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Posted by Op Ed | Oct 15, 2022
Disgraced ex-president Donald Trump floated his offer to broker peace for Russia’s unprovoked full-scale invasion on September 28, and the insincere prank against Ukraine’s sovereignty was met with glee from his former benefactor, the Russia’s Dictator and accused war criminal Vladimir Putin.
“Mr. Putin started this war and Mr. Putin could end it today – simply by moving his troops out of the country,” said John Kirby, NSC Coordinator for Strategic Communications, in an interview with ABC News. “Mr. Putin has shown no indications, zero, none, that he’s willing to do that. In fact, quite the contrary, by calling up hundreds of thousands of reservists, by politically annexing or at least trying to annex four areas of Ukraine, he’s showing every indication that he’s doubling down, that he wants to continue to prosecute this war.”
With his ban for instigating the January 6 insurrection, Trump remains banned from Twitter and other top social media platforms. So he took to his White Supremacy mouthpiece and failing rightwing platform, to make posts that discredited U.S. leaders, and polished more of his lies and laziness into the appearance of leadership.
“Be strategic, be smart (brilliant!), get a negotiated deal done NOW. Both sides need and want it. The entire World is at stake. I will head up group???”
“We must demand the immediate negotiation of a peaceful end to the war in Ukraine or we will end up in World War Three. And there will be nothing left of our planet — all because stupid people didn’t have a clue… They don’t understand the power of nuclear.”
The entire world is at stake and only Trump can offer peace? That follows the same logic as a gangster who attacks a business, then returns later to offer protection from being attacked – at a price.
Had Trump been re-elected to a second term, Putin would be occupying most if not all of Ukraine by now. Under Trump, the United States would not have offered any of the vital assistance Volodymyr Zelenskyy needed to save his people and push back the invaders.
The same man who “negotiated” the utterly humiliating military withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan, who was impeached twice for betraying America – one involving threats against Ukraine that would abandon it to Russia’s mercy if President Zelenskyy did not lie in order to help Trump’s re-election bid.
“Ever since the early days of Vladimir Putin’s invasion, advocates of appeasement have pushed the idea that Ukrainian political and territorial concessions are the only way to end Russian aggression. These arguments ignore the genocidal reality of the war while denying agency to Ukrainians and relying on flawed assumptions of Russia’s behavior and capabilities. Russia has not put forward a single sensible peace plan since the invasion began on February 24. Moreover, Moscow has rejected Ukraine’s proposals. During the initial stage of the war, Ukraine offered to abandon NATO membership and make further concessions to the Kremlin, but Putin preferred to proceed with his bid to seize Kyiv. Despite multiple military setbacks, Moscow’s position has hardened over the intervening months, with Putin essentially demanding Ukraine’s capitulation and insisting that any settlement must include the surrender of entire Ukrainian regions to Russia. Such imperial posturing cannot serve as the basis for serious negotiations.” – Doug Klain
Trump celebrated Putin as “savvy” and a “genius,” and supported his justification for invading Ukraine in February, while berating President Joe Biden for good measure. Republicans have made “tough on crime” a perennial political issue, but then support the appeasement of a dictator under the leadership of an as yet unconvicted treasonist.
This is the honest broker that disingenuous Republicans, who under Ronald Reagan condemned Russia as an Evil Empire, chose to support. It also reflects their viewpoint that both Russia and Ukraine are equal parties in responsibility for the war – much in the same way a rape victim is responsible for her abuse, and can broker a deal with her kidnapper to be released.
“When the Russian army retreated from northern Ukraine in the second month of the war, advancing Ukrainian troops encountered widespread evidence of war crimes in the formerly occupied suburbs of Kyiv including mass executions and large-scale sexual violence against women, men, and children. Similar revelations in other liberated regions and testimonies of people who have fled occupied Ukraine indicate that these crimes are a deliberate feature of Russia’s so-called Special Military Operation. In areas of Ukraine currently under their control, Russian forces are terrorizing the civilian population. Millions of Ukrainians have been subjected to forced deportation to the Russian Federation, with special laws adopted in Moscow to allow for the Russification of Ukrainian orphans. Children who remain in regions of Ukraine under Russian control are forced to undergo indoctrination in schools, with teachers imported from Russia to impart distorted histories. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian language is being eradicated from public life along with all symbols of Ukrainian statehood. Ukrainian media outlets are blocked and residents are pressurized to accept Russian citizenship.“ – Doug Klain
Rational people do not want war, and do not support the expansion of America’s military spending. But Ukraine is fighting America’s enemy, and all they have ever asked for was the weapons to defend themselves. It is not Vietnam, it is not Afghanistan. America is not sending its military men and women to another country’s civil war. Ukraine is fighting for its freedom, in the tradition of America’s example against the British in 1776.
“Is there an alternative to further escalation? Russia would like to freeze this conflict. The Kremlin suggests that it is open to peace talks with Ukraine through mediators. But Ukrainians and other observers conclude that any ceasefire would be used by Moscow as an opportunity to regroup and rearm, strengthening its forces for the next phase of the war.”
The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) voted on October 13 to adopt a resolution to recognize Putin’s regime as a terrorist one. Oleksiy Honcharenko, a Ukrainian lawmaker and member of the Ukrainian delegation to PACE, wrote on this wrote in his Telegram that, “PACE has just adopted a powerful resolution on Ukraine! For – 99 delegates, 1 abstained. This is a historical result! Full support of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.”
The development followed a vote only one day earlier on October 12 by the United Nation’s General Assembly. The international body voted overwhelmingly to condemn Russia’s attempts to annex four regions of Ukraine. The resolution was supported by 143 countries while 35 states abstained – including China and India.
No one other than Putin, it seems, wants a nuclear war. But to capitulate now means that Putin will forever hold the world hostage. As proof, the overused example of Hitler shows what brokering peace with a monster brings. Every effort made to bring peace to Europe, by throwing some nation or marginalized people under a bus, only emboldened more brutality until the entire world was drawn into a war for humanity’s survival.
Anyone who insists that Ukrainians and their independent nation must be sacrificed in order to bring peace betrays our basic humanity. They will also be the first to cry when the jackboots step on their neck, and then ask how such a thing could happen to them.
Cоry Sеаmеr
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