A Plea For Sanity In Ukraine

We have the experience necessary to know what not to do. We appear determined *not* to learn from it.

They say that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Based on that definition, the United States is well on the way to pursuing an insane path when it comes to the Russia-Ukraine War.

As recently as two or three weeks ago, polling showed no more than a quarter of the American public favored getting involved, in the event Vladimir Putin moved on Ukraine. According to a poll from Rasmussen Reports that came out yesterday, that number has now doubled. Interesting, the poll also showed that the more money a person makes, the more likely they are to support military intervention. It’s almost as though the working classes know who the burden of this war is actually going to fall on.

And make no mistake—we are already at war. The moment the United States decided it was a good idea to destabilize the Russian ruble and make the lives of ordinary people inside Russia a lot more miserable (while curiously continuing to buy oil from Putin and the Russian oligarchs), we effectively entered a currency war.

Thankfully, NATO said no to the idea of “no fly zone”, an idea that would virtually guarantee conflict in the skies between U.S. planes and Russian aircraft. NATO has also said that Ukraine will not be joining the organization any time in the near future. All of that is good and a path to peace.

But within the United States, in both political parties and across the philosophical spectrum, there are strong voices demanding action. A full-scale propaganda push is underway to soften the opposition of the American voter to another foreign war. And judging from the Rasmussen poll (a poll that tends to be reasonably accurate on Election Days), the propaganda is working.

Before we go down the primrose path, perhaps it's worth looking back at two other historical examples. As a nation, we have been here before…

The Run-up To World War I

The American public rightly wanted no part of getting involved in the bloody European war. President Woodrow Wilson thought otherwise. Wilson had grand dreams of the U.S. transforming the world into a better place with its military might.

Propaganda against the German government of Kaiser Wilhelm kicked in. When the German navy sunk the Lusitania, a passenger ship in the Atlantic, the public was primed to respond as Wilson wanted.

That response was a fervor for war. Suddenly, there were 18 and 19-year-old boys being sent to fight for the interests of European empires, under the auspices of making the world safe for democracy. The very idea of eating German dishes like sauerkraut were mocked in the United States, as these early 20th-century virtue-signalers threw out their kraut and turned on German-American citizens.

Today, we see Russian athletes ostracized, vodka being poured out and Russian businessmen stripped of ownership of professional soccer teams in Europe. Nothing like doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

The public is being primed today just as they were in the early 20th century. Our current political leadership is just waiting for their Lusitania moment to pull the trigger and summon everyone to war. It might well be a currency war. But don’t underestimate how much of a toll that can take on a society, if the value of everyone’s money gets cut by a third.

Former president Barack Obama has told us that we all need to be ready to sacrifice in this current moment. I’m not sure which of his mansions Obama was speaking from when he said that. But he reminds me of the king in the first Shrek movie who told his subjects going out to hunt a dragon that “some of you may die. But that is a sacrifice I am willing to make.”

The Road to Baghdad

Even more maddening than repeating the mistakes of a century ago, is repeating the same mistakes of two decades ago. A mistake that just came to an end in August. And we are getting advice from the same people who led us down another primrose path in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Republican senator Lindsey Graham has called for the assassination of Putin. Former Vice-President Mike Pence took the podium last night to tell GOP donors (people I’m guessing are in that $200K-plus group from the poll above) that “there is no room in our party for Putin apologists.” 

Sounds fine on the surface…until you realize that Pence represents a Republican view that defines “Putin apologist” as anyone who doesn’t feel like the border of Ukraine is worth a war against a nuclear-armed power that could blow the world to smithereens.

When you hear people like Pence, Graham, Liz Cheney and other GOP war hawks talking tough, try this little test—substitute the name Saddam Hussein for Vladimir Putin. Take all the news stories you’re hearing—whether they’re true or not—and remember all the stories you heard about weapons of mass destruction. Ask yourself if it sounds like a familiar refrain.

Then ask yourself this–does anybody who took this country into Iraq deserve to be taken seriously now in the current moment? The Iraq and Afghanistan wars were not just an idea that didn’t work out. They were a debacle of the highest order for national security, fiscal policy and simple humanitarianism. 

Is that too harsh? How about the trillions of dollars spent going down this rabbit hole? George W. Bush inherited a budget situation that was reasonably healthy. Today our balance sheet is effectively blown sky high and there is no visible way out. How about the fact that taking out Saddam did not lead to a flowering of democracy in the Middle East, but the flourishing of ISIS? And above all, how about all the soldiers who–if they came back alive at all–that have been left with physical disabilities or serious PTSD, which has served to wreck military families across the nation. 

. Who listens to the same people over and over again and expects a different result? If the Rasmussen poll is right, the answer would be about half of the population and strong majorities of the upper-income brackets. 

I never supported the Iraq War, but I used to defend the motivations of George W. Bush for going in there. I thought he acted on the best information he had and was simply misled by bad intelligence that everyone in the world believed. 

That might be true. But I cannot defend that Bush–or those in his administration—that have shown no interest in getting to the bottom of why their information was so bad. If your name was attached to a humanitarian, national security and fiscal debacle of epic proportions, wouldn’t you want to know who in the heck gave you such bad information? I would. But the Bushies do not. They do, however, have plenty of energy for pearl-clutching over Donald Trump’s failings, both real and imagined. 

Et Tu, Donald?

Now let’s come to President Trump. For four years he was the peace president. The first president of the postwar era to not get the United States into hostilities abroad. The man who negotiated the end of the Afghanistan occupation (and then had to watch his illegitimate successor bungle it to massive proportions). The man whose Administration negotiated not one, not two, not three, but FOUR peace agreements in the Middle East. 

I was all very impressive. Now there’s word circulating that one reason Putin didn’t try this when Trump was president is that Trump informed the Russian President that any such move would be responded to with the bombing of Moscow. 

Are you kidding me!? Now, let’s acknowledge two possibilities. The first is that maybe this report isn’t true. The second is that, even if it is true, Trump might have been simply keeping Putin off-guard. Indeed, Trump’s unpredictability was something that kept both China and Russia on their heels. 

That’s all possible. But as an actual policy measure, it’s simply terrible. I’m going to cautiously guess that Russia would take the bombing of their capital as an act of war. And once again, if I’m going to support a move that risks blowing the world up in nuclear conflict, I’d like it to be over something more than which corrupt government happens to collect taxes from the Ukrainian people. 

This all ties into something I consider highly alarming in watching the response of U.S. political leaders. A lot of Republicans are jumping on the bandwagon to proclaim that Biden’s weakness enabled Putin to invade. This rhetoric comes not simply from people like the Cheneys, who probably watch live war footage for entertainment on a Saturday night, but from GOP pols who have otherwise supported a more reasoned approach to foreign policy. 

I follow the Facebook page of Elise Stefanik, the #3 Republican in the House and someone who will probably be Speaker one day. I generally support her. But I don’t support the repeated Facebook posts slamming Biden’s weaknesses. 

Is Joe Biden weak? Of course he is. Even when he had his mental faculties he was a corrupt buffoon. That’s not the point. The point is that if you are going to slam someone for weakness, what is your definition of strength? Is it military troops? A currency war? If that’s the case, I’m out. 

A responsible approach–which Stefanik, to her credit, has advocated, is the demand that the U.S. stop buying oil from Russia. The oil money is what finances the war machine and the benefits from those purchases really don’t trickle down to their Russian people. Hence, stopping their purchase won’t hurt the ordinary people in Russia and it will bite Putin and the oligarchs. It’s a reasonable middle ground as a national security gambit. And it’s an obvious strategy simply for getting energy independence here in the U.S. 

So please, President Trump, Congresswoman Stefanik, and everyone else touting these points–stop. Instead, call for a focused, disciplined approach of energy independence, which can have a positive ripple effect in Russia. But enough of the grandiose promises of “strength” and the assurances that nothing bad will happen abroad when Trump comes back in 2025. Those are promises that can’t be kept. 

As a nation, we have plenty of experience dealing with the propaganda that primes us for war. As a nation we have plenty of experience with how hard it is to get out of these wars once we’re sucked in. It’s happened in our generation, so we have no reason not to learn from past mistakes. This time, let’s try sanity. 

A Hopeful Story

So, are we just supposed to sit back and do nothing? No. We can pray. I know that can seem empty, like just a pious exercise, but lacking in real-world value. But in the aftermath of every war, you hear miraculous stories of people surviving. 

One such story came during the German invasion of Poland that started World War II. A young man was hiding in the lower level of his apartment. The Nazi soldiers came in, had plenty of time and searched for people to capture. Amazingly, they never searched the lower level. That young man, Karol Wotiyla, eventually became a priest, a cardinal and then Pope John Paul II. He became the most consequential figure of the 20th century. And it was a miracle that he wasn’t captured by the Nazis. 

Our Catholic tradition–as testified to by saints and mystics down through the ages–informs us that our prayers move the heart of God to release the angels, who then bring these miracles about on our side of eternity. 

So ,to do something that will really make a difference, try the prayer below. And tune out the war news, all of which is selected and filtered to get us to respond in a very specific way. Instead, let’s turn to Our Lady, Queen of Peace.