Ukraine: Good vs Evil, Period! Right?

UKRAINE:

IT'S GOOD VERSUS EVIL, PERIOD! RIGHT?

by John Spritzler

March 20, 2022

[The URL of this article is https://www.pdrboston.org/ukraine-good or also tinyurl.com/yj7ymchb; please share it.]

[Also please see my Open Letter to President Biden re Ukraine]

[For DEEP background to understand the Ukraine conflict, please watch this April 7, 2022 video presentation by Scott Ritter.]

[Click here for links to more info re Ukraine, updated frequently]

What's going on in Ukraine is a fight between the good guys and the bad guys. And we should support the good guys, right? Obviously!

And whoever is invading where people live and bombing civilians there is obviously the bad guys. Obviously!

And when civilians somewhere fight back against such invaders, then they are the good guys. Obiously!

Ukrainian civilians fighting back against those who are trying to kill them are the good guys.

And invaders who are trying to kill Ukrainian civilians where they live are the bad guys. Again, obviously!

So far, this is all obvious. You and I certainly are in agreement. I say this sincerely!

But notice that in the above I never referred to a nation, only to people. There are people who are good guys, and there are people who are bad guys. But a nation is neither a good guy nor a bad guy. In all nations today there live both good guys and bad guys. And unfortunately, bad guys are in control of the governments of virtually all nations even though they are only a small minority of the population; they enforce class inequality and oppression of the have-nots.

How do bad guys stay in power? One of the main ways is by using a frightening foreign bogeyman enemy, by telling the good people in their nation that they are protecting them from the foreign bogeyman enemy nation and therefore everyone must "rally 'round the flag" in unity with their nation's rulers against the bogeyman enemy.

The bad guys who rule Israel (a billionaire upper class) and who oppress Israeli Jewish working class people big time [1], need a bogeyman enemy to get away with this, and this is why they fund HAMAS and work to keep it in power in Gaza [2].

The bad guys who ruled Serbia and Croatia (Communist Party dictators), when faced with a pro-democracy movement of good-guy Serbs and Croats united together, decided to demobilize that movement by making the Serbs and Croats hate each other, each viewing the other as a frightening bogeyman enemy. Here's how they did that. The Croat government bombed Serbs in the name of Croatia, and the Serb government bombed Croats in the name of Serbia. [3]

U.S. rulers used the Soviet Union as a bogeyman enemy during the Cold War. They told us that they were protecting us from Communism and therefore we had to obey them, let them (the U.S. upper class) keep the have-nots poor while the corporate elite got rich, all in the name of uniting to fight the "real enemy." Most people don't know that, in order to make sure the bogeyman enemy was sufficiently frightening to serve the needs of the U.S. upper class, the U.S. upper class armed the Soviet Union big time all during the Cold War, even while sending American GIs to fight North Vietnam that was armed with weapons delivered by the Soviet Union but provided to it by the United States. [4]

When Mikhail Gorbachev ended the Soviet Union he told American diplomats, "I will do something very terrible to you America--I am going to take away your enemy." [5, 6] Unless you understand the need that bad guys have for a bogeyman enemy you wouldn't understand Gorbachev's remark. But now you do understand it, right?

U.S. rulers had to come up with a new bogeyman enemy: Islamic Fundamentalists. In fact, U.S. rulers created this enemy.[7, 8] But Islamic Fundamentalists, while scary, are small fry compared to the old nuclear-armed Soviet Union.

THE BIG PICTURE TODAY, OF WHICH UKRAINE IS JUST A PART

Extract from a Newsweek article:

"Some have presented this conflict as a morality play, between good and evil, but the reality is more complex. Ukraine is no flourishing democracy. It is an impoverished, corrupt, one-party state with extensive censorship, where opposition newspapers and political parties have been shut down. Before the war, far right Ukrainian nationalist groups like the Azov Brigade were soundly condemned by the U.S. Congress. Kiev's determined campaign against the Russian language is analogous to the Canadian government trying to ban French in Quebec. Ukrainian shells have killed hundreds of civilians in the Donbas and there are emerging reports of Ukrainian war crimes. The truly moral course of action would be to end this war with negotiations rather than prolong the suffering the Ukrainian people in a conflict they are unlikely to win without risking American lives." [ https://www.newsweek.com/lessons-us-civil-war-show-why-ukraine-cant-win-opinion-1764992?fbclid=IwAR3CVayZ5E3W8he7c_a0PvJsK9h9b_QcTtbjt8gGwfj9WKZwSHIvhOPhU1I ]

There is abundant evidence that U.S. rulers want to re-start the Cold War and are doing what it takes to make Russia's ruler (Putin, another bad guy) play the role of bogeyman enemy. This explains why U.S. rulers have been 'baiting the bear' [9] and why they have continued to expand the anti-Russia NATO alliance eastward [10], knowing it would elicit the same response as the U.S. response would be if Russia formed an anti-United States alliance and recruited Mexico or Canada into it, placing missile launching pads there aimed at U.S. cities.

The U.S. absolutely and deliberately destroyed the possibility of peaceful relations with Russia, especially by refusing Russia's request that it would never admit Ukraine into NATO [11]. If the U.S. had wanted peaceful relations with Russia it would not have orchestrated a coup in 2014 (the "Maidan revolution") to remove the "pro-Russia" (actually neutral) elected president of Ukraine [12] and replace his government with a pro-U.S. government, even supporting Neo-Nazis (who hate Russia) to carry out the required violence. [13]

THE BAD GUYS

U.S. rulers (Biden who is beholden to the U.S. billionaire plutocracy that treats us like dirt) and Russian rulers (Putin and the Russian billionaire oligarchs) are BOTH bad guys, determined to keep the rich rich and the have-nots poor.

What about Ukrainian president Zelensky? Zelensky is doing exactly what the U.S. rulers want, in particular he is keeping Ukraine in big debt to the IMF [14], which in turn spells very bad news for ordinary have-not Ukrainians. [15] Capitalism in general has been very bad for Ukrainians, judging by the fact that the Ukraine population rose to its peak of 51.4 million at 1991, at which time the Soviet Union dissolved and became capitalist and Ukraine became independent of the Soviet Union and under the sway of Western capitalism, at which point its population dramatically declined to only 43.5 million by 2021 "due to high emigration rates, low birth rates, and high death rates." [16]

And yes, Zelensky is Jewish, but he has made peace with the neo-Nazi paramilitaries violently attacking Russian-speaking Ukrainians in the eastern Donbass region.[18]

Zelensky--and the pro-U.S. Ukrainian government installed by the United States orchestrated-coup in 2014 (the "Maidan revolution"), which relied on violence carried out by neo-Nazis[13]--is waging a civil war against the mainly Russian-speaking people of the southeastern Ukrainian regions of Luhansk and Donetsk (in the eastern Donbass region) who want independence from Ukraine. Watch this documentary [19] and video report of an independent journalist [20] about this. The Jerusalem Post in this article [21] tries to downplay the role of the Ukrainian neo-Nazi Azov military force in attacking the Russian-speaking Ukrainians, but even it is obliged to admit it. There is much evidence also that Azov attacked Ukrainian civilians in Mariupol [23].

Immediately after the 2014 coup, the new Ukrainian government passed a law that, despite the fact that most people in the Donbass region spoke Russian as their first language, for the first time required all schools and universities to teach in Ukrainian, with special exemptions for certain ethnic minority languages but with no exemption, however, for Russian, Byelorussian and Yiddish. [22]

WHAT THE BAD GUYS HAVE ACCOMPLISHED TO DOMINATE THE GOOD GUYS

So now think about where we are today. Russia is restored (in Western media) as the frightening evil bogeyman enemy.

Biden is gaining support as the bold leader (supposedly) of good people against the bad people.

Ukrainians--some at least--are viewing their president Zelensky as a hero for standing up to the bad guys.

Putin--yes, a very BAD GUY--is, with some success, casting himself in the eyes of the Russian public as the savior of Russia, declaring to the Russian people that he is standing up against a hostile NATO that wants to threaten Russian people with missiles launched across the border from Ukraine, and that he is the savior of Russian-speaking Ukrainians under attack by Neo-Nazis. Of course Putin would never be able to do this were it not for Biden's crucially helpful refusal to declare that Ukraine will never be allowed to join NATO (NATO members decide who can join; it's not an open-admission club [11]), and Biden's crucially helpful refusal to use U.S. power in Ukraine to remove Neo-Nazis from any power there rather than allow them to remain armed and dangerous [17].

Putin can only continue the invasion of Ukraine if he maintains at least a critical minimum required amount of support for it from the Russian public. Thanks to Biden as noted above, Putin has that required support from the Russian public. (To fully understand why Putin has this public support from good and decent ordinary Russians, please watch this Scott Ritter video [24].) Without that support from ordinary Russians, Putin would risk being overthrown if he continued the invasion of Ukraine. In 1917 the Czar of Russia was overthrown because he kept Russia in WWI, causing great suffering to the Russian population.

All rulers, no matter how dictatorial, know that they risk being overthrown if they pursue a sufficiently unpopular war. Biden, as noted above, could turn so much of the Russian public against Putin's invasion of Ukraine that Putin would know he risked being overthrown if he continued the invasion.

How could Biden do this? By letting the Russians hear (by radio and internet connections that they still have and even by hacks into Russian TV, which have already happened, and by communication with family and other close people in Ukraine that many Russians have) that he (Biden) was a) permanently banning Ukraine from joining NATO and ending the supply to Ukraine of any weapons that could offensively attack Russia, and was b) taking strong measures (the U.S. has enormous power in Ukraine) to remove Neo-Nazis from power in Ukraine and to end the Ukrainian government's oppression of Russian-speaking Ukrainians in the Donbass or elsewhere. Note that if Biden did this it would deny Putin the support from the Russian public that he needs for the invasion of Ukraine regardless of what Putin's REAL (unstated) reasons are for invading Ukraine.

The point is that Biden wants Putin's invasion to continue, because he wants to re-start the Cold War, to have the Russian bogeyman enemy to control us--Americans--just like during the "good old days" of the Cold War. This is why Biden doesn't do the things that would end the carnage and why, on the contrary, U.S. foreign policy has been designed to ensure the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the renewal of the Cold War.

I say, let's be on the side of the good guys against the bad guys. Let us also be precise in determining who are the good/bad guys.

Don't you agree?

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1. https://www.pdrboston.org/israel-s-government-attacks-jews-to

2. https://www.pdrboston.org/israeli-leaders-hamas-need-each-oth

3. https://www.pdrboston.org/gov-ts-use-violence-to-provoke-hatred

4. https://www.pdrboston.org/u-s-armed-the-soviet-union-in-cold-

5. http://www.zianet.com/lapaz/abolition2.html

6. http://baltimorechronicle.com/2009/111909Publius.shtml

7. https://www.pdrboston.org/inventing-the-enemy

8. https://www.pdrboston.org/drones-real-purpose-create-hatred-o

9. https://middle-east-online.com/en/us-foreign-policy-cruel-sport?fbclid=IwAR1aaTUsAf60MSLzbNy72JoGmsJ5EQRu4dfrQlvHCczfwk1aYt-S7vBWc0Q