97 Comments

100% agree with you on this. Those Ukrainian flags and “I stand with Ukraine” slogans make me sick to my stomach. These people are hypocrites and most likely don’t realize by taking sides they are in fact supporting the continuation and escalation of the war. I try to stay neutral on it as Putin is no saint either, though he may actually be the good guy in this, ironically. I remember your voice in the anti Iraq war movement when I joined hundreds of thousands in protests in San Francisco. Sadly some of my friends who marched with me back then are now those sporting Ukraine flags. Obviously they’re watching too much CNN & MSNBC...

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Thank you, Scott. Missing peace movement bothered me right from the beginning of this conflict. All critical sites, which critiqued Iraq war, become yellow/blue ‘Stand with Ukraine’ apologists. But I wonder if another black and white thinking is the answer: “If you truly want peace, come over to the dark side. Embrace war.”

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When you put it like that, I cannot but agree with you. I've lost a lot of friends over this, but what the hell. They support the Nazis of Ukraine. They support NATO. That's wrong.

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Nov 25, 2022·edited Nov 25, 2022

Hi Scott, excellent article. Even Zelensky does not want Peace. Nor does the US or NATO. This has been the problem for the past 80 years. Their Colonization drive did not start in 2021 or 2014.

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So true!

It feels like we are living in Orwell's 1984. The ruling elites keep hijacking words and twisting the meaning. You have managed to bring the essential meaning back! So inspiring!

P. S. Many thanks for the thanksgiving speech - I wish you, your family and your team all the best! I am so gratefull that people with heart still exist.

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Great comment. The same happend in Germany. The GRÜNE (green party) had their roots in the peace movement and look at them now. Baerbock and Habeck, both of them part of the fifth column and brainwashed by their masters to hate Russia. Same for the SPD.

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Atticus Finch? Indeed the Stand with Ukraine slogan does not have a subtitle “Forget the Donbas civilians shelled by the Azov over 8 years.” Or so I understand the situation, perhaps one facet. Now that corruption has been linked to US funding of the Ukraine conflict, all of a sudden negotiation becomes an option. I do believe Trump would have gently butted heads together to achieve a settlement.

There’s an awful lot I don’t know for someone whose tax dollars are spent on the conflict against my will, interests and better judgement. I am solicited daily for food banks, police who need vests, native American children who want to go to college, etc., etc. And we ship $100B to a war cuz a referendum that voted autonomy of the Donbas provinces is not good enough for the Ukraine Nazi contingent? Who the f*ck are they? The grandchildren of the tower guards at Auschwitz. Correct? How did they get political power? US Congress stipulated the Azov don’t get our money ... but the CIA has ALWAYS funded them, correct?

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I can't even begin to describe the disgust I feel with the so-called "liberals" who ushered in Barry Obama in the name of peace and then applauded every action he took, no matter how much death resulted. They only care about nice speeches and fine words. They don't care about actions. They ignore reality. In short, they are not all there upstairs. I'd like to say that conservatives are better, but really, both sides of the aisle are the same. The only differences are the superficial "platforms" they claim to support. The PEOPLE have no representatives, all are bought and paid for.

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For those 'I stand with Ukraine' people, it's not that they don't understand the historical context of this war, as if they would change their minds if they only knew more. They don't want to know more, and will accuse anyone who brings up inconvenient information as a Putin puppet, or other such nonsense.

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Thank you Scott. I have been a 'peacenik' all of my life, and still hope for a future where my children and grandchildren can live in peace. But I do believe that Russia is in the right re Ukraine, and that the West left them no option but war against the worldwide corruption concentrated in Ukraine.

I hope that your heartfelt statement here is read by millions, and that people stop mouthing platitudes that simply lead to many thousands of deaths in Ukraine and to millions of refugees. Those cute little flags have already led to an unstoppable devastation of the economies of most of Europe, from which more misery and death will follow.

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Nov 26, 2022·edited Nov 26, 2022

It was an eye opener for me to realize, when Obama took office, that there was no anti war movement only an anti republican movement. It opened my eyes even further to see the supposed anti war movement suddenly feel that condemning a war monger was suddenly evil (racist!).

However, it has been amazing, but not all that surprising, to see the left start eulogizing the CIA, FBI and other spy (and not so secret police) agencies as heroes since they helped lead the coup against Trump. I am told now that while there were problems with the secret police before, now they only hire the best and the brightest.

It is clear that the only values of the left (looking at you the squad!) are to serve their oligarch masters and crush possible threats to their masters.

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Dear Maj. Scott,

No one is born a rabid dog. Furthermore, I believe there are people who can make rabid dogs look like fluffy puppies. There seem to be no bestial limits to human depravity, other than sleep and death. The lions, in their dens, tremble at our approach.

On the other hand, I vividly recall your heroic efforts to avert the Iraq war. Bravo! Unfortunately, it was 'way above your paygrade.' I wouldn't call you 'Scotty boy' in a dark alley, but I'm beginning to think you're like a big peace-loving hippie trapped inside a stone-cold Marine.

While your analysis has been invaluable to understanding the conflict in Ukraine (thx very much), it's been hard for me to like you because you are a Marine. You see, I did 10 days in the brig once for allegedly 'spitting on a Marine Lt.'. It was a LIE - even the XO and the Lt. knew it was a lie - but I still had to do the ten days for [redacted, redacted, redacted].

note. The Marines redeemed themselves somewhat when they were shooting at us in Cypress once, and I haven't forgotten.

And while it's always prudent to walk softly and carry a big stick, war is not inevitable. Peace is inevitable. The alternative is too horrible to contemplate. We've have had 'our last warning' as Gen. MacArthur explained in Tokyo Bay at the end of WWII.

Peace is not some outburst of ignorant emotionalism nor 'an expression of vague and pious hope'. The inextricable march of human civilization requires it.

*because the world is round, it blows my mind.

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Nov 25, 2022·edited Nov 25, 2022

Well put. Put well. The MSM-dupped masses think not of war or peace but simply what feels good to themselves within their manipulated and twisted social environment. Do not expect this 25% of the US public to think, be rational, or "come around". They are brainwashed and lost.

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Excellent post, but with all due respect Scott, I would argue with a couple points.

I think there has NEVER actually been much of an anti-war 'movement' in the U.S.

The best we had was during the late 60s-early 70s, when so many, mostly young and with a lot at stake, showed up in the hundreds of thousands in the major cities. I recall one such march I joined, in the Bronx, that drew an est. half-million. But we had an advantage: war had become very personal for at least a couple reasons: our brothers were being sent to VietNam only to return in body bags or with crippling injuries, and we young draft-age men might easily follow them.

Prior to the criminal and disastrous invasion of Iraq, some of us, many sparked by your own efforts to call out the lies that sold that war, did march again to try to head it off. We saw it coming and did what we could.

But I noted how comparatively small the effort was in the U.S. compared with those against the S.E. Asia war. It was then I first concluded that there really wasn't an anti-war movement of any real presence. Oh, there were a few groups out there. I chaired a regional presence of Beyond War, for instance. But our voices were minuscule and often preaching only to small choirs.

Today, there are not enough anti-war voices to constitute a 'movement'. Rather, there are preachers talking into a hurricane-force wind of propaganda that is propelling all those blue-and-yellow flags. Those of us who continue to try to counter the propaganda effectively lose 'friends', are ignored and treated as pariahs.

And it isn't any "peace movement" that is waving those flags. Those people were ALWAYS just partisan (usually Democrat) chair-sitters, who'd lament a war that Bush or some Republican started, but who, as you note, went completely silent when one of their own "Team Blue" were in power. All was then copacetic. They were willfully blind to the murderous assaults on innocent civilians around the globe, more often than not killed in wars for which we were responsible.

I also argue with the 'inevitability of war'. Oh, of course it is inevitable in the present day conditions- a largely distracted, too-comfortable, highly propagandized and frankly, fairly ignorant population that simply kneejerks in the directions that their partisan leaders indicate.

But those conditions must of necessity change. At least if we are going to continue as a species.

For it is the prerogative of consciousness to deepen. It happens at the individual level, then the collective / mass conscious that follows. We seem to be stuck- as if at an evolutionary end that, coupled with our technological and commercial impulses, will likely spell our demise.

But there are ways out of this. With consciousness that we are all, on this planet, together, interdependent and all worthy - war (and especially, imperial wars, will be seen as not only morally wrong but completely illogical.

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I've been anti-war since I was six. I didn't march, or write letters, but just thought it was stupid that adults killed each other, and family taught me not to glorify any wars. I was active during the build to the war in Iraq which I agree stopped nothing, but it was good to on the right side of things. I was against all our Middle Eastern neocon driven wars, and what is going on now in Ukraine, which was preceded by a neo-nazi coup that Obama supported. I hold my country culpable and don't support their efforts at all. Ultimately our agenda for world dominance could wind up destroying us all, and one day it might.

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