Rich Lowry: Aiding Ukraine Not Like Invading Iraq

Rich Lowry thinks we are refighting the Iraq War.

He is partially correct. It is difficult to overstate the profound impact that the Iraq War had on our views about foreign policy. It is not really just about Iraq though. The wars in Iraq, Syria, Libya and Afghanistan have all blended together to shape our perspective of America’s role in the world. Those of us who are a little older also remember NATO’s bombing of Serbia and how Kosovo was ripped away from that country by liberal interventionists. We also remember all the failed attempts to foment regime change in Iran and Venezuela as well as the ongoing humanitarian disaster in Yemen.

Needless to say, we are deeply skeptical of American intervention in Ukraine. It is also unquestionably true that we see Ukraine through the prism of the last 25 years of American imperialism in Eurasia. Vladimir Putin isn’t the first evil dictator and war criminal that liberals have attempted to slay over there. There was also Slobodan Milosevic, Saddam Hussein, Bashar al-Assad, Muammar Gaddafi and Ali Khamenei who have all at various times taken their place as the Hitler of the Year. The massive refugee crisis that has been created in Ukraine also isn’t the first refugee crisis of our lives. It is all so familiar.

If basically the same thing keeps happening over and over again in different countries involving the same people with alarming regularity, maybe the cause of the cycle lies a bit closer to home? Lots of people were able to predict based on decades of experience of observing American foreign policy that Washington would have a new war on its hands shortly after the catastrophic withdrawal from Afghanistan. Some other excuse was clearly needed to continue to wash out and launder and redistribute trillions of dollars from the American taxpayer to all the welfare parasites that inhabit the Beltway.

National Review:

“On Ukraine, the neo-isolationists of the Right are fighting the last war.

They warn of a return to the belligerent mood that led to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 — never mind that they are warning the wrong country.

If the U.S. launched a large-scale military intervention 20 years ago without adequately calculating the risks or understanding the political and culture contours of the country it would occupy, it is now the Russians, not the Ukrainians, the Europeans, or us, who are replicating that mistake.

Giving the Ukrainians Javelin missiles to fire at armored columns encircling their cities is a far cry from taking over a large Middle Eastern country with no exit plan …”

Granted, the war in Ukraine is more like the previous proxy war in Syria than the Iraq War, which was the last war between the United States and Russia. There are calls for a No-Fly Zone which would instantly embroil us in a war with Russia. The policy in Ukraine has been to arm the moderate Neo-Nazis like the moderate al-Qaeda rebels in Syria. You have basically the same moralizing rhetoric about toppling an evil dictator. It is framed as a struggle between “autocracy” and “democracy” like Syria during the Arab Spring. In both Syria and Ukraine, the United States destabilized a pro-Russian regime through covert ops and spawned ISIS which eventually led to American “boots on the grounds” in eastern Syria. NATO backed the United States in its regime change efforts in Serbia, Afghanistan and Libya, but not Iraq.

“Still, the neo-isolationists, who call themselves realists or “restrainers,” want to believe that we are on the verge of dangerous escalation in Ukraine …”

In light of the fact that the U.S. has effectively cosigned the war and the deaths of thousands of Russian soldiers in Ukraine, it is safe to say that this dangerous escalation has already come to pass. It also seems like every day brings news of some new type of military equipment being sent over there. Today, it is tanks and anti-aircraft systems. Republican senators like Tom Cotton are also openly calling for giving Zelensky pretty much anything he wants so that he can “win” the war.

“In seeking to avoid the mistake of 2003, the restrainers are making their own mistake of 2022.”

In what universe is avoiding a war with Russia over the status of Donbas and Crimea a mistake? The president of the United States has no greater foreign policy responsibility than avoiding a nuclear war. A war with Russia is one of only a few things that could truly devastate this country.

Why does Ukraine seem so familiar?

For one, the same CIA agents and retired generals who are mouthpieces of the military-industrial complex who were on cable television last summer bewailing the end of the war in Afghanistan are on television every night selling the public on the war in Ukraine. The same “journalists” who were outraged by the withdrawal from Afghanistan are badgering Jen Psaki to start World War III with Russia.

The same jingos on FOX News like Sean Hannity and Mark Levin who sold us on every single one of the previous interventions and disastrous wars in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Afghanistan, Iran and Venezuela are selling the war in Ukraine. They are using the same tropes and arguments and moralizing rhetoric. Mark Levin wanted to go to war with Iran which he promised would be a cakewalk. Hannity wanted to go in guns blazing and take out the Russian column which has withdrawn from Kyiv Oblast.

The same neocons who were behind the Project for a New American Century who led America into the Iraq War – to name a few, David Frum, Bill Kristol, Robert Kagan and Eliot Cohen – are cheering on American intervention in Ukraine. Eliot Cohen even published an article in The Atlantic called “The Strategy the West Needs To Beat Russia” in which he called for turning Ukraine into a supersized Afghanistan. This is the same strategy that Hannity advocates every night on his show when he compares arming the Ukrainians to arming the mujahideen in Afghanistan. The goal is to kill Russians.

The very same politicians who led us into and through Iraq, Syria, Libya and Afghanistan are often still in power and leading us into the war in Ukraine. Joe Biden himself voted for the Iraq War. John McCain and Lindsey Graham played starring roles in fomenting this crisis in Ukraine. Both Lindsey Graham and John McCain voted for the Iraq War. Marco Rubio celebrated regime change in Libya and the death of Gaddafi. He called for regime change in Syria and Venezuela. During his own personal crusade to topple the Maduro government in Venezuela and install Juan Guaidó in power as a puppet leader, Rubio compared his effort to George H.W. Bush’s regime change in Panama.

We have piled thousands of sanctions on Russia in an effort to crush the Russian economy. This is also based on well established precedent and is part of long running trend of using sanctions to punish and smite and vanquish evil doers around the world. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright who recently passed away and who supported American intervention in Ukraine thought the sanctions that we imposed on Iraq during the 1990s which led to the death of half a million children was worth it.

Let’s be real here.

I’ve focused on the last 25 years because we have been at war for my entire adult lifetime. These are the wars and coups and interventions that I remember and have colored my perspective. We could just as easily rewind the tape though all the way back to the Spanish-American War.

Here’s the real question: do you think America is better off as a result of 125 years of imperialism and militarism? Are we better off now that we have traded places with the old British Empire? Are we better off with a world that is littered with the graves of five, six, even seven generations of Americans that stretch from one end of Eurasia on the shores of Normandy to the other in Vietnam, the Philippines and the Solomon Islands? Are we better off with these gigantic unaccountable multinational corporations and with this vast military apparatus and with all these responsibilities around the world? Are we better off with the Deep State and the “intelligence community”? Are we more or less free? Do we have a healthier culture? Is the status of Crimea and Donbas worth fighting a war with Russia or being locked into another Cold War with Russia and China for a generation? What is the opportunity cost of all of these endless wars?

My answer is an emphatic “no.” We would be better off without liberal imperialism and without wars to “make the world safe for democracy.” Ukraine would also be better off had it not replaced Syria as the latest battleground in a proxy war between the United States and Russia. The world would have been better off without Iraq and Libya and Afghanistan and Vietnam for that matter.

The last war in Iraq was merely one episode in the same story. It is the story of how America rejected its own origins, which was a rejection of imperialism, and repudiated its own founding stock and their vision of a westward facing continental Republic that avoided entanglements in European wars in order to ape the declining British Empire for the “glory” of lording it over the rest of the world.

Note: Andrew Jackson’s foreign policy established good relations with Russia that lasted for the rest of the 19th century.

About Hunter Wallace 12379 Articles
Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Occidental Dissent

17 Comments

  1. We shouldn’t intervene in Ukraine.

    We should make sure that if Russia is bound and determined to invade and occupy Ukraine that we use their attachments to China as a wedge to drive between them and the West, forcing strategic decoupling of the global supply chain that robs the White working class in the West of domestic manufacturing and production jobs.

    If that means sending them just enough weapons to keep them both mired in chaos long enough for us to rebuild our domestic supply chains and bankrupt the businesses that offshored all our jobs to China, then I say we do it.

    We owe China and Ukraine nothing. We owe Russia nothing. We need absolutely nothing from them. True neutrality isn’t possible until we are extricated from imperial entanglements, including the global supply chain that’s transferred all the labor demand to non Whites in far flung regions we have no interests or influence in.

    • 1. The war in Ukraine has ensured that China and Russia are joined at the hip now. If the goal was to drive a wedge between them, the opposite has occurred. They are also joined in this by all the other enemies our elites have made over there particularly Iran and North Korea.

      2. The people who sent the global supply chain to China in the first place are the same people who are still guiding our foreign policy. Remember, all China has done is emulate Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore. Even the “America First” crowd merely wants to relocate the global supply chain to India.

    • “True neutrality” means NOT giving weapons to either side, and NOT contributing to mass death.

  2. If you look at it long term America created this problem. If you look at it short term I suppose Putin looks bad;

  3. The Rich Lowry’s of the world are willing to roll the dice on the prospect of nuclear war, a war like no other in history for its potential devastation. He is equal parts insane and evil.

    The Ukraine war isn’t even a good distraction anymore for the public which has the attention span of a goldfish anyway. Inflation concerns are overriding everything else as prices continue climbing and the population gets poorer by the day.

    Normally a foreign policy crisis improves the President’s standing with the public as there is a rallying around the flag effect. Not this time though.

    The public is sick of these interminable wars and sees the country disintegrating as wogs invade across the southern border and the country comes apart. Events 5,000 miles away are only a priority for the corrupt ruling class which intends to strip mine the country of assets first chance they get.

    Various polls show Dementia Joe with %40 public support. That means his support is hovering around %30 and going lower. Combined with the the Lügenpresse’s sudden discovery of shocking, I mean shocking crimes on Hunter’s laptop from Hell Dementia Joe is probably on the way out and it’s Cackling Kamala’s turn to be Mr. President.

    Good. Cackling Kamala can join the new Predator looking Supreme Court justice, the Wise Latina, Admiral Levine, The Buttplug, Dementia Joe and a cast of thousands from The Island of Misfit Toys who constitute this clown show of a country. Worse is better now, there is no reforming the system.

    • No. The Nudelmanlandian Nudelmanistas did hit the target they intended: ethnic Russian civilians, including women and children, creating over 100 grisly war crime casualties. This false flag attack was planned by U.S.-UK-Mossad intelligence that gathered a pro-Russian crowd at the location by using fake social media posts, then hit them with the missile. Like the Israelis, the Nudelmanlanders paint messages on their missiles about their intended victims. In this case, the Nudelmanlanders wrote “children” on the missile, because they intended to kill ethnic Russian children.

      Nudelmanland always follows the U.S.’s two most important rules: (1) always lie first, and (2) when you are caught lying, lie harder.

      “Ukraine immediately stated that it was Russia who fired at the people (…) and that it was an Iskander missile with a cluster warhead. When photos of fragments of the missile appeared, it turned out that it was a Tochka-U missile used by the Armed Forces of Ukraine. After that, Zelensky changed his tune and began to claim that it was not an Iskander (…) but a Tochka-U, only Russian (…) But in the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, Tochka-U was officially withdrawn from service with (…) the transition to Iskanders. There is not a single video with the combat use of Tochka-U of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation or the armies of the LDPR in Donbass, even if we assume that they will begin to be taken from long-term storage bases. At the same time, a lot of videos of the combat use of Iskander and other types of missiles. At the same time, Ukraine uses Tochka-U everywhere, including to strike Donetsk, where the SBU specially gathered a rally through fake people in social networks for this blow. The rocket allegedly arrived from the southwest. According to some data, it was shot down. According to others, it worked normally. There was an inscription ‘For Children’ on the rocket. It is also worth noting that the population of Donbass, including Slavyansk and Kramatorsk, is considered disloyal to the Armed Forces of Ukraine, so they can easily be sacrificed”: https://niqnaq.wordpress.com/2022/04/08/colonel-cassad-131/

  4. “It is the story of how America rejected its own origins, which was a rejection of imperialism, and repudiated its own founding stock and their vision of a westward facing continental Republic that avoided entanglements in European wars.”

    America didn’t reject it’s own Origins. The Yankees rejected Virginia, and the Southern Tradition. Then they doubled down on Puritanism, and forced their will on America. The “election” of Joe Biden is just the latest example of the forced, Yankee will, and their middle finger to the rest of America.

    There are plenty of Northerners online, who still think it’s 1865, and who continuously call for of the genocide of their subordinate subjects in Dixie, or Idaho. Or both, while completely ignoring the 21st Century.

    The characters in Washington ignore the 21st century, too

    End Reconstruction. End the War.

  5. The war in Ukraine could have been avoided if the US govt learned to mind their own business and stop pushing their evil ways on other countries.

    • The culpability of the Biden Regime is the same as MacArthur willingly disregarding Chinese warnings they would enter the war if he pushed up to their border. The result was that the Korean war was for all practical purposes over in late 1950 went on for 3 more bloody years and the rotten Kim family is still around. They were told what they were doing in Ukraine meant war and went ahead and did it anyway.

  6. “The last war in Iraq was merely one episode in the same story. It is the story of how America rejected its own origins, which was a rejection of imperialism, and repudiated its own founding stock and their vision of a westward facing continental Republic that avoided entanglements in European wars in order to ape the declining British Empire for the “glory” of lording it over the rest of the world.”

    Perfect.

  7. Trust us you stupid gentiles, an endless war in the Ukraine with no clear purpose and no exit strategy would be nothing at all like those previous open-ended conflicts that we dragged you into. Now start waving those Ukrainian flags, because freedom isn’t free.

  8. 8 APR, 11:19
    Sanctions can be qualified as act of aggression against Russia — Medvedev

    According to the deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, it means that Russia has the right to self-defense

    MOSCOW, April 8. /TASS/. The deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, Dmitry Medvedev, believes that anti-Russian sanctions can be regarded as an act of aggression. In this case, Moscow has the right to self-defense, which it is free to use, he said on his Telegram channel on Friday.

    “The whole combination of the legal and political circumstances prompts the conclusion that sanctions in the current situation can be qualified as an act of aggression against Russia and a form of hybrid war,” Medvedev wrote. “In this case, the country that has been subjected to aggression, in other words, Russia, has the right to individual and collective defense within the framework of national legislation and international law. Nobody should feel any doubts that Russia will use this right in a way and to the extent it will find appropriate.”

    Medvedev stressed that “illegal sanctions under certain circumstances may be qualified as an act of aggression by certain countries or their alliances.”

    “In the first place, when they are aimed at undermining economic independence, and, consequently, state sovereignty, which endangers the very existence of the state. As a matter of fact, as our opponents say, it is a declaration of economic war,” he explained.

    ——-

    Hope Russia declares war on the Yankee Empire because the Yanks are waging war economically against Russia as it did against the Southern states 160+ years ago. We lost and have been a captive territory of the Yankee Empire for the last 160 years but Russia has a very good chance of wiping out our eternal foe forever.

    Secede now!

    May God Save the South!

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