Dennis Kucinich: Mistaking Militarism for Statecraft,
Empire for Democracy and Debt for Prosperity
September 28, 2024 dennis kucinich, ukraine
Turning and turning in the widening gyre, the falcon
cannot hear the falconer. All things fall apart. The
center cannot hold.” — W.B. Yeats, The Second Coming
As of May 2024, the United States has committed over
$175 (borrowed) billion to escalating the proxy war
against Russia, and, as in the case of the Iraq and
Afghan wars, with little regard for accountability
pertaining to tracking military hardware, equipment,
funding, or fraud prevention.
One of the most grotesque moments in this bloody global
Punch and Judy show preliminary to nuclear war, was the
recent arrival of Vladimir Zelenskyy, former president
of Ukraine, making a campaign stop at an ammunition
factory in Scranton, Pennsylvania, where some of the
three million 155mm artillery shells the US has given
Ukraine are produced.
Alongside Zelenskyy, in an incitement-op photo promising
further escalation of war, the Democratic Governor of
Pennsylvania autographed one of the high-velocity
artillery shells which will be aimed at Russia.
Pennsylvania, which is home to the City of Brotherly
Love, was unwitting re-Christened by its top official,
with a cursive flair, as the state of brotherly hate.
The fervor of warmongering, fueled by machismo and high
bravado illustrates the failure of leadership and a
fatal ignorance of the diplomatic process. We should be
exercising the science of human relations, not
propelling a hubristic and ego-driven brinkmanship
which accelerates the dialectic of war.
For decades I have led opposition to war and advocated
for the transformation of America’s prevailing policy of
“Peace through Strength” to a forward-looking policy of
“Strength through Peace.”
I challenged the Bush II Administration’s foreign
policies, and introduced Articles of Impeachment against
President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney
over Iraq and the lies which led us into war. Illegal
and unnecessary, the Iraq war (debt-funded and
authorized by both Democrats and Republicans) has cost
our nation over $3 trillion, and the loss of 5,000 of
our brave men and women who serve and injuries to
countless more troops.
The war caused the deaths of over one million Iraqis.
Let that sink in. One million Iraqis perished in a war
based on lies. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. The war
further damaged America’s global reputation and set us
upon a path where, since 9/11, America has borrowed $8
trillion to keep the war machine in tune as our own
nation’s pressing domestic needs for housing, health
care, education, child care, and retirement security
have been set aside.
When I heard Vice President Harris brag about former
Vice President Dick Cheney endorsing her candidacy, that
put the exclamation point on the fact that the leaders
of the Democratic party are for war. I am not.
Why else would Vice President Harris become the front
person for such virulent bravado, invoking lethality
abroad?
A paradox of this campaign is that the much-villainized
former President Trump, (representing a party that has
also taken us into unnecessary wars) is the one who
speaks to the need to negotiate and to talk directly
with potential foes in order to avoid war, or to end it.
I ran for President twice, in 2004 and 2008, to bring a
halt to endless wars, to stop the hemorrhaging of our
nation’s wealth and to redirect our attention to our
needs at home. During the Obama Administration, I fought
against his expansion of war, against attacks on Libya,
and Syria. That Administration’s surveillance and state-
sponsored black-ops reached new heights, drawing America
further into the depths of a murky military abyss.
All believers in the Judeo-Christian ethic are taught
the equivalency of thought, word and deed. . A sin is a
sin is a sin. Words create worlds and actions, and,
well, they also create reactions.
Whether a missile arrives in Russia is separate from the
fact that the news of the Pennsylvania governor signing
a warhead reached the Kremlin instantaneously.
Congratulations Governor, you just made your state a
target.
It is a faulty military strategy which is based upon
baiting one’s targets to have an excuse to attack
preemptively. This type of thinking isn’t about taking
care of and protecting our allies. I would call it
lunacy but it happens far more frequently than once
every full moon! We need level-headed leadership, not
political actors mindlessly playing in the flash of
WWIII, pandering for votes or for cash from the military
industrial complex.
The U.S. government’s endless quest to instigate,
fulminate or otherwise set our nation on a path of
either participating in or of funding endless war has
become an inconscient force which is now sweeping up
nations in its maw and, if left unchecked, with soon
draw in American troops and inevitably a world war will
come home in ways that no one in the continental United
States has ever experienced, far exceeding the horrors
of 9/11.
W.B. Yeats’ poem, written over one hundred years ago,
also pertains to the present moment, the breakdown of
international law, the slaughter of innocents, open
genocide, mocking humanity for its primal human
instincts and instead preferring a descent into the
maelstrom of kill or be killed, of “do unto others
before they do unto you.” Our nation’s leaders have
lost their capacity for diplomacy. And we have lost
many chances for peace.
Ronan Farrow, in his brilliant book “War on Peace, the
End of Diplomacy and the Decline of American Influence,”
traced the catastrophe of substituting militarism for
statecraft.
So we arrive at a point where we fully fund war in the
Middle East, and, astonishingly stand helpless, vainly
begging the recipients of our billions of dollars, our
weapons, “intelligence,” and of our strategic advice –
not to expand the war we are paying for, not to visit
death upon innocents.
We call for cease fire, to come to terms, to end the
conflict, while the bodies pile up, and tensions
escalate with all nations. Our collective voice is
muted. We confess futility to effect events which we
have set in motion, as a Sorcerer’s Apprentice, and when
tidal forces break loose, no thought is given to an end
game which could lead not only to the destruction of our
closest allies but to the undoing of our own nation.
Like pre-programmed robots from a 1950s B-movie, blind
to our own extinction drive, immune to the signs of
failing empire, and with notions of exceptionalism
justifying colonization, Democratic bosses proudly
escalate war against Russia, the country with 5,580
nuclear warheads, about 1/3 of which are “launch ready.”
Two years ago, the US, with the back door machinations
of Britain’s Boris Johnson, rejected a peace agreement
which would have kept Ukraine neutral, restored the
peace and spared the lives of hundreds of thousands of
Ukrainians and Russians.
Instead, we now trot out muddle-headed EU politicians
and our NATO sock puppets to support advancing the war
deeper and deeper into Russia, sending missiles with
more and more destructive power, hyping the fantasy of
capsizing the government of a country which remembers
losing nearly 30,000,000 people in World War II, during
which Russia was on our side.
To create an enemy is to provoke fear everywhere. To
misjudge an “enemy” is to court disaster and
destruction. As we give freedom and fortune to the
egocentric war mongers, the military industrial complex
and those naive enough to think that war equals peace
for Ukraine – – life and liberty are ebbing at home.
We help our “friends” aggress, and cynically celebrate
their victimhood, actively preventing diplomatic
resolution, putting our avowed friends at great risk of
destruction.
Do you remember how back in October 2022, thirty Members
of the U.S. Congress’ Democratic Progressive Caucus
signed a letter calling for President Biden to consider
diplomacy, and then in a matter of hours were pressured
to retract the letter? The Members were reprimanded by
the Administration and the Democratic leadership for
their advocacy of peace.
In that withdrawn, forbidden letter, the Progressive
Members stated,
“The risk of nuclear weapons being used has been
estimated to be higher now than at any time since the
height of the Cold War. Given the catastrophic
possibilities of nuclear escalation and miscalculation,
which only increase the longer this war continues, we
agree with your goal of avoiding direct military
conflict as an overriding national-security priority.
Given the destruction created by this war for Ukraine
and the world, as well as the risk of catastrophic
escalation, we also believe it is in the interests of
Ukraine, the United States, and the world to avoid a
prolonged conflict. For this reason, we urge you to pair
the military and economic support the United States has
provided to Ukraine with a proactive diplomatic push,
redoubling efforts to seek a realistic framework for a
ceasefire.”
Later in April 2023, nineteen Conservative Republicans,
including now VP candidate Senator J.D. Vance, similarly
communicated to the Administration the perils of
escalating the war without diplomatic strategy, stating
in their letter:
“Our military assistance goes beyond tangible assets to
include military training and intelligence support. The
extent of our aid makes it increasingly difficult to
deny Russian accusations of U.S. complicity in a proxy
war. Vladimir Putin’s advisors are already framing the
conflict as “a military confrontation between Russia and
NATO, and above all the United States and Britain.”
Russian tolerance for fighting a proxy war with NATO
could run out at any point. The decision to invade
Ukraine should be evidence enough of Putin’s willingness
to use military force and should give us pause in
continuing to push the limits at the risk of
catastrophe.”
Ukraine is a pawn, politicized for Democratic
presidential electoral gain, blood for ballots. Ukraine
should have been free to choose its own destiny, its own
government, protect its own agriculture and precious
resources, free to live without fear of an invasion and
control from Russia or any other country. Instead,
denied the promise of true sovereignty, it has been
forced to sacrificed the flower of its youth to war.
While the people of the US are being played by
politicians who are giddy with the notion of stuffing
the November ballot box with bombs rockets, missiles,
artillery shells and national debt, our government is
also being played by the equally unstable and craven
leaders of foreign countries.
And so, the U.S. forks over endless rivers of U.S.
taxpayers’ cash for endless wars, without any thought of
how this all ends, or how or who ultimately pays. Red or
blue, there are no winners in a war devouring our lives,
our blood and our national wealth.
There is madness to all of this. Our so-called leaders
are whistling merry tunes through the graveyard of
history, mocking the dead of Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
because it happened to THEM, not us. Because something
like that could never happen to us. Because we are
smarter and stronger and have God on our side.
It is time to wake up, America. It is time to stop this
madness which presents as legitimate governance, and to
think, to speak and to stand for peace, diplomacy and
the continuation of life on our small planet.
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