Make no doubt about it, you and I are funding the war in Ukraine.
We are paying for the killing with billions of our taxpayer dollars for military aid to Ukraine.
When in fact we should be pushing for a negotiated end to this war.
There are only two choices now for Ukraine — negotiated peace.
Or war.
And God forbid, nuclear war.
There is growing consensus across the left/right political divide for peace – voices from Rand Paul, Tucker Carlson, Henry Kissinger and Candace Owens on the right to Noam Chomsky, Chris Hedges and Roger Waters on the left.
Yes, Henry Kissinger, who in a May speech said the failure to restart negotiations with Russia and the further alienation of the Kremlin would have dire long-term consequences for stability in Europe.
“Negotiations need to begin in the next two months before it creates upheavals and tensions that will not be easily overcome,” he said. “Ideally, the dividing line should be a return to the status quo ante. Pursuing the war beyond that point would not be about the freedom of Ukraine, but a new war against Russia itself.”
Why then is there no anti-war movement in Berkeley Springs, in Morgan County, in West Virginia or the United States for that matter?
Because liberals were always at the center of anti-war movements. And liberals are now part of the war party in control of Congress and the White House.
President Biden is taking the lead in funneling through Congress billions in military aid to Ukraine. And not one Democrat in Congress voted against the war funding package. Not Bernie Sanders. Not AOC. Not one.
“It was quite surprising to read that every single Democrat voted to send $40 billion worth of aid, much of it military, to Ukraine while Ukraine is at war,” Brown University’s Stephen Kinzer told the Capitol Hill Citizen earlier this year. “There were no Democratic voices for peace. There were no Democratic voices for negotiations. No Democrat stood up and asked: ‘would we like to have an enemy based on our border?’ No Democrat stood up to ask: ‘What is so awful about a neutral Ukraine?’”
Instead of negotiations, the Democrats are now into escalation.
Earlier this week, the two major gas pipelines — Nord Stream 1 and 2 — that would funnel natural gas from Russia to Europe started leaking natural gas.
European officials from the EU, Norway and Denmark all said that the damage was likely caused by a deliberate attack.
In February of this year, at a meeting with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz at the White House, President Biden warned that if Russia invaded Ukraine, the Nord Stream 2 pipeline was in trouble.
“If Russia invades . . .there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2,” Biden said. “We will bring an end to it.”
A reporter then asked Biden:
“But how will you do that, exactly, since the project is within Germany’s control?”
“I promise you, we will be able to do it.”
Radek Sikorski, a former Polish foreign minister, current Member of European Parliament and husband of neocon Atlantic magazine reporter Anne Applebaum, suggested on Twitter this week that Washington was behind the attack.
He posted a picture on Twitter of the underwater leak and then wrote —
“Thank you, USA.”
A couple of days later, he deleted the tweet.
In an article last week in the San Jose Mercury News titled Stop Fanning the Flames of War. Seek a Ceasefire in Ukraine, Marcy Winograd and Medea Benjamin wrote that “a constant flow of U.S. weapons serves as a disincentive to peace negotiations.”
Back in March, just one month after the invasion, Ukraine and Russia had tentatively agreed to a 15-point peace plan, “only to have it undermined by Britain’s then Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who reportedly told Zelensky not to sign the deal because the United Kingdom would not be party to any agreement with Russia, and the West would supply Ukraine with all the weapons needed to defeat Russia,” Winograd and Benjamin wrote.
In a national broadcast, Putin recently warned – “In the face of a threat to the territorial integrity of our country, to protect Russia and our people, we will certainly use all the means at our disposal.”
Days later, White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told the media – “We have communicated directly, privately, at very high levels, to the Kremlin that any use of nuclear weapons will be met with catastrophic consequences for Russia.”
“If the U.S. State Department is communicating with the Kremlin on the consequences of a nuclear first strike, surely the Biden administration can sit down with the leaders of Russia to support a ceasefire and peaceful settlement,” Winograd and Benjamin wrote.
The military industrial complex is in control of both parties. Virtually everyone with power in Washington – from both parties – is in favor of confrontation with Russia.
This means a shooting war with Russia.
What to do?
Time to put aside our differences and come together in Berkeley Springs, in Morgan County and in West Virginia and say to those fueling the fire – time to negotiate, no war with Russia.