Hawks and doves

My friend Paul was funny at coffee the other day. He calls himself a recovering democrat, missed Vietnam on a medical deferment. Paul says, "Hey, I remember when you dems were the peace and love party, now you are just a bunch of warmongers."

It is funny how the labels have changed. And how so many of the GOP are content to let Russia swallow up their neighbor. What was it that Trump said a while back, something on the order of, "Putin loves his country and he just wants to make it bigger."

DeSantis had said that "becoming further entangled in a territorial dispute between Ukraine and Russia" was not "vital" to U.S. interests. Of course, seven years ago, he was singing a different tune:

"We in the Congress have been urging the president, I've been, to provide arms to Ukraine. They want to fight their good fight. They're not asking us to fight it for them. And the president has steadfastly refused. And I think that that's a mistake," DeSantis said in a 2015 radio interview with conservative talk radio host Bill Bennett.

In any case, I spend too much time writing about GOP stupidity and ignorance. How about liberal stupidity and ignorance for a change?

© Robert Sommers 2023

Ben Cohen, of Ben and Jerry's fame, is the top contributor to a group dedicated to stopping U.S. aid to Ukraine. 

Cohen has contributed more than $1 million to a group campaigning to turn the U.S. public against President Biden’s military support for Ukraine.

Approached about his role in backing the group, Cohen told The Daily Beast: “I think the U.S. should use its power to negotiate an end to the war, not prolong the death and destruction by supplying more weapons.”

Step away from the bong, Ben. Whether coming from a liberal or a conservative, this sounds like absolute bullshit to me. 

Like, who doesn't want peace? But peace is one thing and getting played in a sinister endgame is something entirely different.

This quaker like passivity plays right into the hands of people like Vladimir Putin.

Putin wants to completely subjugate his neighbor and turn it into a Russian thrall. He has already captured Crimea.

Moldova, Belarus, the sky is the limit in his dreams of resurrecting a greater Kievan Rus, a Russian ancestral empire that has been gone since vanquished by the Mongols way back in 1240 a.d..

The Russians would love to negotiate at this point, because they are not doing very well on the battlefield and want to solidify their holdings. But don't think that they are suddenly feeling shame at their craven attacks on their innocent neighbor, on the kidnapping of Ukrainian children and rape and slaughter of their civilians. 

Negotiation is merely a temporary cessation on their predatory territorial goals and plays into their hands and lies. Bullies don't negotiate from altruism, they negotiate when faced with a bigger stick. It is sad but true. The only thing that will stop Putin at this point is a big fat bloody nose.

The western world can either help Ukraine in this moment of existential terror or we can watch them crumble with blood on our hands, like we allowed the germans to march my family into the ovens and pretend to look the other way for three or four years and until it is too late.

That makes me a hawk, so be it. Fuck Putin, Tucker Carlson, De Santis, Rand Paul, Thomas Massie, Donald Trump and all the rest of the Putin loyalists. We need to stand by our friends and our principals, not parochial sellout deals like many are advocating. I would love to beat swords into plowshares but we're just not there yet.

Because someday it might be we who need help. And if you want to call me a warmonger, have at it. I've been called worse.