Putin & Zelensky: Sinners and saints who fit our historic narrative

Responsible Statecraft   Putin & Zelensky:  Sinners and saints who fit our historic narrative Think about why the West wants to invoke WWII and the Cold War here, and then ask whether it's been productive. February 21, 2023 By Stephen Kinzer   This is part of our weeklong series marking the one-year anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, February 24, 2022. See all of the stories here. While war rages in Ukraine, all is blissfully peaceful on the home front. Americans have embraced the official narrative. No western movie ever drew the good-versus-evil line so clearly or crudely. The White House, Congress, and the press insist that Ukraine is the innocent victim of unprovoked aggression, that Russian forces will threaten all of Europe if they are not stopped, and that the United States must stand with Ukraine "for as long as it takes" to assure victory. Dissenting from this consensus is all but impossible. Even in the run-up to our 2003 invasion of Iraq, a few lonely voices cried out for restraint. Since we plunged into the Ukraine War, such voices are even harder to find. Today it is considered heretical, if not treasonous, to suggest that all parties to the Ukraine conflict bear some blame,  to argue that the United States should not pour sophisticated weapons into an active war zone, or to question whether we have any vital interest in the outcome of this conflict. A strictly enforced intellectual no-fly zone has all but suffocated rational debate about Ukraine. [Continue Reading]