Weapons-Makers Cash In on Quigley’s Plea for ‘Humanitarian Aid’

Illinois 5th District Mike Quigley, in his Sun Times op-ed "U.S. must ramp up arms production for Ukraine to send a message to foes of democracy" reveals his total support of US weapons manufacturers who are reaping the benefits of all those political donations sent his way.

Quigley flunks basic history when he poses the Russo Ukraine war as democracy v. authoritarianism. Neither Ukraine nor America showed any interest in democracy when both conspired to overthrow democratically elected president Victor Yanukovych in 2014. The US inspired and supported the coup which was a criminal war against Ukrainian democracy.

That ignited a separatist revolt in Ukraine Donbas to end Kyiv’s destruction of that Ukraine area which happens to be culturally Russian. The resulting civil war solidified Ukraine’s descent into a failed democracy obsessed with destroying a faction of its own people largely responsible for the election of Yanukovych, who had their back. Yanukovych’s successors put targets on those Ukrainian backs. Apparently, Ukraine democracy does not apply to Ukrainians not in tune with Kyiv’s ultra-nationalism.

Quigley quickly pivots from supporting an imaginary Ukrainian democracy to supporting a massive increase in US weapons manufacturing to allow the Ukrainians to do all the dying while US weapons makers do all the profit taking. It also ensures Quigley will stay high up on the weapons maker donation list.

Mike Quigley came to Congress in 2009, the year after the US and NATO first floated Ukraine membership in NATO to help keep Russia out of the European political economy. He’s supported every nefarious US effort to keep Russia down and out in Europe, in spite of its cheap natural resources badly needed there.

Fourteen years of provocations including the 2014 coup, hundreds of millions in weapons for Kyiv to destroy Donbas Ukrainians, and refusal to negotiate a single one on innumerable Russian requests for dialogue instead of proxy war, led us to the unfolding catastrophe in Ukraine. Several hundred thousand dead, millions fled or relocated, a shattered economy, and no chance of winning short of American nukes.

Mike Quigley is precisely the political leader in warfare practicing "doublespeak" George Orwell had in mind in his novel 1984 and essay "Politics and the English Language. Orwell would be rolling in his grave if he could hear Representative Quigley claim that US weapons of grotesque death were really “humanitarian aid… that give Ukraine its best chance of victory.”

No Congressman Quigley, they give Ukraine its best chance to add hundreds of thousands more dead that could be saved by promoting a negotiated peace rather than your doublespeak version of humanitarian aid.

Walt Zlotow became involved in antiwar activities upon entering University of Chicago in 1963. He is current president of the West Suburban Peace Coalition based in the Chicago western suburbs. He blogs daily on antiwar and other issues at www.heartlandprogressive.blogspot.com.