Why So Many Progressives Promoting Endless Ukraine Bloodbath?

 

by Walt Zlotow 

Posted onJune 7, 2023

Too many of my progressive comrades have been on board US/NATO’s $100 billion plus giveaway of weapons to keep the Russo-Ukraine war going in perpetuity.

One reason is political. If Democrats leaders support it, which nearly 100% do, they support it. Chalk that up to political tribalism.

Another is good guys/bad guys mentality. The war is about Russia authoritarianism v. Ukraine democracy, when both are in a race to the authoritarian basement. Putin is the new Hitler bent on gobbling up Western Europe, starting with Ukraine. Zelensky is the new Churchill, even though he betrayed his countrymen in the Donbas by caving to extreme Kyiv nationalists bent on destroying their Russian culture and many of their practitioners as well.

This thinking is at its best, totally misguided. At its worst, it’s delusional and self-destructive. Either way it has promoted 2 catastrophic aspects, one real, one potential.

The real one is the 16 months of unrelenting warfare killing hundreds of thousands and largely destroying Ukraine as a functioning country. The potential one is the threat of war escalating into nuclear confrontation between US and Russia. Armageddon in Ukraine approaches with each passing day.

Both have occurred from the Democratic administration and their progressive base, fully committed to a proxy war against Russia, using only Ukrainians as cannon fodder to keep Russia out of the European political economy.

Progressive folks remain in total denial on the year’s long US provocations that made the Russian invasion, not justified, but inevitable. Those direct provocations began in 2008, at the NATO meeting in Bucharest when NATO floated membership to Ukraine, in spite of Russia’s clear declaration Ukraine membership crossed a Russian existential red line.

Provocations culminated in 2014 when the US assisted regime change in Kyiv which ignited civil war in the Donbas. Eight years of America fueling that civil war ended in Russian invasion last year. Nice going Uncle Sam.

Progressives are also stuck in denial the US, in its lust to defeat Russia, sabotaged negotiations that could have ended the war within its first 2 months. Top US and UK officials traveled to Kyiv and smashed the negotiating table to bits.

Worst denial of all? Many progressives have joined their Democratic leaders in Congress and the White House in allowing ever more offensive weapons, including nuclear capable F-16’s, depleted uranium shells, and longer range missiles capable of striking Russia directly. They utterly dismiss such aggressive weapons threaten nuclear war. Their eye is on the prize of total victory, blinding them on those looming mushroom clouds.

The root word of progressivism is progress. Progressives’ blind support for endless war in Ukraine, destroying it while possibly destroying all of us, is not progress. It is madness.

Walt Zlotow became involved in antiwar activities upon entering University of Chicago in 1963. He is current president of the West Suburban Peace Coalition based in the Chicago western suburbs. He blogs daily on antiwar and other issues at www.heartlandprogressive.blogspot.com.

https://www.antiwar.com/blog/2023/06/07/why-so-many-progressives-promoting-endless-ukraine-bloodbath/