In
the U.S. Russia-hating liberals are joining the neocons in seeking
more war in Ukraine, as the prospects for a rational and peaceful
resolution to the crisis continue to fade.
by
James W. Carden
Part
1
Last January, Sen. John McCain led
a delegation along with his longtime sidekick, Sen. Lindsey Graham,
to a contingent of Ukrainian troops not far from the front line in
eastern Ukraine. In the presence of Ukrainian President Petro
Poroshenko, Graham told the soldiers: “Your fight is our fight …
2017 will be the year of offense. All of us will go back to
Washington and we will push the case against Russia.”
McCain promised the assembled
troops, “we will do everything we can to provide you with what
you need to win.”
When contemplating the long
careers of the two Republican senators, it is hard to escape the
conclusion that McGeorge Bundy’s quip about the famed Cold War
columnist Joe Alsop – that he had “never known him to go to
any area where blood could be spilled that he didn’t come back and
say more blood” – applies equally to McCain and Graham.
Indeed, last month’s National
Defense Authorization Act shows that – if nothing else – McCain
and Graham are as good as their word: the recently passed defense
appropriations bill provides for $500 million, including “defensive
lethal assistance” to Kiev, as part of a $640 billion overall
spending package.
The aid comes at a good time for
the embattled Ukrainian President Poroshenko, whose approval rating
hovers around 16 percent. In a bid to stave off the possibility of a
far-right coup d’etat, Poroshenko is back to banging the war drums,
promising, well, more blood.
In a little-covered speech at the
U.S. Military Academy at West Point on Sept. 19, Poroshenko promised
that “American weapons will help us liberate the Donbas and
return Ukrainian territories.” He also noted that Ukraine
spends roughly 6 percent of its GDP on defense, “a figure,”
he observed, “much bigger than the obligation for the NATO
members.”
Clearly Washington’s
condemnation of governments that wage war “against their own
people” remains selective, contingent upon who is doing the killing
and who is doing the dying. In this case, it would seem that
Russian-speaking Ukrainians simply don’t rate.
In addition to promising a wider
war in the Donbas, Poroshenko has repeatedly promised that he will
seek NATO membership. In August, during a visit by U.S. Defense
Secretary James Mattis, Poroshenko declared: “Our Ukrainian
caravan is on a roll and we have one road to travel upon — a wide
Euro-Atlantic highway, leading to membership in the European Union
and NATO.”
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