Ukraine is Just Vietnam 2.0

It’s ironic that while the Biden Administration blatantly embraces tyranny in America, it purports to be fighting against tyranny in Ukraine.

Most, if not all of America’s many wars since World War 2, have been waged in the name of either defending democracy or preventing the spread of what we have deemed to be some form of tyranny. The results have been overwhelmingly disastrous for America.

The protracted Vietnam war lasted nearly 20 years. The U.S., of course, asserted its objective was to prevent the spread of poisonous communism. Not unlike the present conflict between Russia and Ukraine, the Vietnam war was waged between the South Vietnamese government and North Vietnam, who wished to unite Vietnam under one communist government.

While the Biden administration attempts to falsely portray the Ukrainian conflict as a black and white struggle between a united, pro-western and anti-Moscow Ukraine, the reality is that Ukraine is as bitterly divided as red and blue states in America. Eastern Ukraine is overwhelmingly pro-Moscow, while western Ukraine is largely pro-western and pro-Europe.

The Vietnam War was waged despite the protests of a majority of Americans, who opposed the war. It’s important to remember that the impetus for America’s escalation of that conflict in August of 1964 was the infamous ‘Gulf of Tonkin’ incident.

On August 2, 1964 the U.S. Navy reported that two of its destroyers had been attacked by North Vietnamese patrol boats. President Johnson used the attack to justify the U.S. Government’s long desired goal of engaging in a full scale war in Vietnam and bring it to fruition.

But America’s escalation of the Vietnam war was based on a lie — North Vietnamese patrol boats had not attacked American destroyers as the Johnson administration claimed. The perceived ‘attacks’ were actually the result of “overeager operators”, poor equipment performance, and the sound of the U.S. ships’ own propellors. The attack had been imagined.

In 1975, after nearly twenty years and 60,000 Americans had died in the Vietnam war, the North Vietnamese took Saigon and Ho Chi Minh and TIME magazine featured the North Vietnamese leader on the cover with the heading “The Victor.”

Today, nearly 50 years after the disastrous Vietnamese War ended in American humiliation and blood, the United States seems eager to repeat that failure in Ukraine.

Our seemingly imminent commitment of American forces to supposedly “stand up for democracy” in Ukraine is as ill founded and politically motivated as the Vietnam War. The Biden Administration has increasingly made its desire clear to escalate rather than de-escalate the conflict.

After General Milley suggested peace talks could begin in the winter, the Biden Administration scrambled to squash any such possibility; reassuring the Ukrainians that the U.S. would continue to support Kyiv militarily, once fighting resumed.

Why is the United States so intent on escalating the war in Ukraine and why is America so obsessed with Ukraine?

The United States has interfered in Ukrainian politics for decades. In 2004, the Kremlin backed Presidential candidate Viktor Yanukovych won the election only to be declared illegitimate after protestors wearing orange in support of his opponent, Viktor Yushchenko, took to the streets in protest.

It’s ironic that Bush, the United States, and even the international community supported the Orange Revolution and those protestors, who claimed the Ukrainian election had been rigged; but attacked and dismissed Americans, who charged the 2020 election had been rigged.

In 2005, Bush celebrated the protests in Ukraine, which resulted in the overturning of those election results and a new runoff election — which resulted in the victory of the west-backed candidate Yuschenko, instead. The Orange Revolution is a "powerful example of democracy for people around the world, Bush claimed.

This is the same argument Biden is making nearly two decades later to justify American commitment of unlimited resources — both financial and militarily — to prolong the never-ending war in Ukraine.

Just five years after the West succeeded in electing its preferred candidate as President of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych — the very man they accused of stealing the 2004 election — was elected President in 2010. ‘International monitors’ declared this election as free and fair; even an ‘impressive display’ of democracy. It’s odd, to say the least and begs the question: is Ukraine a democracy when the international community and the West seem to control who is and isn’t permitted to lead the Nation?

Had the west claimed the 2010 election had been illegitimate — as they had in 2004 — would another revolution have brought about a different result?

In any case, the West and United States, specifically, soured on Yanukovych by 2014. After Yanukovych reneged on a E.U. trade deal, which would have economically harmed Ukraine even while it brought Ukraine closer to the West, Ukrainian protestors led by violent far-right activists supported by the United States, took to the streets, occupied government buildings and eventually engaged in an armed battle with police, which resulted in the deaths of 13 police and nearly 50 protestors.

This violent insurrection was openly supported by the United Stated and democrats to ensure regime change. These same people condemn January 6th as a violent insurrection in America.

Amidst the violent 2014 protests in Ukraine — known as the Maidan Revolution — Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland visited Ukraine and offered cookies to demonstrators. In a leaked phone call between Nuland and U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt, Nuland enthusiastically affirmed her support of Arseniy Yatsenyuk to become Ukrainian Prime minister in a post-Yanukovych government.

“Yats is the guy,” Nuland declared, even while Yanukovych was the lawful President of Ukraine. It’s odd that a Nation — the United States — which repeatedly asserts its interference in the affairs of Ukraine is about preserving democracy, was engaged in supporting a coup d’eta to overthrow a democratically elected President; even handpicking a successor before the lawful President had been ousted.

Why did America support the toppling of the Ukrainian government in 2014? Because President Yanukovych dared to accept a generous no strings attached economic lifeline from Moscow over a less than ideal offer from the E.U.

It was amidst the Maidan Revolution in February 2014, during which the United States intervened in Ukraine to support a coup d’eta as punishment over Ukraine’s rejection of the West, that Russia invaded and annexed Crimea. It was the United States’ support and escalation of the Maidan Revolution — a desperate effort to force Ukraine into the West’s orbit — that instigated Russia’s response.

Half of the country at the time rejected the U.S. installed anti-Russian administration. Still, rather than allow Ukranians to determine their own Nation’s fate and future, the United States decided for them.

Even after Russia invaded Ukraine and annexed Crimea in 2014, then President Barack Obama insisted that a military solution was not on the table. "This is not another cold war that we're entering into. The United States and Nato do not seek any conflict with Russia," Obama said. "Now is not the time for bluster … There are no easy answers, no military solution.”

Fast forward to 2023 and the Biden administration’s position couldn’t be more different and opposite. This time, amidst a second Russian intrusion, Biden seeks conflict with Russia and insists on a military solution.

While it’s understandable that the United States laments and even objects to the war raging in Ukraine, why is it in our national interest to commit ourselves to fighting this war for Ukraine?

It’s ironic that while the Biden Administration blatantly embraces tyranny in America, it purports to be fighting against tyranny in Ukraine.

While we feign outrage over Russian aggression and territorial ambitions today, our own Government instigated a war with Mexico in 1846 over our own claim that Texas, Oregon, California, New Mexico, and what is today known as the American southwest, should belong to the United States, rather than Mexico. We won and the United States expanded its own territory by nearly one third.

The United States justified its invasion of Iraq in 2003 on the grounds that Saddam Hussein possessed ‘weapons of mass destruction’ — later proven untrue. It was the 21st century equivalent of the phony ‘Gulf of Tonkin’ non-incident, which was used to escalate the Vietnam conflict.

Oddly, those very people, who today condemn America’s involvement in Vietnam and Iraq, are cheering America’s involvement in Ukraine.

Given America’s history of fomenting instability in Ukraine, I think it’s time we look inward and introspectively at what responsibility and blame we bear for the current conflict in Ukraine. Every conflict in Ukraine has previously resulted from our own interference and this escalation appears to be no different.

Our Government’s role is to protect America’s interests, not those of foreign nations. Our only interference or military involvement in foreign affairs should be strictly limited to those instances wherein our own Nation’s interests are clearly threatened and necessitate American intervention.

Did America suffer from the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014? How can our foreign policy be so vague, unpredictable, and incomprehensible — that one aggressive action by Russia elicits American acceptance, while another elicits full throated threats of full blown war?

Does it matter that Eastern Ukraine is pro-Moscow while western Ukraine is anti-Moscow — that half the country identifies as Russian? It should.

Imagine — and God forbid — that the present divide in America began to boil over into an escalated conflict. How would Republicans or even Democrats view Russian support of either red states or blue states; if they took a side, provided financial and military support to select their preferred winner?

The conflict between Russia and Ukraine is based on their own shared history. It has nothing to do with the United States. It’s the consequence of a complex set of circumstances resulting from the Cold War and the end of the Soviet Union.

We are being drawn into a conflict that isn’t ours to resolve — based on a superficial and dishonest portrayal of reality. Russia, China, Ukraine, and the United States have competing interests. Russia certainly wants to reclaim Ukraine. They don’t want America interfering.

China wants to supplant the United States as the predominant superpower. It wants the United States weakened by supporting Ukraine.

Anti-Russian and pro-western Ukrainians and the government we have hand picked want and need America to fight the war for them in order for them to prevail.

And yet many Ukrainians, who are sympathetic to the Kremlin, do not want anyone interfering.

This isn’t the 1980’s. The Soviet Union is no more. China, rather than Russia, is the greatest threat to American dominance and stability. The current war in Ukraine poses zero threat to America, but our involvement and escalation poses a great risk and threat to the United States.

Furthermore, our continued and unlimited support of Ukraine robs Ukrainians of reaching a natural resolution to a conflict we have directly delayed and prevented from happening for decades.

The only interests our involvement protects are those of our own corrupt politicians, who have poured money into Ukraine for decades. This is a political war; waged by corrupt bureaucrats, who aren’t guided by any selfless desire to protect American interests; only their own.

While our Congress pours more than a hundred billion dollars into Ukraine and promises hundreds of billions more to ‘rebuild’ Ukraine and pay for Ukrainian welfare and social services and pensions, our own social safety nets are bankrupt, our infrastructure decaying, our own wages diminished by inflation, and our own border invaded by millions upon millions of illegals.

What about rebuilding America? Our Government is more concerned with protecting Ukrainians and ensuring that they are protected than they are with protecting Americans. The reality is that our support of Ukraine comes at the expense of the support of America. No foreign policy should put the needs of a foreign nation above the needs of its own Nation.

If we continue on this path, Ukraine will be another Vietnam — another endless and futile war fought superficially in the name of protecting democracy; all the while what remains of our own democracy is destroyed.

Ukraine is not a democracy. It’s a rag doll and punching bag abused by the United States. If our objective is to protect the sovereignty of Ukraine, then we should treat Ukraine like a sovereign Nation, rather than our own 51st state — permitting and even demanding that Ukraine and Russia work out their own agreement, destiny, and future without our incessant meddling.