In an effort to be fair to my least liked Progressive Mouth Piece, The Guardian, we look at a couple of Articles, one of which is pretty good and another that is execrable.
Simon Jenkins’ July 15th piece casts a critical eye over Kier Starmer’s recent, astonishingly ill-considered, pompous, sabre rattling pronouncements about how he hopes British missiles will be fired deep into Russia. I agree with Simon Jenkins that too many European leaders seem to be making alarmingly bellicose statements about how we should punish and attack Russia on behalf of the Ukraine. No one, not me, not anyone I know, is saying that Russia is not at fault but do we really want to deal only in threats and violence? Is no one interested in seeking a diplomatic compromise? Of course we can if we wish dismiss diplomacy as mere appeasement. But I think casting Putin as another Hitler and seeing him as poised to invade Europe is unconvincing. Let’s not forget that Putin was actually at the negotiating table with Zelensky and had agreed a formula for ceasing hostilities. That agreement would never have been the end of the affair but it could have been a start. It was America and Britain who derailed it, not Putin.
What I hear now is a political intransigence masquerading as moral rectitude. Of course nations should not go around invading each other. But every situation has its particular nuances. There was and is a large ethnic Russian population in the Eastern Donbass. There was a desire among them to separate from Ukraine and be part of Russia. Should their wishes, their desire for self determination, be taken into account?
Moral purity is like silk. It feels good to slip into. You look and feel smart. But the real world demands not so much dressing to impress, as dressing for the prevailing conditions. And the conditions involve lots of different agenda’s and conflicting desires. The agreement Putin and Zelesky had ‘agreed’ but not signed was to make Ukraine a neutral state; not part of any Russian federation nor part of NATO. That would have been a good starting place.
And for those who feel any compromise is wrong, who want to take the ‘We never negotiate with terrorists’ sort of line, let’s consider that the British government and the IRA secretly negotiated, despite decades of killing. And however messy and distasteful it might have felt to those involved those compromises led to the lasting peace we have today. Were they wrong?
I can’t help but wonder if the European leaders who are so very keen on going to war with Russia aren’t trying to look tough and beat their chests about moral rectitude because they don’t want anyone to look at the utter shambles of their own houses.
Then there is this travesty from The Guardian on the 17th of July: Trump’s choice of Vance ‘terrible news’ for Ukraine, Europe experts warn. If you haven’t read it take a quick look. The journalist quotes from an expert but the quote is pure opinion rather than delivering any new expert knowledge or analysis. And the opinion quoted is tendentious to say the least. The journalist offers no critique or analysis of the expert’s opinion, brings no other perspective to bear. The opinion, clothed as it is in the authority of being uttered by an ‘expert’ is presented as if it should be accepted without question.
Ian and I then contrast the Guardian’s expert with a different ‘expert’ opinion quoted in an article in Le Monde Diplomatique, “Russia: why the sanctions failed to bite”. Of course you could say well how is this article any better? It has its own expert offering a different ‘expert’ opinion. So what? The difference I see is that the second expert offers facts and an argument you can follow and question as justification for his opinion. Not just raw opinion with no analysis which is what you got, and regularly get, in The Guardian.
Anyway, you don’t have to take my word for it, you can read both articles and decide for yourself.
The long and the short of it is that it feels to me as if a number of European politicians led by Macron and Starmer, cheered on by the mainstream progressive press, want to herd us into a morally puritan, diplomatically closed road to a wider, longer, bloodier war.
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