While Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) is using the downed Malaysia Airlines passenger airplane to justify his call for escalating US military support for the Ukraine government, RPI Academic Board Member Lawrence Wilkerson counters that the key to creating a neutral, at peace, and more prosperous Ukraine is for “cooler heads” to prevail over the calls for military escalation made by people including McCain, whom Wilkerson calls a “raving maniac.”
Wilkerson explains in a Real News Network Interview on Sunday his recommendation of how these cooler heads can end the fighting in Ukraine, saying:
What we need to do — Putin, the European Union, and the United States and the Ukrainians of any type, separatists or in the east or west, Crimea, Odessa, or wherever — is stop this business of killing one another and seek a political solution to the problem. I’ve said before, we need to have a neutral Ukraine, neither aligned with Russia nor the United States nor the European Union — a Ukraine that nonetheless is helped by all three to become more stable, politically and economically, and a Ukraine that is not coveted by anyone.
As Wilkerson mentions, this is a solution he has discussed previously. Two MSNBC interviews of Wilkerson in March provide further details.
While Wilkerson refers to McCain as a maniac and a madman in the Real News Network interview, Wilkerson also takes McCain seriously. The College of William and Mary professor and former aide to Secretary of State Colin Powell cautions that McCain, McCain’s philosophical allies, and military-industrial complex companies can make a powerful push against the steps needed to bring peace to Ukraine. Indeed, people like McCain in the past, Wilkerson explains, have prevailed over cooler heads to push the US into wars including the Mexican-American War and the Spanish-American War.
Regarding the downing of the Malaysian Airlines passenger airplane in Ukraine, Wilkerson notes that the “first blame” is with the International Civil Aviation Organization for not having put out “notice to airmen and other precautionary notices about flying in this area” — a conflict zone where an airplane had recently been downed at high altitudes. Beyond that, Wilkerson describes a shared fundamental blame for the violent conflict. That blame is shared by the United States, Ukraine, and Russia because they have failed to reach a negotiated political solution.
Wilkerson also notes that the US military shooting down an Iranian passenger airplane in 1988 during the Iran-Iraq War in which the US had “taken Iraq’s side almost wholesalely” means “we are possibly the biggest hypocrites on the face of the earth.”
Watch Wilkerson’s complete interview here:
