Editorial Note written May 26, 2023: The Ukraine War is what made me stop writing this Substack. I know I have lost a lot of ground, but the invasion just stopped me in my tracks. My thoughts right from the start were totally contrary to the establishment US narrative. And, having served in some of the United State’s horrible wars that have done absolutely nothing to give Americans freedom. Iraq and Afghanistan, to be precise. The Ukraine War triggered my PTSD in a big way. I had to deal with that. I knew my views would be condemned, that made me hesitant, I admit. I will write a new article soon on Ukraine, but I think the uncompleted draft below is useful. It is completely unedited and I just stopped and waited over a year and a half to revisit this. I present it for historical context more than anything else. The below was written in late February, 2022.
For my subscribers, thanks for sticking around. I am ready to crank it up again.
The first casualty in war is always truth.
I tend to think a lot about a topic before writing about it and I have, like most folks, been watching the Russian invasion of Ukraine closely. I should say that I hate war, I have been involved with many US wars, including being boots on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan. The US hasn't been in a justified war since World War II, with the possible exception of the First Gulf War. Afghanistan was justified when we were going after bin Laden and Al-Qaeda but became a total disaster when we switched it into nation building.
What Russia is doing in Ukraine is the same thing that the US has done numerous times over the years, yet we are condemning Russian actions while patting ourselves on the back for being such wonderful world citizens. That little fact needs to be something we think about as we watch this play out. The difference is that we do these things in distant lands and Russia is doing it on their own border. The closest US parallel is the Cuban missile crisis where we went after threats on our border. We have, of course, also used the same excuse to destroy Central America.
I support the Ukrainians who are fighting this invasion. Make no mistake. It is their country. But, rather than espouse the US and NATO view that Putin is a madman engaged in an unjustified invasion, I think we should be looking at the root causes and how it could have been prevented. Because what Russia is doing is a response to US/NATO threatening their borders. I don't know how this is going to play out, but it could have been prevented. That is how I am looking at it while the media and politicians are blowing smoke in order to create another pariah state that we have to be afraid of and hate in order to keep the coffers of the military-industrial complex full.
Not one pundit has suggested talking to Putin about the situation. Diplomacy, how quaint. Diplomacy is actually hard, which is why the American government essentially never engages in it and prefers military action, particularly when a neoliberal president is in office. That would be every president since and including Reagan, with the exception of Trump. War is good for business.
I heard a retired US Army general talking head on Fox News today who actually was right about the root causes of this conflict, as opposed to most of what we are hearing in the media. Then, he and the interviewer went into how Putin is deranged. It reminded me of how we always dehumanize our enemies in this way. We did it with Saddam. We did it with Trump (while ignoring Biden's dementia). Putin may be a dick, but he is anything but crazy or deranged. What he is doing is entirely logical from the perspective of Russian security. We have done this type of thing on far less pretext.
Found your Sub via Taibbi. Several very good points. I will disagree with you on a couple though. You are someone who seems very willing to entertain, in a civil manner, viewpoints or narratives that might conflict with your own, so here I go.
* I completely empathize with your personal view of war. I come from a military family on both parental sides. My dad served and my mom was a schoolteacher at the local district's elementary school literally inside of Fort Bliss. So yes, war is bullshit. Every war is a banker's war (at least every US or western one). The men doing the fighting are not fighting for their own interests, usually, but those of oligarchs and elites. That said, I do not think it's a good comparison for the Russia-Ukraine war, for reasons that you yourself touched on.
* Even WWII is shrouded in lies and the history we have been taught about it is as revisionist as any "revisionist history" you can find on the matter. The US provoked the attack on Pearl Harbor and likely knew about it in advance and did nothing, much like 9/11. There were powerful interests in the US funding both the Nazis and Stalin (after having previously invaded the USSR after the Bolshevik Revolution, BTW), but mostly the Nazis (at the beginning anyway). Lend-Lease was later. Hence, from an American perspective and one informed by my own grandfathers (plural) participation in it, even that was not a "good" or "just" war.
* The US intentionally provoked the Russian invasion of Ukraine in so many ways that it's pointless to enumerate them now. Simply go to Consortiumnews.com and you can find most of it there. It was in the books for a long time. What if Russia or China was arming up Mexico or Canada - or - directly aiding an insurgency in Washington D.C. after which the resulting government went to war on a certain subgroup of American citizens - say, Spanish speakers or "ethnic" Irish. As in tried to completely criminalize their existence and wipe them from the history books.
* The proof is in the pudding. The US and Canada (and UK) directly aided the re-saintification of Stepan Bandera in Ukraine. They have named streets, schools, malls, and government buildings after him since the US-aided putsch of 2014. That is to say, the coup d'etat known colloquially as the Maidan Revolution.
* The Ukrainian governments post-2014 have all openly expressed a desire to get fast-track membership to NATO and numerous US pols from "both sides of the aisle" have gladly said they'd facilitate this. Is it any wonder that Russia worked quickly to re-secure Crimea after the referendum in 2014 and invaded in response to violations of TWO Minsk agreements so that they can prevent NATO (read: US) missiles on their borders? Oh and Ukrainian govt's have also openly stated they'd restart that country's nuclear program. Shades of the Cuban Missile Crisis as far back as 2016.
* Putin may be a "dick" but like you alluded to, he's not a supervillain or evil mastermind, nor is he an imperialist looking to add lucrative colonies to the RF. They resisted for 8 years the desires of the local people on the ground in Donbass to join the RF and be shielded from attacks by the terror regimes in Kiev. The Bandera/Nazi people I mean (cue up the 'but Ukriane has a Jewish president!' yeah one that promised to bring a peaceful mutually agreeable solution in the East but who was hamstrung and threatened by the US-backed/aided/funded Banderite/Nazis in the western part of the country).
It goes on and on. This war in Ukraine is a proxy war waged by the FUKUS/NATO axis. The reason that Russia advanced on Kiev in March of 2022 was that they wanted to use it as a gambit to force negotiations to end the war. And that's what actually happened. Until BoJo was sent into Kiev to either twist their arms or promise untold riches to the Ukrainian oligarchs whose strings the West (including the Biden Crime Syndicate) has been pulling.
That's all for now, good work on your Substack. I'll check out some other articles and maybe gain some fresh perspective from a non-left point of view. We at least both seem to be anti-Empire.