Opinion: Ukrainian flaws do not justify war

This week, I encountered a widespread conspiracy theory about Russia's war in the Ukraine. A niche news source claims that American-funded bioweapons laboratories exist in the Ukraine, and are a provocation to Putin. This source asserts that Neo-Nazis dominate Ukrainian politics, and that sex slavery is rampant. The Ukraine, they explain, is not worthy of sympathy or support.

At first, the outlandishness of these claims and the fervor with which they were made provoked disdain in me. These claims seems as plausible to me as were the conspiracy theories that JFK was killed by the CIA, that the 9/11/01 atrocities were perpetrated by an Israeli-CIA cabal, and that we never went to the Moon.

Brittle moral certainty based upon narrow research sources is not persuasive. Simplistic and sweeping out-of-context connections that purport to explain everything wrong with the world are not reasonable. Conspiracy theories make for fine fiction but for poor history.

However, even unsophisticated zealots can occasionally get facts right. Official sources have begun to admit that US money seems to be funding bio-weapons labs in the Ukraine. Further, as at Chernobyl, combat operations might cause an uncontrolled release that would bring catastrophe.

As American-funded "gain of function research" at the Wuhan Lab is unfathomable to me, so is the research into increasingly advanced biological and chemical warfare around the world. Even I, a died-in-the-wool Cold Warrior, can see absolutely no benefit to mankind in developing ever-more-lethal diseases and weaponized chemicals. Aren’t H-Bombs enough for anyone’s doomsday?!

So, evidence seems to back up these particular claims of this fringe group. Added to the facts that there are indeed both neo-Nazis and child sex traffickers in the Ukraine, the existence of such labs seems to these believers to justify Putin's invasion.

This contention is nothing less than suicidal! We who support the Ukraine do not do so because the place is led by paragons of virtue. Ukrainian President Zelenskyy, whose Jewish ethnicity would argue against him being a neo-Nazi, is not perfect. By American standards, he is an authoritarian.

Neo-Nazis exist on the lunatic fringe in most societies, including ours. So does the ubiquitous child sex slave trade. This abomination is one of the very worst things that we human beings have not as yet expunged from existence. The Ukraine is not uniquely evil in these regards.

Putin is a blood-stained Narcissist. His war is not against "encirclement" by the West. This canard is an old Imperial Russian and Soviet complaint, which they argue excuses their occasional indulgences in crimes against humanity. Neither Putin's previous invasions of the Crimea and Georgia nor his recent takeovers of Kazakhstan and Belarus required anything more than his ambition as justification.

The Ukraine must be supported despite its flaws! If it is allowed to fall, Putin’s aggression will have profited him. More will follow. And, the butchers who rule from Beijing will see nothing standing in their way from invading and trying to conquer Taiwan.

If aggression is not stopped now, then war will spread around the world, dooming the billions of humans everywhere to poverty, disease, and premature death. This, we can yet avert if only we are willing to protect a flawed victim from a rapacious conqueror.

• • •

In Maine and then Idaho, Ralph K. Ginorio has taught the history of Western Civilization to high school students for nearly a quarter century. He is an “out-of-the-closet” Conservative educator with experience in special education, public schools and charter schools, grades 6-12. He has lived in Coeur d’Alene since 2014. Email: rginorio@cdapress.com