More or less in line with my feelings previously expressed, I just don't see where direct negotiations with Russia right now have any value when they aren't exactly radiating goodwill and honest dealings, and when Ukraine is the party that is currently facing an existential threat. Is it to signify to those on the left that hold the view that peace is always an option (bugger the facts on the ground) that these 30 folks are definitely going to point out that war is bad and talking is better?"A group of 30 House liberals is urging President Biden to dramatically shift his strategy on the Ukraine war and pursue direct negotiations with Russia, the first time prominent members of his own party have pushed him to change his approach to Ukraine."https://t.co/jswa9SZgXf
— Alex Thompson (@AlexThomp) October 24, 2022
“We are under no illusions regarding the difficulties involved in engaging Russia given its outrageous and illegal invasion of Ukraine,” the Democrats’ letter states. “If there is a way to end the war while preserving a free and independent Ukraine, it is America’s responsibility to pursue every diplomatic avenue to support such a solution that is acceptable to the people of Ukraine.”
The letter was signed by some of the best-known and most outspoken liberal Democrats in Congress, including Reps. Jamie Raskin (Md.), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.), Cori Bush (Mo.), Ro Khanna (Calif.) and Ilhan Omar (Minn.).
I'm cringing. What is it for? What does it do? Is it a political statement for anyone at all? Is it a diplomatic statement for anyone at all? Whose bright idea, and what is the wattage on their bulb? Because do not say you are under no illusions and then post a delusionary hope. Do not call out the leadership of your party over some shit that is not happening. America's responsibility is the support of democracy--and not peace. That limpness isn't awake (I won't talk about "wokeness") and aware of the threat of totalitarian power, and if you give that quarter anywhere, you are not looking at the global right-ward trends* that made Brexit, Trump and Meloni happen, and could give us Le Pen in France, etc.
This is not a public comment forum. This is international policy. This is almost as dumb as the 47 jackasses who signed an open letter to Iran over the JCPOA. I cannot believe Democrats are stupid enough to follow that example at this time and I see them trying to cover up their dirt right now.
Good heavens, what were they thinking in the first place? It served no purpose at all but to make us wonder what the fuck they are doing and I am saddened to see people I thought highly of in that number.
UPDATE: I realize this part is ignoring the slaughter of Ukrainians for political reasons elsewhere and is insensitive as fuck. Also--you don't fight authoritarians or fascism everywhere by allowing it anywhere. And you do have to fight it everywhere. And that means you call it what it is whether in local elections (the easy setting) or wherever in the world (war--the harder option), and you don't talk peace before you understand whether peace is even possible.
6 comments:
Even stranger, according to Yasterblansky this letter was actually produced last July. At that time President Biden was actually trying to negotiate an agreement BEFORE the full-tilt Russian invasion. At that time, such a letter was an agreement with and support of the President. The real strangeness is why, and by whom, was it released now???
https://yastreblyansky.blogspot.com/2022/
dumb, dumb move. ignore the agency of ukraine, ignore the (recent) history and expect russia to be honest. very surprised to see raskin on the list. thought he was smarter than this.
The idea that this is the release of a draft from four months ago is going to bug me because of the language that reads:
We are under no illusions regarding the difficulties involved in engaging Russia given its
outrageous and illegal invasion of Ukraine and its decision to make additional illegal annexations of Ukrainian territory.
The illegal annexations basically just happened, unless I missed Putin hinting at the future annexation of territory that far ahead. So, was something signed months ago then altered before being leaked? That type of treachery goes a bit beyond what can be easily foisted off on a mistaken release by an aide or whatever. The cover for the release, that it was published by someone, unvetted, sounds idiotic to me because why did they sign such a self-defeating thing in the first place--unvetted (assuming the original was still pretty much the same?)
I concur with Yastreblansky that this looks like sabotage, but am hard-hearted, after everything any political person should have come to know in the past six years or so about Russian influence ops, that any person fucked up to the extent of being so socially engineered to sign this sort of thing--it's the useful idiot equivalent of getting an email from "Amazon" saying sign in at this link and provide us with your payment credentials. It's political phishing for max political credit hacking.
You know that phrase "more in disappointment than in anger"? Me, I'm the other thing, right now.
vix i think that can be viewed charitably as to referring to the initial invasion in 2014 and the subsequent seizure of territory in the last 244 days.
I found Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov announced the annexation plan formally on May 26. On the other hand, Huffpost has an elaborate and completely different scenario in which Pramila Jayapal was seeking more signatures up into late September and the line about annexations was added at that time https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ukraine-progressives-letter-jayapal_n_63581668e4b03e8038e3db40?m2. So they have actual sources and I"m just sitting here pretending to be I.F. Stone, with an accent on the "pretending", and they're probably right. But it just gets weirder and weirder.
Glenn Grindelwald is out of his mind on Twitter with delight at the opportunities he's been given to denounce the "cowardice" of the Progressive Caucus and the dictatorship in the party that denies freedom of speech to all the House members, and Michael Tracey and I believe Tulsi Gabbard are in the mix too. Together with Putin's escalations of the nuclear threat and Saudi Arabian decision to force OPEC members to cut oil production, I'm falling into full 2016-style paranoia.
Leave it to Greenwald and 'em (politically homeless arch contrarians of maximum useful idiocy) to capitalize on what feels like a sop to the anti-war left by calling the walk-back the real problem. It isn't groupthink for a bunch of people to recognize the same set of facts, although it is a political fault to be willing to set them aside to make a wholly unnecessary statement that muddies the waters. What irks me is that if Jayapal was holding the letter open in the hopes of getting more signatures, she was not appreciating why more left members of Congress weren't willing to sign--an important flag, you would think?
I don't care for discourse for discourse's sake, so my take on giggle-asses like Greenwald and Tracey and Gabbard (Taibbi, Max Blumenthal, a whole shitload of them) is--it's not that these darlings are politically incorrect, it's just they've no fucking idea what they're talking about. It's not special to wrap one's identity around being wrong. Just not saying what everyone else does isn't a virtue and sticking with it after fact-checking isn't a virtue, it's just persistence. Herpes manages persistence. Humans should do better. Right-fighting a "Blame America first" narrative is so opportunistically wrong I can't fathom the mindset that does so for no other than reason than attention.
And in the back of my mind--I don't.
Post a Comment