I’m in Ontario and this past week I got a couple of messages from family and friends in southern Ontario that their sons/nephews/friends who are in the army are going to be sent to either Poland or Ukraine in the next few months.
It’s really upset myself and my family because I have relatives who were war veterans who either died or were traumatized by war (in WWII and WWI). Most of my family and circle of friends all agree … no one in Canada should be sent to any war / conflict / fight / aggression / whatever you want to call it in Europe.
One of them said that they were going to be deployed to Poland but then that recently got changed to Ukraine. The messages about this one soldier came from a mother who is a friend of mine. She said that her son told her that it would be a combat role for him.
I am not certain if the young son is making up stories for his mother (as they have a difficult relationship). I’m partly wondering if the young guy is doing some strange path of going to Ukraine just to fight in whatever capacity (whether as a Canadian soldier or just a plain mercenary) just because he wants to.
So after hearing two separate families suggesting that they thought their relative was going to be sent to Poland or Ukraine in the next few months … is Canada sending … or going to send troops to Poland or Ukraine? Or is this something that their families have to worry about because some dumb kid is wanting to join a war on his own?
You’re going to get real lonely real fast if you think that supporting Ukraine and being a leftist are mutually exclusive.
Ask yourself this: Does standing up for an imperialist, autocratic fascist really align with my progressive ideals?
Just because he hates America, doesn’t make Putin your friend. And Putin’s people have gotten very good at spreading their propaganda through far left spaces, because they know how desperate people are in these spaces to latch onto anything that smacks of American Imperialism.
And to be clear, America is an imperialist power. No one is questioning that. But you have to look at the facts of the situation, not just reflexively assign heroes and villains based on your pre-existing feelings.
Every country has a right to its sovereignty. The “NATO question” is a Russian lie (they never brought it up when they annexed Crimea, their recent actions have actually pushed more countries into joining NATO including ones on their border, and Ukraine actually did offer to make never joining NATO a condition of peace but the Russians refused because they had no real interest in that), but even if it wasn’t it still wouldn’t justify invasion. Ukraine has the right to negotiate whatever treaties they want, because that’s their right as a sovereign nation. By the exact same justification Russia could have invaded Canada to prevent us from joining NATO.
If the US (or Canada) invaded a country to stop them signing a treaty, would you feel that was fair and justified, or would you consider it another example of Western imperialism?