Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) provided some refreshing counterweight to the war promoting statements of the United States House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee chairman and ranking member at the committee’s Ukraine hearing on Wednesday with sole witness Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland. Rohrabacher, who chairs the committee’s subcommittee with Ukraine jurisdiction — the Subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia, and Emerging Threats — begins his exchange with Nuland by challenging the “black and white alternatives” being discussed at the hearing. Rohrabacher proceeds to warn that the US having a goal “to basically defeat and humiliate Russia” instead of “to do what is right by Ukraine and bring peace to Ukraine” will mean that “the people of Ukraine will continue to suffer and suffer and suffer.”
Committee Chairman Ed Royce (R-CA) and Ranking Member Eliot Engel (D-NY) had both talked repeatedly in their opening statements for the hearing regarding “Russia’s aggression” in Ukraine, with no mention of the US role in implementing a coup and supporting the post-coup government’s war escalation in the nation. Royce and Engel place all blame on Russia, with Royce even talking of the often heralded but never documented Russians bringing tanks into Ukraine. Royce and Engel both conclude in their opening statements that the US government should provide more weapons to the Ukraine government.
Watch here Rohrabacher’s exchange with Nuland at the hearing:
The complete committee hearing may be watched here.
More suffering of Ukrainians is not the only risk of the US government seeking escalation of the Ukraine military conflict. As Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity Academic Board Member Lawrence Wilkerson has warned, war rhetoric regarding Ukraine could help transform this conflict on Russia’s border into a new world war.
