The Ukrainian Fight
To The Editor:
Except for WWII and for what should have been a limited U.S. defensive posture in South Korea against a Red Chinese invasion south of the DMZ, the U.S. has repeatedly involved itself in needless wars egregiously wasting human life and treasure and the U.S. has repeatedly broken promises made to allies and to countries struggling to protect their freedom and democracy including those fighting side by side with our American soldiers like the Filipinos in WWII and the Kurds in Syria. The need for the U.S. to defend Ukraine is even greater because the Ukrainians are fighting for freedom as an established democracy against one of the two greatest enemies of the United States led by an oppressive cold blooded Russian tyrant (like Stalin who caused four million Ukrainians to die from starvation in the 1930s) in Vladimir Putin to whom Donald Trump, Fox Cable News Talking Heads and Republican Members of Congress recently paid homage to further embolden Putin’s aggression that destructively impacts America. Yet the GOP refuses to recognize the vital security provided by NATO conveniently forgetting how, when there was no NATO, Russia’s Stalin strengthened Russia by quickly raising the “Iron Curtain” from 1945 to 1991 to exploit such European countries as the homelands of many of our Fayette County ancestors, like the first modern democracy in Europe, the Czech-Moravian and Slovakian Lands and East Germany.
The U.S. promised to defend the Ukrainian people when the U.S. took away Ukrainian nuclear weapons upon the fall of the Soviet Union. That promise has been severely broken primarily because the U.S. and Western Europe failed to include the Ukraine as part of NATO when Russia was at its weakest and so now we are forced to ask the following questions of Republican and corporate centrist Democratic leaders: Why is the U.S. since 9/11 not by now totally independent of its reliance on foreign oil both in Russia and the Middle East? Why did the U.S. fail to take actions a decade ago now to supply U.S. domestic natural gas for all of Europe to bring Russia to its knees and doom despots like Putin? Why has the Trump dominated Republican Party and its propaganda machine abandoned the Ukrainians and emboldened the invasion of the Ukraine by Putin? Why does the Republican Party still want to pave the way for Putin to invade other non-NATO European countries with impunity and to grow stronger by the GOP refusing to support the expansion and adequate funding of NATO in Europe?
To defend America against both Russian and Chinese domination, Republican leaders should use this opportunity to fight for a good paying job creating a clean energy U.S. economy independent of foreign oil combined with the U.S. obtaining control of all rare earth and other needed elements and making the taxpayer investments needed in domestic industries to avoid suffering lack of essential supplies in times of war for genuine national, economic, environmental and health and planet-saving security! But they will not because Republican lawmakers are dependent on transnational oil companies and coal companies and corporate lobbyists and the wealthy and corporate elite who subscribe to Neo-Liberalism to stay in office. The GOP’s refusal to support the Democratic House of Representatives Build Back Better Plan in any shape or form is Exhibit No. 1.
To protect our freedom and save our democracy from such corporate tyranny and from foreign tyrants like Putin, true American patriots must resist Dark Money fueled Republican and corporate centered Democrat control of our representational democracy. We can start by going to the League of Women Voters website prior to every primary and every general election and learning about each of the candidates at every level from City Hall to the Texas Legislature and the Congress and the White House, while ignoring the brainwashing propaganda of Fox Cable News Talking Heads and their clones on Hate Radio who permeate the airwaves of rural America with their poison. Putting our ideological blinders aside and taking that time to learn about all candidates will enable informed voters to elect the candidates who will most likely serve working families and small business owners as their constituents and who will fight for their needs and the above solutions for genuine national, economic, environmental and health and planet saving security. Then voters will finally realize that only elected Progressive Democrats may be relied on to do just that.
John W. Mikus
Houston