The bill calls on President Barack Obama to “provide the government of Ukraine with lethal and non-lethal defense articles, services, and training required to effectively defend its territory and sovereignty.”
In other words, the way to deal with the Ukraine situation is to arm Ukraine.
Critics of the bill aren’t impressed, saying it looks like a dangerous rewriting of history. And it’s also very hypocritical.
“There are so many errors and mistakes and misinterpretations and dis-interpretations,”Francis Boyle, professor of international law at the University of Illinois College of Law, told Sputnik. “This is nothing but neoconservative propaganda.”
More concerning, such provocation “will worse tensions all around,” said Gordon Hahn, an expert on U.S.-Russian relations and author of Russia's Islamic Threat, Russia's Revolution From Above, 1985-2000 and The Caucasus Emirate Mujahedin: Global Jihadism in Russia's North Caucasus and Beyond.
“This is a very dangerous move which doesn’t make much sense to me,” Hahn told Sputnik. “One interpretation here is someone wants a confrontation with Russia over this, hoping it will topple Putin.”
U.S. Aggression
HR758 might “strongly condemn” “aggression against neighboring countries aimed at political and economic domination,” but, apparently for the U.S. House, similar aggression on the part of the U.S. in non-neighboring countries is just fine: there was that little foray into Iraq, for example. Remember the weapons of mass destruction there? Don’t worry, the investigators looking for them don’t remember them either.
Never mind Afghanistan, Vietnam, Korea, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras and Iran. And those are just the ones that roll off the top of the head.
Only when the U.S. does it can we call it something else: an “operation to reinforce peace,” perhaps, being careful in the choice of target locations of such operations. There aren’t any peace-reinforcing troops in South Sudan, for example. They could certainly do with some peace there, but sadly, the South Sudanese have no geopolitical or strategic advantages to offer Washington in return. They only have famine.
The resolution accuses Russia of invading Ukraine and condemns Moscow's violation of Ukrainian sovereignty.
Last we checked, there remains no proof of such an action. As former U.S. Congressman Ron Paul puts it, "Surely with our sophisticated satellites that can read a license plate from space we should have video and pictures of this Russian invasion. None have been offered."
And why, by the way, is it a violation of sovereignty when Russia "invades" Ukraine (which it hasn't,) and it's not a violation of sovereignty when the U.S. participates in a coup that overthrows a democratically-elected government there?
"We have all heard the tapes of State Department officials plotting with the US Ambassador in Ukraine to overthrow the government," writes Paul. "We heard US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland bragging that the US spent $5 billion on regime change in Ukraine. Why is that OK?"
HR758 goes on to lambast the "fraudulent and illegal elections" held by "separatist forces" in eastern Ukraine "for the supposed purpose of choosing leaders of the illegitimate local political entities they have declared."
It seems a general rule these days that whenever elections are held abroad where the outcome benefits U.S. interests, those polls are lauded by Washington as free and fair. Why does the U.S. refuse to recognize the rights to self-determination of eastern Ukrainians?
Let’s fight fire with fire
HR758 declares with absolute certainty that Malaysia Airlines flight 17 was brought down by "Russian-backed separatist forces in eastern Ukraine."
Last we checked, we're still waiting for a final report on the investigation of the crash.
And what's with the resolution's criticism of Moscow's "coercive economic measures" against Kiev? Isn't this the proverbial pot calling the kettle black? Isn't this what Washington has been doing to Moscow for months with sanctions?
The Resolution also expresses concern that Russia "has expanded the presence of its state-sponsored media in national languages across central and western Europe with the intent of using news and information to distort public opinion and obscure Russian political and economic influence in Europe."
“Distorting public opinion” seems to suggest that someone (someone) holds a legitimate monopoly on the public’s decision making process.
In the very next breath, HR758 expresses the need to boost U.S. propaganda in the Russian language to Russian speakers worldwide. Never mind that the U.S. has been doing that for decades already through Voice of America and Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, entities the resolution seeks to bolster.
Russia only learned from the best.
Escalating Aggression with Russia
HR758’s petulant list of demands concludes by calling “for the reestablishment of a close a cooperative relationship between the people of the United States and the Russian people based on the shared pursuit of democracy, human rights, and peace among all nations.”
In other words: do what we say, to the letter, and then we can be buddies again. Sounds like the grounds for a good solid friendship.
Boyle sees HR758 as evidence that “neocons are really driving American foreign policy across the board especially in regards to Russia.”
He adds that the resolution could have been drafted by Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former National Security Advisor and advocate for NATO expansion. Brzezinski wrote in 1998 that "Without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be a Eurasian empire."
Plus, Boyle says, fulfilling the resolution would be illegal.
“Basically we have a civil war in Ukraine right now and when there’s a civil war, under international law, all sides have an obligation to refrain from military intervention,” he says. “That means both the U.S. and Russia.”
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