Some other thoughts on Ukraine: Anyone who repeats Putins propaganda that the Euromaidan protesters are fascists shouldnt be taken seriously. Putin and Yanukovych are themselves, for all intents and purposes, fascists. They dont get to use that excuse. Besides which, while some tiny percent of the protesters may in fact be right wing fascists, they are clearly not representative of or in control of the movement. I think we may have thrown around words like fascist or communist around so much that theyve lost a lot of their meaning. Which is too bad in situations like this, because were deprived of a tool with which to recognize and counter authoritarian propaganda. I wish media outlets would stop referring to Putin as some kind of chess master. Anyone can win at chess if you start with three times as many pieces as the other guy. Likewise, the media needs to stop the whole these two perspectives are equal thing. Im not going to claim that there arent people in Crimea who would rather Crimea be part of Russia. That doesnt change the fact that whats going on there is a military occupation. The western media should not be talking about the referendum in Crimea as if there is any chance that there might be any legitimacy to it. While were on the topic of the media, Im amazed by how little they understand of Ukraine, even the alleged experts. Maybe Ive just been watching the wrong news outlets, and others have been getting it right. But Ive rarely heard it said out that the biggest divide in Ukrainian politics isnt geographic, its generational, between the people who grew up in the Soviet Union and the people with no memories of it. Many media outlets frame Euromaidan as fundamentally a Europe vs Russia conflict, when it is much more a protest of extreme corruption. But then Americans and Europeans love to think everything is about us. Its so frustrating to watch the U.S. and Europe do so little right now. There should have been major economic sanctions against Russia within a couple days of their occupation of Crimea. Our political leaders are willing to spend trillions of dollars on pointless wars and hundreds of billions bailing out bankers who should be in jail. When our leaders really want to do something, the money always seems to appear, especially if the action benefits the business owning class. But Obama and the leaders of western Europe havent done anything beyond the strictly symbolic so far to curtail this invasion. If we were willing to spend even one one hundredth the resources using non-military avenues to defend Ukraine that we were willing to use to murder hundreds of thousands in Iraq, I doubt Putin would be able to keep hold of Crimea. Obamas been completely ineffective so far. Not that McCain or most of the other Republicans have any business criticizing Obama on that front: our own invasion of Iraq destroyed any moral authority our government had on that front, and also materially diminished our ability to respond to crises like this one by straining our military and weakening our economy. Not only is the west not jumping to help Ukraine, it seems eager to exploit it, likely further impoverishing much of the country and possibly even risking a backlash. If youd asked me how I wouldve expected the U.S. and Europe to behave in this situation, I guess I wouldve expected something pretty similar to what theyre actually doing. That doesnt make it any less infuriating or frustrating to watch it actually happen.
Posted on: Sun, 16 Mar 2014 08:27:50 +0000
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