The Left's Argument for Peace in Ukraine

Only a Masochist would Meme about Ukraine, part II

May 13, 2025

If you haven’t already, please check out part one of this series: Only a Masochist Would Meme About Ukraine

THE NEOCONSERVATIVE DUOPOLY

Before getting into who is against the war in Ukraine, let’s discuss the people who are for it. These people are the national security state, the majority of both Democrats and Republicans in congress, the military industrial complex and corporate American media.

The war has been the baby of Joe Biden and the Democrats but ultimately it is a bipartisan neoconservative war. The neoconservatives were historically Republicans, best exemplified by George Bush and Dick Cheney. But as the power dynamic shifted to Obama and then Biden the neocons changed what party they were aligned with and the Democrats are now firmly the party of war. On issues of foreign policy and war-time powers of government surveillance there is no difference between the Bush and Biden administrations.

“Putin’s latest attack on Ukraine was premeditated and totally unprovoked,” Biden said in his State of the Union Address after the invasion. “He rejected repeated efforts at diplomacy. He thought the west and NATO wouldn’t respond. He thought he could divide us in this chamber and in this nation. He thought he could divide us in Europe as well. But Putin was wrong. We are United and we stayed United . . . we shared with the world what we knew in advance Putin was planning and precisely how he would try to justify and falsify his aggression. We countered Russia’s lies with the truth.”

But Biden is the one lying here. NATO expansion has made this the most provoked war in history, and the American policy was to actively sabotage peace agreements.

“It is modern day appeasement,” Joe Biden said in a May 5th interview regarding ceding territory to Russia in a peace agreement. “Listen to what Putin said when he talked about going from Kiev into Ukraine and why, he can’t stand the fact that the Russian dictatorship that he runs, that the Soviet Union has collapsed. Anybody who thinks he is going to stop is just foolish.”

You can tell this is not a SloppyMemes original as it isn’t too wordy.

The quote shows Biden is still endorsing the “domino theory” of Russian aggression. The original domino theory that if America does not fight communism in Vietnam, communism will spread all over Asia. The new theory is if America does not stop Russia in Ukraine, then the Russian Federation will conquer all of Europe. Baby boomers who opposed the Vietnam war but support the Ukraine war have forgotten history’s lesson. Before the U.S. sent in its own troops it had sent military aide to the South Vietnamese to fight a proxy war against the Chinese backed North Vietnamese.

Following the invasion Anthony Blinken told the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations: “It is abundantly clear in President Putin’s own words, that this was never about NATO and it was always about his belief that Ukraine does not deserve to be a sovereign independent country and must be reassumed into Russia in one form or another.”

Blinken was lying. Ukraine or Georgia joining NATO has been a redline for Russian leadership since the 1990s.

“Yes this is about an aggression towards Ukraine and the about horrific things that are being done to innocent people but it is also an act of aggression against the entire international system,” Blinken told 60 Minutes in September 2022. “If one country can get away with acts of aggression against another, if it can simply go in and say, ‘you know what, I’m going to take over that country. I’m going to change its borders. I’m going to grab its territory.’ If that is allowed to happen with impunity, then what happens? It says to every would-be aggressor ‘it’s open season. I can do this too.”

It is statements like this that makes countries in the global south — Brazil being the biggest example — laugh at the U.S. and withhold their support. There is nothing more hypocritical than the United States saying it is wrong to invade and meddle in other countries. From Vietnam, to Iraq, Afghanistan, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Palestine, Venezuala, Congo and many others, America has been on invading, overthrowing governments and/or changing the borders of other nations non-stop since World War II.

Republican Senator Lindsay Graham, a noted neoconservative who has never seen a war he didn’t like, and has consistently boosted funding for Ukraine over the past three years, had this to say to “Meet the Press” in June 2024 about the U.S.’s motives for helping Ukraine:

“Ukraine is sitting on ten to twelve trillion dollars of critical minerals. They could be the richest country in all of Europe. I don’t want to give that money and those assets to Putin to share with China. If we help Ukraine now they can become the best business partner we ever dreamed of. Those assets could be used by Ukraine and the west and not given to Putin and China. This is a very big deal how Ukraine ends. Let’s help them win a war we can’t afford to lose. They are sitting on a gold mine,” said Graham.

This reveals how the U.S. has major economic interests in Ukraine. The Republican position has changed on this over the past year as now the mineral deal is supposed to be a security guarantee for Ukraine after a peace settlement. Then add the fact that cutting off Russia as an energy supplier to Europe makes them more dependent on U.S. energy – as well as Blackrock and JPMorgan have contracted to take a major role in reconstruction after the war.

In a meeting with Zelenskyy in 2024 Graham gloated over the great investment of funding a proxy war against Russia: “Russians are dying. It’s the best money we’ve ever spent.”

“The industrial level war crimes that have been committed against the Ukrainian people, if they are forgiven in the name of peace you will have destroyed everything we have worked for since the end of World War II,” Graham later said in public statement. “There can be no forgiving or forgetting when it comes to Putin’s war crimes. There can be no backing off of helping Ukraine because if we fail here there goes Taiwan . . . if you are running for president as a Democrat or a Republican I don’t see how you can make the argument that we are stronger against China if we pull the plug on Ukraine . . . the best way to protect Taiwan and world order is for Putin to lose.”

This is another Republican talking point for supporting the war. If America shows weakness against Russia on Ukraine, then China will take Taiwan. This is a ridiculous argument. The two situations are not related. Republicans want to connect the two in order to fear monger and sabre rattle against China.

After passing a $95 billion-dollar military aide bill to Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan, House Speaker (R- Louisiana) Mike Johnson stated: “Three of our adversaries, Russia, Iran and China are working together and they are being aggressors around the globe. They are a global threat to our prosperity and security . . . this bill has a number of very important features. It provides for greater accountability of Ukraine aide funding, it forces an end game strategy for the Ukraine war, includes a loan instrument for the foreign aide to Ukraine and the repo act to ensure that Russian assets pay part of the bill . . . and remember 80% of Ukraine funding will go towards the replenishment of American weapons and stocks.”

The way this bill was framed is in response to the Republican wing of the party that want to defund Ukraine, saying this may be the last time the congress approves major funding for Ukraine. And by tying it to funding for Israel he was sure to get the votes of many of these Republicans. Still the neoconservative wing of the Republican party want to continue their support for Ukraine and if Trump’s peace negotiations fail there will be more support in the future. By saying we need this bill to defend against Russia, Iran and China he is returning to George Bush’s rhetoric about the Axis of Evil. The dissembling nature of Republican politicians is self evident when you see that they were elected with a mandate to pursue an America First agenda, yet the first thing they did was fund foreign wars in Ukraine and Israel.

There has been a split within the Republican party between traditional neoconservatives and younger members of the MAGA movement who want to stop sending aide to Ukraine. I will discuss the anti-war right’s argument against funding the proxy war in part three of this series. Because of this split on the right, the war in Ukraine is widely seen as a war supported by Democrats. Rank-and-file Democrats now see support for Ukraine as a fundamental belief equal in importance to support for abortion or LGBTQ rights. In the widely attended “hands off” protests against the Trump administration, “hands off NATO” and “hands off Ukraine” were listed in their demands.

The media who support this war include both organizations that identify as liberal, including CNN and The New York Times, and those that identify as conservative such as The Daily Wire, The New York Post and Fox News. Corporate media, who have always had a pro-war bias, challenge politicians who support the war with these simple questions: why aren’t you doing more? Why don’t you send more weapons and send them faster? What can be done to escalate this war more, and how can we as journalists help the war effort? The media never ask what politicians are doing to negotiate peace or reduce the death toll. They are willfully incurious as to the real reasons the war started in the first place.

Conservative new outlets have changed their tune on Ukraine in recent months to conform with the Trump administration’s talking points, as he moves to negotiate peace and muscle Ukraine into a mineral deal — all part of a plan for America to gain energy dominance over Europe. Sean Hannity is now all on board with Trump’s plan despite the fact that for most of the war’s duration he and the network had been staunch supporters of funding the war. Hannity’s counterpoint, Rachel Maddow, is doubling down and going with the narrative that Trump and Putin are conspiring to take down the U.S. government and dismantle its spy networks — all in a nefarious plot to weaken America to the point where it will no longer be able to fight Russian imperialism.

Background checks on Ryan Routh, who attempted to assasinate Donald Trump, show that he had volunteered to fight in Ukraine and he believed the greatest threat to America is Donald Trump. So basically he was radicalized by CNN/MSNBC.

JORDAN KLEPPER’S SOFT WAR PROPAGANDA

And why, you might ask, is Jordan Klepper of The Daily Show’s head included in the top graphic? Because although Klepper is not the worst on this subject -- Rachel Maddow is by far the worst -- he is an example of soft cultural propaganda, where war propaganda is just another show on TV to entertain you. Like how you might come to believe beating suspects in interrogation rooms is justifiable because the Law and Order: Special Victims Unit cops must get information fast so they can stop those kid diddlers.

Klepper’s special Moscow Tools takes advantage of the worst narratives of Trumpers being useful idiots to Putin and found the dumbest people he could find in the MAGA crowd to prove his point. He got a few MAGA rubes to who say they admire Putin’s leadership and appreciate how he represents Christian values. Klepper then moves on to argue that Republicans were better when they were Russia hawks during the cold war. He interviews neocon John Bolton to get an explanation for why MAGA are so dumb and evil – Bolton’s answer is they have strayed too far from Reagan. Then Klepper repeats discredited Russiagate theories that he knows his audience have absorbed into their mind as truth. He follows this up by highlighting a website that posted a fake story about Zelenskyy using U.S. funds to buy a couple of yachts — a story repeated by prominent Republicans. This expose of misinformation helps Klepper’s argument and undermines the truth that Ukrainian politicians and gangsters are stealing massive amounts of the money and arms the U.S. has sent as aid. A top Zelenskyy advisor told a reporter at Time Magazine, “people are stealing like there’s no tomorrow.” This makes it easy for Klepper to convince his audience of a bigger lie: Ukrainians are all honest. Those corruption stories are fake news, folks!

Next he interviews Kline Preston — a GOP representative who is a Russophile with Russian connections — as if this cherry-picked goon is somehow representative of the anti-war right. Then he interviews an Estonian politician with the angle of how essential NATO is and how Europe will be conquered by Russia if it is ever disbanded. Klepper is oblivious to how militarily aggressive and damaging to the world NATO has been. Unironically the politician says Russia is the bully and America is the “big friend,” like America has never done any bullying prior to Trump’s presidency.

His argument is that only the dumbest of the dumb on the right are against war funding for Ukraine. They are against it because they’re racists who love white Christian authoritarians. And that’s it. His argument is because these people are dumb then the war must be right. Klepper has taken the old Jay Leno “Jaywalking” bit of doing man on the street interviews with random dummies who don’t know simple trivia, and turned it into a vehicle for neoconservative propaganda. He does not address a single logical argument for peace talks in Ukraine and he assumes only a “MAGA moron” would be against Ukraine funding. It never occurs to him that there could actually be an intelligent leftist argument. Well in fact, there is an excellent leftist argument that I will get into now.

THE LEFT’S ARGUMENT AGAINST THE WAR

In October 2022 the “progressive caucus” of Democrats in congress issued a tepidly worded letter to President Biden saying that although they will continue to vote for war funding they would like it to be accompanied by a policy of diplomacy so a peaceful settlement could end the bloodshed. This is because progressives know in their hearts what endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have shown us: that the military industrial complex profits, the people suffer and die, and in the end the other side wins anyway (as in the Taliban now rule Afghanistan again and power in Iraq is divided among the Shi’tes, Kurds and Sunnis).

They received the expected McCarthyite response. The progressives were savaged by war pig Democrats and Republicans alike as unpatriotic, and the “liberal” media almost blew a fuse shouting about how their words were treasonous appeasement and likely due to Kremlin’s influence. A day later the progressives retracted the letter and said that it had not been properly vetted. They had been easily defeated by negative press in less than twenty-four hours and now knew that they must never speak of peace again. Ever since the progressives have voted for Ukraine war funding without complaint. This is consistent with how progressives have always been subservient to the conservative wing of the Democratic party and have failed in their fights on most subjects like universal health care, higher minimum wage, student-debt relief, etc. They are the “controlled opposition” and allowed to only speak out on non-economic issues like reproductive and LGBTQ rights. Oh wait, they can say bad things about oligarchs as long as the only oligarch they say by name is Elon Musk.

And that’s it. That’s all our “progressive” politicians have done about the war.

GOD BLESS CODE PINK

Has there been any leftist demonstrations against America’s proxy war? Yes, by one small group called Code Pink. Code Pink have confronted politicians on numerous occasions, shouting at them at town halls and public events about why they are not negotiating peace. Every time they are dragged out by security. On Twitter they have been mercilessly smeared by neocons who say they are funded by China and in league with Russia – both lies. When Code Pink protested outside of Nancy Pelosi’s house about the genocide in Gaza Pelosi made the accusation that they were funded by the Chinese Communist Party. Later when protesting at a Senate hearing Republican Senator Charles Grassley made the same accusation, and later wrote a letter to the FBI saying they should have to disclose behavior benefiting foreign entities. His goal of course was to chill free speech.

Here is a video of Code Pink, lead by Medea Benjamin, protesting in Bernie Sander’s office.

Code Pink also have put out an excellent video called Making Sense of a Senseless War, which distills the left argument against the war into 18 minutes. Check it out:

NOAM CHOMSKY’S ARGUMENT FOR PEACE

Who are the left peace movement? Noam Chomsky, Pope Francis, former Bernie Bro Youtube channels who have given up on the Democratic party, a few European intellectuals like economist Yanis Yaroufakis, anti-war journalists at the Greyzone and Code Pink. That is the entire left movement against the war in Ukraine. A small group of the hated and the despised.

What is the argument specifically? The first part is to explain the context of the war in a non-propagandized way. This shows how although the aggressions of Russia are not justified, Russia’s terms for peace are reasonable. The second is to explain what these terms are and how peace can be reached. The left’s argument for peace negotiations in Ukraine is best represented in a few interviews with Noam Chomsky.

In a C-SPAN interview from April 3 2022 Chomsky explained the peace position.

“Ambassador Chas Freeman said in an interview that US policy seems to be to fight Russia to the last Ukrainian. We have formulated no feasible goals that lead to an exit from this tragedy. So we can keep pouring in arms, we’re good at that, to escalate the fighting. More Ukrainians will die, more Russians will die. It goes nowhere, just towards further escalation.

“Is there a possible diplomatic settlement? Yes there is. Chaz Freeman laid it out and everyone knows what it is. This has been going on (negotiated) for thirty years I should say. A rough outline for the settlement is a neutralized Ukraine that is not part of a military block and an internal settlement like in Switzerland, Belgium and others, that will guarantee the rights of the Russian speaking minority to have autonomy in their own regions. It is formulated in an agreement called Minsk II. If we don’t want to fight to the last Ukrainian, we have to offer Vladimir Putin an escape hatch or else the current policy is a death warrant for Ukrainians. Putin has to have some way to escape from this without what amounts to suicide. If we send the current message that you’re going to face war crimes trials and there’s nothing you can do about it, and sanctions will continue no matter what happens, we are telling him fight on to the last Ukrainian.

“On September 2021 the U.S. issued a policy statement (not reported by U.S. press) reiterating and amplifying the policy that had been in effect for many years. It says the door for Ukrainian entry into NATO is wide open and we’re inviting you to join NATO. And it says the United States will intensify the sending of advanced military weapons to Ukraine. It will continue with joint U.S./Ukrainian military operations. All of this will be placing U.S. military weapons in Ukraine aimed at Russia. All of this is part of the enhanced NATO admissions program. Well, that is a call for the horrors that have fallen.”

“Wars can end in one of two ways. Either one side destroys the other or by negotiations. We (the U.S.) prefer the first part. You can be confident that it is not Russia that is going to be destroyed. Ukraine could conceivably drive Russia out of Ukraine, but they are not going to destroy Russia. Russia can easily destroy Ukraine. If you believe what respected western commentators are saying, you can read them in the Atlantic Council and elsewhere, they are saying Russia is so crazy they could do anything, so therefore we have to refuse negotiations and ensure Russia destroys Ukraine. That’s the logic . . . and the U.S. is not just refusing negotiations it is undermining them.”

In an interview with TV Rain Newsroom on May 25, 2023 Chomsky said, “When the U.S. and Britain go after a country they go right for the jugular, they destroy communication, transportation and energy right away. Russia have fought a bitter brutal vicious war but it hasn’t done that. Life goes on in Kiev. Western Ukraine has been harmed but not seriously. Russia has not even destroyed the supply lines. So it is a brutal vicious war but not at the level the U.S. and Britain go to war (like the Iraq war).”

“American propaganda says the invasion of Ukraine is something absolutely unique and we cannot tolerate one country attacking another and we have all this wonderful rhetoric about our commitment to international law and so on, then in that context I say what the rest of the world says: you’re a total hypocrite and a liar. Your own wars are even worse.

“Either it will be a negotiated diplomatic settlement, or it will not. That’s logic and you can’t argue with that. Suppose it’s not a diplomatic settlement. Two possibilities. One: one side or the other will capitulate. Two: it’ll be a stalemate and both sides will wear each other down like in the first world war and Ukraine will probably be destroyed and Russia will be severely damaged. So if one side capitulates what side will it be? It’s not going to be Russia. If they were ever facing defeat, which is unlikely, they would simply escalate. They would start moving to attack the supply lines, get into conflicts with NATO and soon we would be in a terminal nuclear war. So Russia is not going to capitulate, we don’t want Ukraine to capitulate, we don’t want a stalemate.

“That leaves one option: a diplomatic resolution. Well, what would it look like? Russia is not going to abandon its control of Sevastopol which it held sense 1783, it’s only warm water port. So Russia is going to maintain that. What about Crimea? Well, the right answer would be to carry out an internationally sponsored referendum in Crimea to see what people want. According to the mainstream American journals, like Foreign Affairs, the main establishment journal, Crimeans want to be annexed by Russia. We can find out with a referendum and if that’s what it turns out to be then OK. If there is some sort of land bridge between Crimea and Russia and some form of autonomy within a Russian Federation for the Donbas region, roughly the Mink arrangements and a guarantee that Ukraine will be not part of a hostile military alliance. Those are the rough outlines of what could be a diplomatic settlement. Can it be reached? Only one way to find out. Try.”

In an interview with Lex Friedman on August 31, 2022 Chomsky discussed how Americans are the most propagandized people in the world.

“The question of seeking ways to end the crime (war) before even worse disasters arise is not discussed in the west. Anyone who dares is immediately subjected to a flood of invective and hysterical condemnation.”

“Let me quote Graham Fuller. He was very highly placed in U.S. intelligence, one of the top officials for decades dealing mostly with Russia and Central Asia. He recently said in all the years of the Cold War he has never seen any extreme Russophobia to the extent that he sees today. I think that’s pretty accurate. The U.S. has even canceled Russian outlets which means if you want to find out what Sergei Lavrov or other Russian officials are saying you can’t look it up on their own outlets you have to go through Al Jazeera or Indian State Television or some place where they still allow Russian positions to be expressed. And of course, the propaganda is just outlandish.”

The video above and quote below from a Times Radio interview on April 25, 2023, with conservative British interviewer Matt Chorley are interesting because they are an example of the obtuseness of the pro-war agenda. Chomsky lays out easy-to-understand facts. Then Chorley achieves the difficult goal of angering his guest with questions that ignore the facts he was just told.

“I’m talking about extreme hypocrisy about claims of how this is the worst thing that ever happened when it’s a fraction of what we do all this time. That’s why the global south is watching with ridicule as pompous western commentators try to lecture them on ‘why don’t you join us in opposing this terrible crime?’ they laugh in ridicule: that’s what you have been doing to us forever.’

“Almost the entire top of the political policy class and diplomatic core who know anything about Russia have been arguing for thirty years that it is reckless and dangerous to try to cross what is a redline for every Russian leader, Yeltsin, Gorbachev, everyone, and that is to allow Georgia or Ukraine to enter NATO. That’s been clear for thirty years. Did Putin make a mistake? Of course. Not only was it a criminal act of aggression, it was an act of criminal stupidity. He’s driven Europe into Washington’s control. It’s a gift to the United States on a silver platter. Finland and Sweden is a different issue. There has never been the slightest threat to Sweden or Finland from Russia.”

“What would happen if Mexico decided to join a Chinese run military alliance that sent heavy weapons to Mexico aimed at the United States, and that integrated Mexican and Chinese military systems? It would be blown away.”

“The western party line which Western intellectuals are instructed to adhere to rigorously says that if you tell the facts that is justifying Russia. No, it is not justifying Russia it is saying ‘here are the facts that we should face.’ If you get out of the western propaganda bubble and move to the global south everybody says this.’

“Putin has amassed enormous wealth for himself, he runs a harsh authoritarian state and he’s carrying out a brutal war; but that doesn’t change the facts about the immense hypocrisy and the lies and the fabrications and the suppressions of crucial facts.”

In a more recent interview from January 2025 with Glenn Diesen, Chomsky discusses why it is important for America to take risks with Ukraine. In previous interviews he had laid out the terms for peace, but it is interesting to read how he interprets the events that have occurred over the past three years.

“The U.S is gaining enormously from the war. Europe is being badly hit. Europe is harmed by the sanctions much more than Russia is. In fact the whole German base, the industrial system, the sophisticated complicated system which has been the core of the most successful economic system in the world and of European development is under threat. Even threatened by possible deindustrialization. Ukraine is devastated, and Russia isn’t suffering economically but it does have tens if not hundreds of thousands of casualties. Many commentators have pointed out that for the United States it’s a bargain that for a small fraction of the military budget they are able to degrade and destroy a large part of the military of one of their main adversaries in the world.

“The reason the media insist on calling it an unprovoked invasion is because they know perfectly well it was provoked. There were extensive provocations going back to the 1990s. That doesn’t mean justified, but it is obviously provoked. And the U.S. invasion of Iraq which was much worse than the Russian invasion of Ukraine was completely unprovoked. It tells you a lot about propaganda to see the way the phrase ‘unprovoked invasion’ has become essential. You have to call it that. The propaganda is quite sophisticated.

Biden and many members of the congress and senate said openly they would destroy the Nordstream 2 pipeline — but when they finally did it they claimed the Russians blew up their own pipeline (because technically it was an act of war against Germany). Later they changed the story to say a rogue Ukrainian did it without Zelenskyy’s knowledge. This is remiscent of the JFK assassination lone gunman theory.

“Take another example. The sabotage of the Nordstream pipeline. It was immediately blamed on the Russians which is inconceivable. Why would they sabotage their own major capital investment and for what possible purpose? If you ask which country has the motivation and capability to destroy the pipeline it’s obvious: the United States. It’s not a secret even, they kept saying we have to stop this pipeline. Biden said we are going to stop this. But you cannot say this. There was a recent spate of articles out saying ‘there is now skepticism that Russia blew up the pipeline.’ That’s brilliant propaganda. We have now established the assumption that Russia is responsible, not us. But to show how free and open we are we allow some skepticism of this idiotic idea. I’m sure the rest of the world is laughing because who else could have done this? Seymour Hersh wrote an article giving details about what should have been obvious and they called him an anti-American Putin lover.

“Take a look at western propaganda. George Orwell had a concept called doublethink, which is to have two ideas in mind which are contradictory and to believe both of them. And he thought it was a propriety of totalitarian states but he was wrong. It’s standard in the west. Sweden and Finland are an example of this. On one hand they were gloating about Russian incompetence, how they can’t even conquer towns twenty kilometers from their border. And our belief that they had a strong military was wrong and they don’t know what they are doing. That’s one idea. The other idea is that they are about to conquer the west and could invade Finland and Sweden. It’s interesting to notice how desperate Western propaganda is to find some indication of Russian intentions to do what they are totally incapable of doing. So if Putin makes a speech and mentions Peter the Great a whole bunch of columns appear that say ‘hey look, he wants to conquer the west, we’ve got to make a bigger military.’ Even France and Germany outspent Russia in the military, let alone the U.S. and Britain. This goes back to the early days of the cold war when the United States was concocting some image of the Kremlin slave state which by its very nature has to extend its domination over the entire world -- so we have to have a huge military to overcome it.”

If you still believe we should keep funding a war in Ukraine after reading all that, you’re a war pig baby!

Stay tuned for part three where we explain the right’s argument for peace in Ukraine.

‘Nuff Said!