Commentary

The Rage Against the War Machine (RATWM) rally in Washington, D.C. on Feb. 19 was, if nothing else, a case of politics making for strange bedfellows. It was organized by the emphatically pro-big-and-all-powerful-government People’s Party and the emphatically shrink-or-abolish-government Libertarian Party. The shock waves of this strange collaboration continue to reverberate. The leftists over at the World Socialist Web Site, for example, are still spluttering apoplectically about their side stooping to cooperation with anti-socialists.

The United States has had its fair share of antiwar rallies and protests over the years. Those events fall into one of two categories: those that are antiwar in principle, and those that are simply anti-U.S. participation in war. In the case of the latter, one questions where their loyalties lie.

Let’s look at RATWM’s website to see if we can identify which of the two categories they belong in. The website lists 10 goals:

Unless I’m mistaken, RATWM doesn’t have an active chapter in Moscow, Beijing, Tehran, or Pyongyang. It seems that they want the United States, and the United States only, to disarm, to decommission nuclear weapons, and to quit fighting. Like so many left-wing groups in the United States during the Cold War, it seems that RATWM is only interested in pushing the United States toward an imaginary false peace while doing nothing to push Moscow toward an actual peace.

This impression was tacitly reinforced by the speeches that two Americans whom I respect gave at the RATWM rally—former U.S. Reps. Ron Paul, a sometime Republican sometime Libertarian, and Tulsi Gabbard, a Democrat-turned-Independent. Both of those speakers called for the United States to abandon its current financial and military support of Ukraine while remaining silent about the myriad Russian atrocities in Ukraine or calling upon Putin to respect Ukraine’s sovereignty.

Gabbard, who served on active duty in Iraq and Kuwait with the Army National Guard and today is a lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve, is—quite understandably—alarmed by the possibility of the American–Russian contest going nuclear. What disappointed me about her speech is that she reserved use of the ugly pejorative “warmonger” only for Americans, as if our side is solely or primarily responsible for the nuclear threat. That imbalance is inaccurate, unfair, and, frankly, rather warped.

Paul, who’s also a veteran, made the same curious omission. Full disclosure here: I met Ron Paul over 40 years ago, and he was kind enough to write an endorsement for one of my books. I can vouch for his valiant efforts in defense of human life. He’s in the minority of libertarians who is anti-abortion, and he is equally anti-war. I just wish he had used the platform given to him by RATWM to affirm the right of Ukrainians to live their own lives in their own land.

Unfortunately, the protest rally organized by RATWM targeted only the United States and not the Russian aggressor. We have seen this before: It’s the old “blame America first” routine favored by the anti-American left. That position is both intellectually dishonest and morally skewed. It’s regrettable that fundamentally good and patriotic Americans such as Gabbard and Paul let themselves be used in the service of such a warped message.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.