Letters

Ukranians, Russians, and (no) Nazis

Yesterday, I got the Jan-Mar 2015 Peace Magazine and read it with great pleasure. It does not mean that I agree with every line. For instance, I feel Potekhin is wrong when he denounces gunmen in Donetsk and Lugansk as Nazis. It is precisely what Russian propaganda does in respect of Ukrainians. True, there are chauvinists, perhaps, imperialists on both sides. Prob­ably, some of these people have extreme right political opinions. Yet neither Rus­sians nor Ukrainians are Nazis. And if you consider them as Nazis you have the only option: you have to wage war to kill them, eliminate them.

But Potekhin is right when he says that the only viable and humane solution is secession. The problem is that nobody wants secession. Poroshenko does not want to be a leader who let a part of his country to go. Putin needs the war to control Russia and retain Crimea.

Potekhin is also absolutely right when he says that the greatest evils often go unnoticed. In the Ukrainian case it was the illegal change of the constitution by Yanu­kovich. In the Russian case, read history and cry.

Alexander Kalinin, Moscow

The Rise of ISIS

Surely, everyone deplores the actions of the I.S.I.S. military forces, in particular regarding their practice of decapitation or killing of anyone they consider “the enemy.”

But Canadians should keep in mind the impersonal view of how we [through our present government, which we elected] react when we learn about the inhumanity and cruelty of ISIS’s forces. We then immediately send F-18’s to Kuwait, from where we launch bombing attacks on ISIS targets in Iraq. Then only God knows how many innocent people we inadvertently kill or injure.

It is only prudent for Canadians to ask, what brought about the formation of ISIS military forces in the Middle East? We should remember what followed when the American military invaded Iraq in 1990, the Gulf War, and then again in 2003, the Shock and Awe War with the help of Canada, and our Canadian General Walter Natynczyk. Those two wars, preceded the joint invasions of Afghanistan by American and Canadian forces, which in total have caused the death, injury and displacement of well over one million human beings in the Middle East, leaving both those countries in shambles. That is why we have Middle Eastern terrorists in the US and Canada

How would the citizens of Canada and the US react, if Iraqi and Afghan military forces inflicted one million deaths, injuries and collateral damage in the US and Canada?

It has been stated that the leader of ISIS is an Iraqi person who spent time in an American prison named “Bucca,” which was maintained not far from the city of Baghdad. Can any­­one imagine how Americans would react to an Iraqi-controlled pris­­on near Washington?

War is inhumane. Politi­cians allow wars. No one really “wins” a war. Only the manufacturers of the weapons that kill, and those global interests that fund them, reap the financial rewards of war.

Leo Kurtenbach, Saskatoon

Peace Magazine Apr-Jun 2015

Peace Magazine Apr-Jun 2015, page 5. Some rights reserved.

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