My American Apology to the Ukrainian People
Dear Men and Women of Ukraine,
This is a short note to express my profound regret, the sorrow and shame I feel as an American when I think about your country, which I hope my countrymen share … and my promise to do what I can to make things right in the future.
No, this has nothing to do with the clash between our politicians, as seen on TV last week in our country’s White House. Nor am I writing because I want U.S. troops in Ukraine, or even to see our country continue prolong your war with Russia by selling weapons to Ukraine. I know from the lips of our own General Mark Milley that America’s intent was never to liberate Ukraine, but instead to “make Russia bleed.” We were willing to fight to the last Ukrainian man, woman, and child, in pursuit of that cynical aim.
Like most Americans, I support President Donald Trump’s courageous effort to end the violence now, via compromise and diplomacy, including territorial trade-offs. From the horrors of the Russian Civil War to the man-made famine Stalin imposed on your people, to the brutal Nazi invasion and cruel Soviet reconquest, your country has suffered more than almost any on earth for the past 100 years. Enough is enough.
I want to apologize instead for our Deep State, our political class, and our media — our self-selected elites whose real loyalty is to their fellow oligarchs worldwide. They, as much as anyone — even anyone in Russia — are at fault for the death, ruin, and suffering that scar your beautiful country. Our elites pressured Ukraine to give up its nuclear weapons, which could have been a permanent guarantee of your independence — in return for a piece of paper, an unconstitutional non-treaty which our Senate never ratified and which has no force of law. That guarantee from Bill Clinton might as well have been scrawled on a bar napkin.
But the politicians you inherited chose to put faith in it. They saw that America’s ruling class was eager to break the promise it had made to Mikhail Gorbachev not to expand NATO eastward — as the price of the Warsaw Pact peacefully dissolving. Our elites, as corrupt as yours, talked friendship and freedom to Russia while helping to loot the country’s assets and forging one military alliance after another, right up to Russia’s borders. Then they acted surprised when a shell-shocked, bankrupt Russia found itself a brutal strongman — as if they’d never cracked a single history book.
Profiting from Suffering
Our military-industrial complex, which dominated both parties, goaded our country into useless wars in the Middle East, cashing $3 trillion in checks along the way. When that grift finally petered out like blood in the sand, they turned their hungry eyes to your country. As sharks who scent blood in the water, they saw the tensions between Ukraine and Russia as a golden opportunity.
As Victoria Nuland, the former U.S. ambassador to NATO, admitted (actually boasted) in 2016, the Obama administration saw Putin’s seizure of Crimea as a chance to make Ukraine an offer it couldn’t refuse. Our CIA and USAID flooded a frightened Ukraine with cash and spies. They bought the loyalty of Ukrainian public officials, making them beholden not to your voters but to our secret agents. They set up abortion clinics and transgender activist groups, and made the price of our “aid” the acceptance of the West’s most toxic cultural exports.
When the Ukrainian people overthrew their pro-Russia president in 2013, our Deep State hijacked that revolution. Nuland was caught on the phone in a recording mulling over the names of whom she might appoint to rule your country.
Did our elites really think that a Russia led by a former KGB colonel steeped in chauvinist “Great Russian” nationalism would swallow such behavior? When the Soviets put nuclear missiles in their de facto colony of Cuba, our president planned an invasion, and walked right up to the brink of a full-scale nuclear war. Did the spooks in Washington really think that Putin was more of a peacenik than John F. Kennedy?
Of course they didn’t. They didn’t expect Donald Trump to run for office, much less defeat Hillary Clinton. They were sure she’d be elected, and thank them for their efforts. She’d carry on their policy designed to force a conflict with Russia, and cut off its cheap energy exports to Europe. Instead, trillions of dollars would go to corrupt energy companies such as Burisma in which our elites (such as the Biden family) had heavily invested. The arms companies in which our elites held stock, such as Blackrock, would profit hand over fist selling weapons to “help” Ukraine defend herself.
Our politicians, deprived of Middle Eastern wars, could swagger around talking tough about “standing up to Russia.” And if need be, our Deep State could smear its enemies as “Russian colluders.” They invented a fake conspiracy theory and tried to run Donald Trump out of office, as you’ll recall. Some 51 leaders of our intelligence community signed a letter claiming that Hunter Biden’s crime diary laptop was “Russian disinformation” — and then when people disagreed, our CIA pressured social media to censor the dissenters.
None of this is the fault of the Ukrainian people. It’s hardly even the fault of the American people, except insofar as we’ve let ourselves be governed by such criminals. But you are the ones paying the price in blood and tears. Our politicians boast in unguarded moments that the money we’ve sent to Ukraine we really paid to ourselves, because most of it went to U.S. defense contractors — as Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. pointed out during his campaign.
But of course when they’re making speeches, these powerbrokers speak instead of “defending democracy” and “saving” the people of Ukraine. They’re lying. They care even less about your people than they do about our people. We’re all just pawns in their astronomically high-stakes chess game, and pawns were made to be sacrificed.
More than a million people have already been killed or wounded in this ghastly, avoidable war. Donald Trump has a passion for peace, and he plans to end it. I pray he succeeds. And I will go on praying for Ukraine, setting up real aid programs there, and living the faith I share with so many good people in your proud country.