[See Round I: HERE]
Editors’ note: Below is the second – and final – round of Frontpage’s exchange between the Freedom Center’s Shillman Fellow Daniel Greenfield and Ted Belman, the editor and publisher of Israpundit.org. We hope our readers will find this dialogue/debate hosted by Frontpage to be thought-provoking and informative. See our previous exchange between Joseph Puder and Daniel Greenfield on Israel’s ‘Balancing Act’ in the Russia-Ukraine War.
Belman:
Daniel doesn’t in any way attack the case I made for blaming the U.S. He writes it off as being a product of the “blame America Syndrome”.
What he does do, is set out facts in an attempt to justify what the U.S. did. Presumably that includes the CIA sponsored coup in 2014 and the Ukrainian killing of 14,000 Russian speaking Ukrainians since then in the Donbass.
Like I wrote, some people think this is a good thing, others don’t.
Finally, he ignores the UN backed treaty which prioritizes self-determination over sovereignty. But that’s OK, everybody in the West does.
Greenfield:
Mr. Belman would like to go into the rights and wrongs of the Russia-Ukraine conflict. I’ll leave that to the Russians and Ukrainians who have strong views on the subject and have been settling them by killing each other for a whole lot of centuries. And will go on doing that for as long as they exist.
I’m not a Russian or Ukrainian: I’m an American.
My point is simple and clear. The conflict began centuries ago. It’s not the fault of the United States.
And no American should fall for attempts to blame other people’s wars on us. America is not the world’s policeman, that also means we’re not the world’s scapegoat.
That’s America First.
I used to think the rest of the world would be grateful for our help. But a lot of them are ingrates or ignorami. Or enemies.
I agree but I am also disturbed by the politicization and corruption of our government agencies which are affecting our ability to self govern. There’s a domino effect that in turn affects our National and global influences. Take a good look at California or our missing border(s). How long can any country remain sovereign as our institutions and infrastructure crumble at an ever quickening pace? Another strategic disaster is American citizenship. It is being canceled by the invasion of millions of non citizens. Lest we forget, How many non vetted Afghanistans did the Biden administration usher in during the Afghanistan abandonment? Is anyone minding the store? Add to all of this, a mainstream media that is corrupt beyond being redeemable…
It all comes down to…. did they ask us for help?
Or did we insert ourselves yet again for the benefit of the “industrial military complex?”
The conflict did NOT start centuries ago. It started at the end of February 2014 when Russian forces attacked Ukraine and seized Crimea. Later that spring Russia sent forces to seize the eastern parts of Ukraine masking it clumsily as a local “uprising”!
In February of 2022 Russia continued with a massive all out attack on Ukraine.
So why do we need to get involved?
It was Lenin which granted Ukraine as a separate legal state. It was admitted to the UN as a separate independent state. Whatever went on centuries before is not in the context of today’s integrated world. This violent war started with the military invasion by Russia into Ukraine. This directly threatens NAYO and violates the UN Charter. There are peaceful ways to go about deciding political issues. However, Russia has a policy of using force. Considering that the United States sees Russia as a threat (and as it does China) requiring a defense budget of over $800 billion plus the billions spent in other departments as State and Treasury. While I dearly love to read Daniel’s articles, I am afraid on this one I have an opposite point of view. It is the policy of the United States to oppose its enemies and to support its friends especially ones where the US has given a writtenguarantee of protection in the 1990s.
Ukrainians speak Ukranian and Russians speak Russian. It isn’t just one conflict, but many over the centuries, NATO (controled by the US) and whatever US Sate deoartment operative, maybe Victoria Nuland sought to take new advantage of the ongoing conflicts and overthrew the Russia friendly Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych in 2014 to facilitate an eastern expansion of NATO. Putin wasn’t happy about NATO snuggling up behind Russia like that , and wasn;t happy about the Ukrainians roving around Donbass and other Russian speaking Ukrainian provinces killing Russian speaking Ukrainians. Russia is not going to wilingly abandon them and have NATO on their backs. I don’t see the benefit of risking nuclear war with Russia or forcing Russia into an alliance with China. NATO is rapidly losing warfighting ability including a complete loss of morale and is going full transgender etc, along with the woke Democrat election thieves and General Millie and the worthless and incompetent twit Lloyd Austin. The USA is riding for a fall. A big fall.
“The conflict began centuries ago” is false. Ukraine did not exist centuries ago. Ukraine was created by the Bolsheviks in 1919 and is a product of communists’ geopolitical engineering. Anyone interested should read “Since When did Ukrainians Become Entitled to the State they Got?.”
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/02/_since_when_did_ukrainians_become_entitled_to_a_giant_state_.html
Well argued Ted !
If Greenfield thinks the America of today has any resemblance to America of the past he is completely deluded.
America is a post-national semi-dictatorship pushing a WEF sponsored “progressive”
One World Government. Perhaps when Greenfield is censored he might wake up.
Nobody is suggesting that Russia is the “good guy with a good system of government”
but to ignore a nuclear powers’ insecurity and the attempt to push “your form of totalitarianism” on them is extremely stupid and dangerous, especially when your form is basically evil and malignant.
Daniel
As I commented on the first debate. You are contradicting yourself again. If The Russians and Ukrainians are killing each other for a whole lot of centuries. Why on earth you are defending The USA for getting into the middle of the fight. Mr. Belman has point for better or worst The USA is getting involved in the centuries old conflict . Also Mr. Belman is accusing you of name calling and you are not refuting it.
It is becoming clear that Daniel is arguing an issue he knows nothing about. As I pointed out in my previous comment, it is not an ethnic conflict, and it could not have been going on for hundreds of years because Lenin created Ukraine in 1919 on the territories of the former Russian Empire. NATO’s eastward expansion deliberately set off this conflict. That is a fact.
America First would have been to not overthrow the duly elected Ukrainian government in the first place. The next America First thing would have been to not insist on NATO in the Ukraine. The third America First thing to do would be to not send weapons and billions of dollars to Ukraine. The current AMerica First thing to do would be to sit down for peace talks with Russia and Ukraine, lift the sanctions on Russia, trade with them like normal people, and then don’t interfere with their internal affairs.