Four words really says it all. But being a wordy guy, naturally I want to say more about how proud I am of how Ukraine is bravely fighting against Putin and his Russian military.
Many times a day I check my Twitter feed to see how the Russian invasion of Ukraine is going. I follow The Kyiv Independent, @KyivIndependent. This screenshot of their most recent tweets shows how gripping real-time coverage of the invasion is.
The stories of heroism and sacrifice coming out of Ukraine are wonderfully inspiring. They spur me to exhibit more courage in my own hugely easier life, which has its own challenges, but nothing like fighting against a Russian invasion of a nation that loves democracy, which makes Putin hate Ukraine.
What's difficult for me to understand is why every freedom-loving American, which seemingly should encompass virtually all of our citizenry, isn't supporting the Ukrainian people.
Sure, it makes sense that Tucker Carlson would praise Putin and disparage Biden on his Fox News show, because that's what Trump has been doing. It doesn't seem to bother Carlson that his words are being used as Russian propaganda.
However, it makes little sense that gun-crazed Republicans, who support the right of everyone to own a military-style assault rifle, aren't backing Ukraine vociferously, since guns are being handed out there to every person who wants one for a much better reason than we have here in the United States.
Namely, to defend their country against the Russian invasion -- which occurred (1) because Putin is sad that the Soviet Union disintegrated into just Russia, and he wants to reconstitute the USSR, and (2) because Putin fears democracies on Russia's borders, since that would give his own people the idea that democracy would be good for them also.
Sadly, conservatives aren't the only ones going soft on support for Ukraine. I've been arguing with a fellow liberal, who usually is more left-leaning than I am, about his conspiracy theory that Ukraine is a hotbed of Nazis.
Sure, there are some Nazis in Ukraine, just as there are some Nazis in many countries, including the United States. But the president of Ukraine has a Jewish background, as do other leaders in the government, so it's crazy to echo Putin's lie that he invaded Ukraine to "denazify" the country.
A milder, yet still disturbing, skeptical attitude toward Ukraine was on display by Bill Maher in his HBO show yesterday. Maher disparaged the Ukraine armed forces, bizarrely saying that he saw them training with wooden weapons.
Maher also pushed back against a guest's correct assertion that it was a mistake to let Hitler take portions of European countries, as that emboldened Hitler to believe that he could conquer all of Europe.
"Putin is no Hitler," Maher said. Obviously true, but Putin also has a goal of taking over sovereign nations. If he gets away with invading Ukraine, other countries could be next.
Even MSNBC's Chris Hayes, who I almost always agree with, is expressing concern that sending military equipment to Ukraine could draw the United States and our allies into a conflict with Russia. That sort of argument for appeasement didn't work in the prelude to World War II, and it doesn't work now either.
Putin is a bully. Yes, he's a bully with thousands of nuclear weapons. That's concerning. Not so concerning, though, that Putin should be allowed to take over Ukraine without the US and our NATO partners doing everything we can to support the Ukrainian people in their fight against Russia.
President Biden and his national security team have performed almost flawlessly in handling both the Russian build-up of troops around Ukraine and the invasion itself. Our intelligence services were spot-on accurate in predicting what Putin would do and when he would do it.
The Biden administration has been able to bring along our European allies with sanctions against Russia to a degree that few had predicted. In addition, it's heartening that Germany, Belgium, and other European Union countries are unabashedly shipping military equipment to Ukraine.
Even if Putin manages to install a puppet government in Ukraine, it seems pretty damn clear that the Ukrainian people won't put up with either a Russian occupation or being ruled by Putin's choice to succeed the democratically-elected Zelensky.
Nonetheless, the invasion of Ukraine has shaken me up, along with countless others. The world now is a more dangerous place. If Putin succeeds in taking over Ukraine, other authoritarian leaders will think they can do the same thing. Taiwan could be next.
This piece in The New Yorker appeared before the invasion. But the sentiment does a great job of reflecting how my psyche feels right now.
"Sure, there are some Nazis in Ukraine . . ."
SOME nazis?
If you really believe that's all there is, please read up on the Azov battalion, that parades under swastika flags and SS "wolfsangle" banners, that has slaughtered more than 14,000 innocent civilians in the Donbass region of Ukraine, simply because they're ethnic Russians who speak Russian. Then there's Mariupol, captured and ruled over by the nazis since 2014, where citizens trying to escape are stopped at checkpoints, pulled out of their cars and shot to death on the spot.
You can find this information for yourself, very easily, unless you're going to keep on wearing blinkers and earplugs so that you do not have to be exposed to the real truth.
It was also Ukrainian nazis who burned alive dozens and dozens of workers in the Odessa Trades Union building in 2014. I will never be able to erase from my mind the images of all those bodies, or the knowledge of what was done to them before they died.
Again, this information is immediately available from just a quick search. You will find nazi militias all over Ukraine, doing what nazis do best, torturing and killing anyone who disagrees with them.
Finally, here is the list of nazis put in power by Victoria Nuland after her successful overthrow of democratically elected president Viktor Yanukovych in 2014:
Dmytro Yarosh, Right Sector neo-Nazi commander who said “our revival begins with our Maidan,” is now second-in-command of the National Defense and Security Council (covering the military, police, courts and intelligence apparatus).
Andriy Parubiy, co-founder of the fascist Social National Party, which later changed its name to Svoboda. Also a member of the Fatherland Party. He is the new top commander of the National Defense and Security Council. Parubiy was co-founder of the Social National Party in 1991, an openly fascist party whose symbol, the “Wolfsangle,” was used by the SS in WWII. The SNP changed its name to Svoboda (“Freedom”) in 2004, and has tried to somewhat moderate its image while retaining its neo-Nazi core.
Arseniy Yatsenyuk new Prime Minister a powerful right-wing banker.
Ihor Tenyukh, member of neo-Nazi Svoboda party, now Minister of Defense.
Oleksandr Sych, member of neo-Nazi Svoboda, is one of three Vice Prime Ministers.
Oleg Makhnitsky, member of neo-Nazi Svoboda, now Prosecutor-General (Attorney General), and has immediately set out to indict the leaders of Crimea who do not want to live under the new order in Kiev.
neo-Nazi Svoboda leader Oleh Tyahnybok, now one of the most powerful figures in the country. He was also a co-founder of Svoboda when it was known as the Social National Party.
While Tyahnybok sought to moderate Svoboda’s public image beginning with the name change in 2004, a speech he gave the same year showed just how paper-thin that cover was.
Speaking at memorial to a commander of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UIA) that collaborated with the Nazis and massacred tens of thousands of Poles, Jews and communists, Tyahnybok called for Ukrainians to fight the “Muscovite-Jewish mafia” which he claimed were running the country.
Tyahnybok praised the UIA and the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists led by Stepan Bandera, who “fought against the Russians, Germans, Jews and other scum who wanted to take away our Ukrainian state.” (For the terms “Russians” and “Jews,” he substituted extremely derogatory slurs).
In 2005, Tyahnybok signed an open letter to Ukraine leaders denouncing the “criminal activities” of “organized Jewry” who, he claimed, wanted to commit “genocide” against Ukrainian people.
Igor Kolomoyskyi (various spellings) is a multi-billionaire Israeli-Ukrainian oligarch with mafia ties who uses armed thugs to take over other people’s businesses that he wants to own.
Kolomyski has used Privat's "quasi-military forces" to enforce hostile takeovers of companies, sending a team of "hired rowdies armed with baseball bats, iron bars, gas and rubber bullet pistols and chainsaws" to forcibly take over a Kremenchuk steel plant in 2006,[22] and has used "a mix of phony court orders (often involving corrupt judges and/or registrars) and strong-arm tactics" to replace directors on the boards of companies he purchases stakes in.[23] Kolomyski was criticized by Mr Justice Mann in a court case in London involving an attempted hostile takeover of an oil company, with the judge stating that Kolomyski had "a reputation of having sought to take control of a company at gunpoint in Ukraine" and that there were "strong grounds for doubting the honesty of Mr Kolomoisky".
Amidst the 2014 pro-Russian conflict in Ukraine, acting President Oleksandr Turchynov appointed Kolomoyskyi governor of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast. He has spent several million dollars raising and equipping an anti-Russian battalion (Dnipro Battalion) to attack and kill the Russian-speaking populations in eastern Ukraine.
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Those are the kinds of persons whom you are supporting.
Posted by: Jack Holloway | March 01, 2022 at 11:46 AM