To the editor:
Three years ago I was riding in a car on the Bonneville salt flats with my friend, who was about to marry a Ukrainian girl, and her friend, who was also from Ukraine, and we were exploring the area.
I was surprised to hear the girls go back and forth, speaking Ukrainian, Russian and English. One of the girls works for the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland, and the other works for Global International. This was two weeks before the war broke out, and the discussion in the car was “Will Russia really invade?“
Then Russia invaded Ukraine. Putin thought it would be a short war. The intrepid Ukrainians and volunteers from the U.S. and other parts of the world stood their ground.
In 1994 the U.S. made a deal with Ukraine, Brazil and South Africa to give up their nuclear weapons with assurances of defense by the U.S. This treaty was made with Boris Yeltsin, who also who agreed to it. Yeltsin would later blame the Duma for not passing it, which is B.S.
In 2008 Russia invaded Georgia and to this day still occupies two states in Georgia.
In 2015 Russia invaded Crimea and still holds it.
Russia’s global strategy is to restore the Russian empire (not the USSR). Putin has made his ambitions clear. He wants a strong Russia again. The only way he can do it is to invade and conquer neighboring counties. No one stopped him in Georgia or Crimea. The world appeased him by letting him take territory without consequences, only asking him not to do that again.
This pattern is a repeat of the old Hitler days, when Hitler invaded Austria, then Czechoslovakia and finally Poland, and the rest of the world appeased him. Hitler wanted to expand his fascist ideology to the entire world. What’s happening now is a historical repetition of what led to World War II. Russia will be rewarded if Ukraine loses this war. China will be emboldened.
U.S. foreign policy has been the same since World War II. We support countries that have democratic self-determination. U.S. Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and then Harry Truman made it clear that countries should be free to govern themselves.
How deeply this ideology is ingrained is seen in the way FDR said “No” to our allies who wanted their old colonies back after the war. U.S. foreign policy is what the entire world looks to when countries vote a democratic model in their own nation. The U.S. acts like the old King Arthur belief, not “Might for Right“ but “Right for Might.“ We are always on the morally correct position.
When Russia invaded Ukraine three years ago, Americans volunteered to go fight. So far, seven have been killed in action. They believed in the cause so deeply they gave up their lives.
We Americans saw who invaded Ukraine and wanted to help. Many U.S. citizens volunteered to feed and help the wounded people and soldiers. Those folks are still putting their lives on the line because this invasion by Russia must be stopped, and the civilian folks from the U.S. believe that they are in the right by helping there.
European countries as a group have given more money to support Ukraine than the U.S. has (contrary to what you might hear on social media). This also reminds me of another historical event when Americans joined the elected government: the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s. The Lincoln Brigade was composed of Americans who fought for the newly elected democratic government of Spain.
I have a personal interest in this war. I have Ukrainian friends. I was supposed to go to Ukraine from Poland to help a friend move her parents closer to the Polish border with Ukraine. We were preparing to do this when it was called off. I was able to send money in Kiev to a friend there. That wasn’t easy, but the war stopped payments to folks, and he was in need.
There was a protest march in Seattle that I participated in at the beginning of this war. Hundreds of folks marched. Clergymen, Polish folks, parents and their kids marched in protest. If you saw the pictures that I put on my Facebook page, they were from that march. Ukraine was attacked by Russia. That’s a fact. Only Putin spreads the lies otherwise.
Freedom is what the U.S. is about. Anyone who wants money from this war can get it from Putin, and that should be part of the treaty. The dictator of Russia should not be rewarded. Ukraine should get some of their land back and be admitted into NATO (ask Finland and Sweden about that).
How can a nation be rewarded for giving America’s enemies bullets, weapons and training, from Cuba, Viet Nam and Kuwait to Iraq, Afghanistan and other places that killed our soldiers and civilians. The American soldier has my respect, and I will never understand how, after a friend of mine was killed in action in any of those places by Russian money and proxy armies of Russia, that the U.S. is rewarding Russia now.
My belief doesn’t have to be yours. If you want to write an opinion, feel free to do so.
Jim Scanlan
Colorado Springs, Colorado
Why? The only reason that drives everything else today.
It’s all for the benefit of a rich guy.