I've been listening closely to the debate going on in Germany over Putin's war and I am struck by the number of public voices in Germany urging their government to press Zelenskyy to the negotiating table. I'm taken aback by how many Putin apologists there are and how broadly they are supported, if the commentaries to their public appearances on social media are any indication.
There's an irony in this. I became a diehard lefty many years ago. I once said my arm would fall off if I ever voted for a Republican and these days, now that the remnants of the Republican party that retain dignity and integrity have been swallowed up by the thoroughly repugnant MAGA wing of their party, I don't waste a minute apologizing for my lefty stance. I watch Amy Goodman for news and my bookshelves are filled with books by Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn. I'm a big Michael Moore fan.
What put me on this path was my experience in the army in the 1960s, where I discovered unbelievable mindlessness and justification for blind obedience. That came with the understanding that the Vietnam War showed the United States to be effectively indistinguishable, in my view, from earlier European imperial powers. The good guys, the noble American idealists striving for an expansion of democracy, were still there, bumbling their way with occasional successes. But much of the time I saw America as a bully willing to go to war to aid American commercial interests. Over the years, that hasn't changed. I still see America as a seriously flawed democracy, struggling to contend with its greedy vulture capitalism segment, and I still see war as the failure of human beings to give peace their best efforts. I remain fiercely anti-war, and despite the arguments I've rehearsed over and over again in my mind for this thing called a just war, I prefer to take the view that living to fight another day is the better course of action in most cases.
But if opposition to war is, or should be, the default position, that does not shut down the case for fighting a just war. I've struggled over the contradictions involved. So why, I've been asking myself, do I find myself so strongly wanting the Ukrainians to push the Russians out of their country if it means not only endless killing not only of the Ukrainian population, but of innocent Russian young men? Putin, we know, won't hesitate to use the youth of his country as cannon fodder, or mine sweepers, as we remember how Stalin used to clear the mine fields by running young recruits across them to give his more seasoned troops easier access to the Nazi forces. Prolonging this war only makes us party to Putin's inhumanity. This switch is more than ironic. It reflects a moral dilemma of the first order.
Why do I want to make Volodymyr Zelenskyy into a hero? Why do I feel so good that Biden has just promised the Ukrainians, by a vote of 68 to 29 in the Senate, another $44 billion in assistance? And why am I feeling a sense of resentment for Germany for not getting behind the war efforts? For so many years I was proud of Germany that it had picked itself up from World War II and become arguably the chief voice for war-avoidance. They knew what they were talking about. If you've seen the images of German cities in 1945, with scarcely one block of stone on top of another in some places, you'll see why the cry became "Nie wieder Krieg" - no more war. In Europe, at least. This was tested in Kosovo, but by and large Germany became the peacemaker, and I was proud of Germany for that.
So many Germans I once admired - Sahra Wagenknecht, Serdar Somuncu, Richard David Precht - all notable public intellectuals, as well as other leftist politicians like Gregor Gysy and the head of the Lutheran Church in Germany, Margot Kaessmann - have come out, usually citing the responsibility Germans carry, given their tragic history, for never shooting at Eastern European people in a war situation. And they are not outliers, but are joined by large numbers of others in both the German radical right and radical left. All united by the eminently responsible sounding argument that Germany must never again engage in war.
I don't want to make the political arguments here. Or go into the historical events, such as Putin's earlier invasion of Ukraine in 2014 when he got away with murder and the Europeans sat on their hands as he ran off with the Crimea and the Eastern Ukrainian provinces of Luhansk and Donetsk as well. There were rumbles among the members of NATO, in the UN General Assembly and elsewhere, but nobody made any effort to resist the blatant disregard for the agreements signed by every nation involved to respect established borders. Those are arguments for another day.
I just want to say out loud that the images of bombed Ukrainian cities have had an effect on me. No amount of justification for Putin's dream of a Russian-controlled Ukraine matters any more. It's the images of the bombing of civilians, the brutality of attacking gas and water generating plants as the winter is upon us. It removes the last shred of truth to the claim that Putin wants to see his fellow Slavs as brothers and sisters. Makes him a bloody, war-mongering hypocrite.
I will still listen to anti-war arguments. But if you want me see any solution to this war other than Putin's defeat you're going to have to come up with some mighty convincing new ones. As long as the Ukrainians continue to show such determination to defend their borders, I'm going to continue, I imagine, to see Zelenskyy as a heroic figure and Ukrainians as a people with a cause worth defending. Count me in as one tax-paying American cheering the trillion-dollar package the Senate came up with today. Keeping the government funded. Good idea. Increasing maternity leave benefits. Good idea. And supporting Ukraine with big bucks. Very good idea indeed.
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