Dear President Biden,
I am writing you as a proud member of Veterans For Peace and its former president. We have been following the war in Ukraine closely, since well before the Russian invasion on February 24 of this year. We were alarmed when you and President Obama supported the regime-change coup in Ukraine in 2014, which was openly cheered on by the State Department’s Victoria Nuland, and spearheaded by self-described Nazis.
We watched in horror as those same self-described Nazis set fire to an Odessa union building full of Ukrainians who were protesting a new law outlawing the Russian language as an official language of Ukraine. 50 people were burned alive or shot and beaten to death. This in a country with a long history with Russia and millions of Russian speakers.
Appalled at the aforementioned atrocities, the Russian-speaking population of the Donbass in Eastern Ukraine declared their independence from Ukraine, and were soon attacked by Nazi militias. These self-described Nazi militias were then incorporated into the Ukrainian army, and the attacks continued. By the time that Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24 of this year, 14,000 Ukrainians had already been killed in that terrible civil war.
Russian president Putin repeatedly warned and almost begged the US and NATO: Do not push your hostile military forces any further onto Russia’s borders. Taking Ukraine into NATO would cross a serious "red line." Russian troops then massed along the border with Ukraine, in a clear show of force.
Mr. President, you might have stopped this war from happening merely by announcing that Ukraine would not become part of NATO and that you would end the militarization of Ukraine. You could have accepted President Putin’s offer to negotiate a new security arrangement in Europe. We looked on in disbelief as you rather cavalierly brushed aside Russia’s legitimate concerns. It looked like you were saying, "Bring it on!"
Well, Russia brought it on. We were horrified by the Russian invasion as well as by your response. You armed Ukraine to the teeth and fanned the flames of war. Ukraine (and the Black market in Europe) is now awash with high-tech US weaponry. A full-on war has killed many thousands of civilians, made millions homeless, and destabilized much of the world. We are now facing economic disasters and fearing the all-too-real possibility of nuclear war. Why?
As veterans who have experienced the carnage of war, we are concerned about the young soldiers on both sides who are being killed and injured in the tens of thousands. We know all too well that the survivors will be traumatized and scarred for life.
As veterans who have experienced the carnage of war, we are concerned about the young soldiers on both sides who are being killed and injured in the tens of thousands. We know all too well that the survivors will be traumatized and scarred for life. These are additional reasons why the Ukraine war must end now.
We ask you to listen to veterans who say "Enough is Enough – War is Not the Answer." We want urgent, good faith diplomacy to end the war in Ukraine, not more US weapons, advisors, and endless war. And certainly not a nuclear war.
It is not too late to do avoid further disaster, Mr. President. It is never too late to do the right thing. Show us a Profile of Courage and save the world from World War III, a war that could literally destroy human civilization as we know it. You must distance yourself from the neocons and weapons manufacturers who are giving you terrible advice. You must reverse course now. Drop the weapons and embrace diplomacy. For the sake of Ukraine. For the sake Russia, Europe and the United States. For the sake of the all the peoples of the world.
Negotiate, Don’t Escalate!
Gerry Condon, former president
VETERANS FOR PEACE
Biden will not listen to the letter and might not even read it. He voted for the Iraq War when he was a Senator, authorized restarting the Iraq War when he was Ehud Barack Obama’s VP and authorized the bombing of Libya and continued the war in Afghanistan until he became president.
Biden is not very popular right now and hopes the war in Ukraine will help him get re-elected in 2024.
Biden will never see it. Some staffer will delete it if in digital form or wastebasket it in physical form.
Presumable these organizations like VPS and VIPS produce these things for the PR. Unfortunately next to no one reads them except on sites like this – this is called “preaching to the choir”, also known as “a complete waste of everyone’s time.”
True but at least this one wasn’t a waste of time that took Months to put together. The thing that annoyed me the most about the “nuclear posture review” was the shear amount of effort that went into something that was frankly speaking a joke. If you are going to do nothing but preach to the choir, at least you shouldn’t take yourself so seriously that you put together an entire team and spend months working on it.With the same amount of effort they could have put together an actual protest that might have gotten some attention.
Pretending that Biden will read this is a joke, but it’s not as bad of a joke as pretending that they put together a serious policy proposal that needed excruciating detail to appear relevant to the powers that be. Why on Earth would Biden or anyone in Washington care how hard someone tried to pretend? A detailed fantasy is still just a fantasy, it doesn’t become real because of the extra work taken to create the fantasy. The posture review took itself way too seriously and it was written in a way that was intended to make the “choir” believe it was in fact a serious attempt to change policy, when at most it was a serious attempt at fundraising. It came across to me as looking rather like a bunch of teenagers LARP-ing and for all of the work they put into it, it was still just plain silly and amateurish.
This one was essentially just an opinion piece written in a rather common linguistic style, still a farce, but only if the author actually believes Joe will read it, which I doubt. On the other hand the people who put together the posture review, this author included, almost seemed to believe their own hype or at least they put it together so we would read it as if it were serious.
This letter took next to no time at all to put together and served exactly the same purpose, preaching to the choir, which doesn’t require a team and months of time, which could have been better spent organizing protests.
So still a joke, just not as God Awful of a joke.
MIC needs proxy war, MIC gets proxy war.
President Pedo, gets his 10%…
Agreeing w/all who have attested here to the futility of this missive. I would attest to the same futility WRT any and all letters to elected officials at all levels. The only message that matters to them is the amalgam of votes that ousts them from–or prevents them from–elective office. Usually, not even that.
So what is the alternative? Nullification, at any and all levels. Some call it civil disobedience. I don’t bother with the “civil” part. (After all, we had a “civil” war in the 19th century.) Until a critical mass of this is achieved and routine, decide which hills you are willing to die on: or, at least, those on which you will choose to sacrifice your civil liberties to the overwhelming force of the tyrant. Prepare for the inevitable consequences of either choice.
Once in power, governments and their officials do not listen to or care about anything you have to say or write. Period.
This statement should also be addressed to ALL Democratic members of Congress, including every last “progressive,” a term that has lost its meaning, who voted for the billions of dollars for weapons to Ukraine. Without those votes for war, there would be no war. That said, this statement is an advance over the words of many in the “peace” movement who spend their time condemning Russia for resisting the US onslaught and reducing the US responsibility for fomenting this war from a headline to a footnote, if that.
September 13 2022 Pro-War Press Celebrates NATO, Coalition Forces Taking 1.6% of Russian-Occupied Ukraine
Corporate media outlets are claiming that Ukraine is in the midst of a major offensive to defeat Russia, but their reports deny reality.
https://nationalfile.com/pro-war-press-celebrates-nato-coalition-forces-taking-1-6-of-russian-occupied-ukraine/