Trigger-Happy Americans
By James A. Lucas
24 March, 2014
Countercurrents.org
The US government is in a dither trying to decide what to do about the Ukraine and Crimea which are almost 5,000 miles away from our shores. This is a potentially explosive situation and a few trigger-happy Americans are pushing Obama to take military action. Why are they doing this? Are we the lawful policemen of the world?
We should take a step backward and let things cool down and not follow the ill-advised impulses of the war-mongers among us. They are playing with fire and the last thing we need is a war between the world’s two major nuclear weapons powers.
A little introspection and an attempt to consider other points of view are important. What would we do if we were in Russia’s shoes? Indeed, this is more than just a rhetorical question for we have had our differences with our neighbors just as Russia has with Ukraine.
And when that has happened neither the Soviet Union nor Russia, depending on the time period in question, took any action, even though they may not have agreed with what our leaders had done.
We invaded Mexico and annexed a third of that nation and they did nothing to stop us.
Since World War II we invaded Cuba, Dominican Republic, Grenada, Haiti, and Panama, killing thousands of people, with no objection from the Soviet Union/Russia that I know of.
During that time period we also interfered with the internal affairs of many of our neighbor nations, in some cases by providing money and military equipment to forces within Chile, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Jamaica, Nicaragua, Suriname and Uruguay. Again no objection to these actions.
The Soviet Union did construct nuclear missile launching sites in Cuba, but that was a reaction to the same type of installations that the US had erected thousands of miles away in Turkey which targeted the Soviet Union.
We have plenty of problems here at home to deal with, and we also need to get on with solving more important issues such as solving our environmental problem and converting from a military economy to one that addresses issues such as inequality of wealth and joblessness.
James A. Lucas, a retired social worker, is an anti-war and anti-imperialist activist member of the September 11 Coalition/Dayton Peace Action. In 2010 he was the recipient of the first Dayton Peace Hero Award granted by the Dayton International Peace Museum.
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