The War in Ukraine is More About Winning Than About Creating a Peaceful Solution
by John Lawrence
Biden talks about winning. Zelensky talks about winning. Putin talks about winning. Both sides are more interested in winning than in creating a peaceful solution that both sides can live with. That's their mindsets and orientations, unfortunately. It doesn't help for either side to demonize the other or characterize them as war criminals. So far there have been a total of approximately 8000 civilian deaths since the February 2022 Russian invasion. In contrast are the Vietnam war results: "Around 2 million civilians were killed in the territories of North and South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. It is suspected that over 1.2 million of these deaths were murders." The war in Iraq, the invasion of which was based on a lie, resulted in the following: "No one knows with certainty how many people have been killed and wounded in Iraq since the 2003 United States invasion. However, we know that between 275,000 and 306,000 civilians have died from direct war related violence caused by the U.S., its allies, the Iraqi military and police, and opposition forces from the time of the invasion through October 2019."
Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, who was considered the architect of the Vietnam War, said in an interview: "[General Curtis} LeMay said, if we'd lost the war, we'd all have been prosecuted as war criminals. And I think he's right. He, and I'd say I, were behaving as war criminals." McNamara characterized himself as a war criminal, but of course was never prosecuted as such. Only the losers of wars are prosecuted as war criminals. McNamara's son, Craig McNamara was a critic of his father's role in promoting the Vietnam war.
"[Craig} McNamara enrolled at Stanford University in 1969. McNamara took part in antiwar demonstrations at Stanford. Often joining him on the podium to denounce the war were two other students at Stanford, namely Susan Haldeman and Peter Ehrlichman, who were respectively the daughter of H.R Haldeman and son of John Ehrlichman. H.R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman were respectively the presidential chief of staff and domestic affairs adviser under Richard Nixon, being known as Nixon's "Berlin Wall", owing to their German surnames and ability to grant or deny access to the president. [Craig] McNamara recalled: "Pretty much all the time at Stanford was occupied with anti-Vietnam and Cambodia demonstrations...I remember the rage settling in on me, and the frustration that we all felt because we couldn't stop the war""
After the war, Robert McNamara was fired as Defense Secretary and became President of the World bank which resulted in another family clash with his son. "In 1971, [Craig McNamara] moved to Chile whose President, Salvador Allende, was a Marxist in order to see Marxism in action. In 1984, McNamara stated that he moved to Chile because: "I felt an enormous sense of frustration with my family, with my country. I felt there was nothing I could do to change my father, so I left the country"."
"In 1973, [Craig] McNamara visited the United States where over the course of a dinner, he became caught up in an argument with Katharine Graham, the owner of The Washington Post newspaper and his father over Chile. The younger McNamara insisted that the Nixon administration was trying to overthrow Allende because he was a Marxist while both the elder McNamara and Graham insisted that there was no such policy on the part of the United States. Later on in 1975, the "destabilization campaign" waged by the Nixon administration came to public light. [Craig] McNamara stated: "That's why I'm still cautious about my father to this very day-that's the flip side. If they [Graham and Robert McNamara] didn't know what was going on in Chile factually, they must have known it intuitively. But they wouldn't say so".
"Shortly before he was due to return to Chile, the Allende government was overthrown in a military coup d'etat led by General Augusto Pinochet on 11 September 1973. The Pinochet government vowed to "exterminate Marxism" in Chile, earning a reputation as one of the worst human rights abusers in Latin America."
Putting all this in perspective purported war criminal Putin's civilian death total in Ukraine pales in comparison with (self-characterized) war criminal Robert McNamara's civilian death total in Vietnam or even the civilian death total in the Iraq war perpetrated by President George W Bush. Not to mention the approximately 200,000 civilian deaths as a result of atomic bombs dropped on Japan or the 25,000 civilians killed in the fire bombing of Dresden.
The war in Ukraine is a tragedy regardless of the number of civilian deaths. One civilian death is one too many. However, the longer the war goes on with both sides determined to win rather than determined to find a just peace that both sides can live with, the longer will be the destruction of civilian lives and real estate.The concept of winning in and of itself is the problem.
