Should the U.S. have supported the coup in Ukraine? [View all]

[JackRiddler]

Rewind with me back to February [2014], before the elected government of Ukraine was overthrown, extraconstitutionally, by the uprising centered on Euromaidan. At that time, a leak of a taped discussion at the U.S. embassy in Kiev exposed that the State Department was deeply involved in a covert action to enact a secret policy to overthrow the Ukrainian government. If you haven't seen the tape of this discussion, please watch it now.

Tape Reveals State Department Officials Plotting Covert Intervention to Overthrow Government of Ukraine (Feb 20)

http://www.democracynow.org/2014/2/20/a_new_cold_war_ukraine_violence

(That's my headline.)

My question: Should the U.S. government have been engaging in this secret policy? (The policy was secret, not the result of a public debate or proceeding of Congress; and the means of action were covert.)

By bringing up this question, please note what I am NOT saying:

1) I am not saying that the U.S. government is responsible for the movement and eventual coup that overthrew the elected Ukrainian government, or that these would not have happened without U.S. planning behind the scenes. It may be that U.S. government action was not the most important factor. What matters is that the U.S. government supported the overthrow, and did so on the basis of a secret policy.

2) I am not taking sides in the subsequent events, or defending or supporting anyone's subsequent actions, certainly not the Russian state's. (We can talk about that in other threads.)

My comment, from Feb 20, before the overthrow of the Ukrainian government:

I'm glad someone has finally covered the real story in the leaked recording of Victoria Nuland, undersecretary at the State Department, discussing strategy for Ukraine with the ambassador at the U.S. embassy in Kiev. Only in the reality-show world of the mass media is it a story that Nuland in passing happened to say, "Fuck the E.U." (oooh, how terrible!).

It also matters little who released the tape, since its authenticity is not in dispute.

What the tape reveals is that Nuland and the ambassador are involved in the management of a covert intervention aimed at overthrowing Ukraine's democratically elected government.

Without any prior public discussion or announcement of a U.S. government policy in the supposedly democratic United States, Nuland and Pyatt discuss how the U.S. government should

1) open a channel to the Ukrainian president to negotiate his resignation;

2) forestall efforts by one of the opposition leaders (Klitschko) to resolve the crisis in parliament by joining the government coalition;

3) get their preferred opposition leader (Yatsenyuk) into power; and

4) keep the opposition leaders they don't like as much as Yatsenyuk outside power, but in a stable alliance with Yatsenyuk. (The ones they want on the outside are Klitschko, who is perhaps disliked because he is too German-influenced, and Tyahnybok, leader of the extreme right party supported by John McCain.)

In this unannounced, secret, hostile intervention to overthrow and replace the government of another country, the U.S. agency is expecting to have a say in the micromanagement of who sits in the new cabinet, according to Nuland:

"What needs is Klitsch and Tyahnybok on the outside. He needs to be talking to them four times a week. You know, I just think Klitsch going in [to the cabinet], he’s going to be at that level working for Yatsenyuk. It’s just not going to work."

Why the love for Yats, as Nuland calls him? (Whether she gives these nicknames condescendingly or familiarly is unclear.) "I think Yats is the guy who’s got the economic experience," she says. Read into that what you will.

More importantly, why does Nuland get to judge that? When did any Ukrainians vote for Nuland and her CIA-infested State Department to play kingmakers for their country?

When did any Americans even get to know, let alone discuss this policy of overthrowing the Ukrainian government, which ultimately will be put down as having been pursued in their name, with their tax money?

In the same clip from Democracy Now!, Yats is shown, to his credit, admitting that he cannot control and has little idea of who is in charge at this point among the protesters battling the police on the street level.

(Note: That proved quite important, as extreme right parties took over key ministries in the new government, which on the day after the coup d'etat passed a law to abolish the status of the Russian language, triggering the Crimea crisis.)

I wish to emphasize that by posting this here, I take no set position on the Ukrainian struggle.

I am an American and a democrat and I am talking about my own government making secret policy on my behalf, without a public process. I oppose that on principle.

I oppose it ten times over if this government policy involves--as it typically does--a mere handful of self-appointed geostrategists like Nuland using U.S. public resources to intervene covertly in faraway countries on the basis of whatever they imagine are legitimate U.S. interests.

Now our junior geostrategists are involving us in another mess most of us do not even understand. We are making new "allies" (whom we may later betray, as usual) and new enemies, and if it ever comes up that these enemies actually act against us, most Americans will be puzzled, hurt and confused: Why do they hate us? They must hate our freedoms!