Thread by @terrelljstarr

I never thought I'd be engaging a CODEPINK tweet about Ukraine, but I can't help it. So much of what these people say is so factually inaccurate or lacking any regional expertise that I can no longer help but respond.

Let's unpack this tweet.

🧵

https://twitter.com/codepink/status/1709351852926488775

1. Do you all notice that @codepink rarely, if ever, platforms UKRAINIANS when they talk about Ukraine? They claim to care about peace but never share the stage with Ukrainians to achieve that goal. And I also notice that they never come here.

I wonder why?

@codepink 2. Also, @codepink never talks about what Russia can do to bring peace. (which is get the fuck out of Ukraine) They never center Ukrainians who are experiencing genocide. They always center themselves.

I wonder why?

3. Thanks to western military aid, Odesa ports are relatively safe for ships to sail with grain for nations that need it most because long-range Western missiles can hit the Russian ships that are bombing the grain supplies.

So when Lee Camp talks about ending world hunger, Western missiles are literally helping to do just that.

4. That 20 billion figure Camp says about homelessness is true. But Lee doesn't understand how budgets work. We can support Ukraine AND end homelessness in the states. The problem is that Pentagon is not properly audited for waste, which is why Bernie Sanders and Barbara Lee have lead efforts to lead cut the Pentagon budget by 10 percent for precisely the reasons Lee is discussing.

@codepink There is literally a caucus in Congress that is working to cut the Pentagon budget to address homelessness and other welfare issues. I wrote about it.

outrider.org/nuclear-weapon…

5. None of these people likely understand Russian or follow Russian language news. If they did, they'd get daily telegram messages from Dmitry Medvedev, ex-Russian President and current deputy security council chairman, calling for the extermination of Ukrainians.

Russia doesn't want peace.

6. If Russia was threatened by NATO, it would have invaded NATO--not Ukraine. If you lack the basic common sense to understand the difference then there is no hope for you.

You can be against NATO (and there are plenty of really good reasons to be!), but at least make reasonable arguments.

I also find it interesting that Cornel West and others love talking about Western imperialism, but have no analysis for other forms of imperialism and colonialism.
Their analysis on Ukraine and colonialism is intellectually parochial and dishonest.

If you want to be against the imperial west, then fine: be against the West and NATO and all of their colonialism. Shit, I'll join you on some of those talking points because there is plenty to attack.

But to turn every world conflict into Iraq and Afghanistan is extremely unsophisticated, ignores regional expertise, dangerously miscalculates the problem and ignores the suffering of people who don't fit the Iraq/Afghanistan template that is commonly used to argue against supporting Ukraine.

I live in Ukraine. I study Ukrainian. I report on Ukraine each week. I travel this country and talk with people who have suffered under Russian genocidal behavior.

It is deeply offensive for lefties who claim to care about the oppressed lean so intensely into the oppressors' talking points.

Ukrainians have been historically oppressed. While there is room for healthy debate about why we should be cautious about forever wars, we need to make clear the U.S. is not the culprit here. IT IS RUSSIA.

Yep, CODEPINK has more sympathy for the Kremlin and little for Ukrainians.

A real peace movement attacks POWER. Russia is the power that is causing this war, yet they have no serious critiques of Putin or his many henchmen who are committing war crimes around Ukraine.

They work with the oppressed. I've yet to see @codepink here in Ukraine. 👀

.@codepink's "peace movement" is a farce. They don't give a shit about peace in Ukraine. They just like the idea of owning the "war hawks" and claiming they're stopping another Iraq/Afghanistan.

But what they are really doing is standing by and ignoring another Srebrenica under the guise of calling for peace.

END