 
> violation of international law.And this is important.And we should not 
> engage in debating the US-Russian-Ukrainian imbroglio without 
> acknowledging this.
> In a sense, the Russians are justifying their military intervention 
> into Ukraine on the grounds of â??humanitarian intervention.â??They 
> are making several claims.The first is that the government of 
> Ukrainian president Yanukovich was legitimately elected, and that his 
> overthrow was a coup by a minority of disaffected voters. The second 
> claim is that the ethnic Russian population in the eastern half of 
> Ukraine is endangered by the new government, or by lawless forces 
> within Ukraine.And a third claim is that the uprising in Ukraine was 
> in fact a form of external aggression, in that fascist and other 
> groups that bore the brunt of the fighting against the government were 
> supported by, or even were creatures of, outside forces, most 
> particularly the United States and the CIA.
> Of course, each of these claims needs to be examined on their 
> merits.There is some truth to all of them.And yet do they give 
> legitimacy to Russian military intervention?When the same defenses are 
> made by supporters of US military intervention, we have been (rightly) 
> skeptical.We reject â??humanitarian interventionâ?? as simply new 
> clothes for the same old imperialism.We are on dangerous grounds if we 
> concede that Russian â??humanitarian interventionâ?? is OK, while that 
> of the United States or the European (former) colonial powers is not.
> A third concern that I have when reading some of the writing on the 
> Left about the US-Russian-Ukrainian situation is the disappearance of 
> actually-existing people.For example, Bruce Gagnon has been a stalwart 
> in the US antiwar movement for decades.Yet in his piece on Ukraine 
> posted on his website and circulated on the UFPJ list today, the 
> people who live in the Ukraine are invisible.They are not part of the 
> story.Max Blumenthal piece on Alternet 
> <http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/us-backing-neo-nazis-ukraine> 
> (â??Is the U.S. Backing Neo-Nazis in the Ukraine?â??) was similar, in 
> that the 99 percent of Ukrainians who are not neo-nazis were not part 
> of the story.Millions of Ukrainians protested the corrupt regime of 
> Yanukovich; and a large proportion of them also want nothing to do 
> with the Opposition, who robbed the country blind when /they /were in 
> power.The US antiwar movement needs to keep the aspirations and needs 
> of Ukrainians in our minds and hearts, even as we are protesting US 
> attempts to manipulate Ukrainian politics and US military threats 
> against Russia.
> Finally, we need to recognize that the Russians are not united on the 
> wisdom of military intervention in Ukraine.Boris Kargarlitsky has 
> written several important articles about this that are now up on ZNet 
> <http://zcomm.org/znetarticle/a-quadrille-of-monsters-and-smashing-the-feed-trough/>; 
> and I understand that Russian dissidents have posted petitions on 
> Russian-language websites protesting the military intervention. We 
> need to learn more about this activity and reach out to our antiwar 
> allies is Russia.
> What should the US antiwar/peace movements do re: the 
> US-Russia-Ukraine?Needless to say, there is not a sound-bite answer. 
> Combating a US military response to the events in Ukraine is obviously 
> of the greatest importance.So too is exposing and opposing US 
> â??covertâ?? intervention in the internal affairs of Ukraine.And we 
> must recognize that the aspirations of people in the Ukraine are 
> widely divergent, and will not be reconciled in the short term. But we 
> cannot be part of a peace movement without acknowledging the 
> illegality and recklessness of Russiaâ??s military intervention.The 
> binaries of the Cold War era need to be put into the trash can of 
> history; the real world has moved on, and so must we.
>

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