I keep offering 'judo moves' for those we depend-upon to save civilization.
One such move might have let Joe Biden demolish the entire Kremlin kompromat ring in DC. (Three Republican Congressional reps have attested that their GOP colleagues hold "orgies" and one of them made the blackmail charge explicit.) Alas, that idea - along with every other agile tactic in Polemical Judo - was never taken up.
Okay, let's try another one. An impudent proposal - or else a potential magic move for the Faramir of the West, desperately holding the line against the modern Mordor.
I refer to Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky, who faces an excruciating dilemma because the the U.S. election.
Whether or not you go along with my longtime assertion of Kremlin-strings puppetting Donald Trump - (and recent polls show that a majority of Americans now see those strings) - the goal of Trumpian 'diplomacy' has clearly been to save Vlad Putin's hash, as his refineries burn, as his bedraggled soldiery mutinously grumbles and as Europe burgeons its formerly-flacid military might to formidability, in response to Muscovite aggression.
Almost every aspect of the current, proposed 'ceasefire' would benefit Putin and disadvantage Ukraine. But Zelensky cannot be seen 'obstructing' a truce, or Ukraine will suffer in the arena of world opinion - and some of his own suffering populace. Hence my modest proposal.
To be clear... if Zelensky were to present this concept to the world, there is no way on Earth that Putin or Trump would accept it!
And yet, it will appear so clearly and inherently reasonable that those two would have a hard time justifying their rejection.
== A Modest Proposal ==
President Zelensky, just say this:
"Our land, our cities and towns, our forests and fields have been blasted, poisoned, and strewn with millions of landmines, while our brave men and women suffer every day resisting the aggressors, both on the front lines and on the home front. Meanwhile, every day and everywhere, our skills and our power-to-resist grow.
"The aggressor has no long term plan. Even should he occupy all of our country, the heat of our rage and resistance would make Kabul in 1980 pale, by comparison. Occupied, but never-subjugated, Ukrainians will turn the next hundred years into hell for the invaders.
"Then why does this outrageous crime continue? Because the despotic Kremlin regime controls all media and news sources available to 135 million Russians, who have no way to know the following:
-- That there was no "Nazi" movement in Ukraine. Except for a few dozen gangster idiots sporting swastikas for shock value. (There are far more such fools in both the USA and in the reborn USSR!) Otherwise, there was never any evidence for anything like it.
-- There was no ' invader army building in Ukraine' before either the full scale Russian invasion of 2022 or the 'green man' putsches of 2014. That was pure fantasy and we can prove it.
-- There was no irresistable momentum for Ukrainian NATO membership before 2022. Up to then, NATO itself had been atrophying for years and Ukraine might have been kept out of the alliance through diplomacy. Now? NATO is growing and gets stronger in potency every day. And Ukraine's alliance with the rest of Europe is now absolutely guaranteed, thanks to Mr. Putin.
-- We were always willing to negotiate assurance and provisions for the comfort and security and prosperity of Russian speaking citizens of Ukraine, especially in the Donbas. That offer still stands. And hence we ask them, are you truly better off now, dear friends?
I could go on and on. But doing so just leaves this as another case of "he-said, she said." And we are done exchanging heated assertions.
It is time to check out which side is lying!
OUR PROPOSAL IS SIMPLE:
Before any ceasefire takes effect, we call for a Grand Commission to investigate the truth.
Instead of world elites or politicians, we propose that this commission consist mostly of:
-- 100 Russian citizens...
-- 100 Ukrainian citizens living in unoccupied territories...
-- 100 citizens from a random pool of other nations.
Members of this Grand Commission will be free to go anywhere they wish, in both Ukraine and Russia, wielding cameras and asking questions and demanding answers. Let them video the trashed and ruined towns and farms and forests everywhere that Russian armed forces claim to have 'liberated.'
And yes, the commissioners will be welcome to sift for evidence of pervasive "naziism" in our country... so long as they are also free to document Vlad Putin's oligarchy and their relentlessly violent drive to rebuild the Orwellian Soviet empire.
== How would it work? A FAQ ==
Why such a large group?
A large and diverse commission helps to ensure maximum coverage and to minimize coercion by their home governments. Among so many commissioners, some will certainly ask pointed questions! And they will return home in numbers that cannot be kept squelched or repressed.
How to ensure the members aren't just factotums of either regime?
They will be selected randomly from the paper pages of old telephone directories! Sure, that might be clumsy. But those paper volumes cannot be meddled with, especially old phone books currently archived in - say - Switzerland. For all its faults, this method ensures that the selection process will pick many citizens who are not beholden to the masters in the capital.
Won't the governments of Russia or Ukraine be tempted to coerce commissioners anyway?
Yes, and that is why they will be invited to bring along their immediate families! Arrangements will be made for spouses and children to stay at nice resorts along the Black Sea, while the commissioners do their work. And incidentally, those families will talk to each other, too. We welcome that. Do you?
Won't some of the commissioners defect - during their tours of Ukraine or Russia, refusing to go home?
Of course some will! We are not afraid of that. Are YOU afraid of that, Mr. Putin?
Won't such a huge endeavor be expensive?
Sure it will be. So? Russia and America brag about how rich they are. And so do the host nations of recent 'peace conferences,' who could easily pony up the expenses, for the sake of ending a dangerous and destabilizing war.
Why not ask the world's billionnaire caste to foot the bill? For the sake of actual communications and genuine peace and prosperity?
There are many of the uber-rich who talk a good game. This would be their chance to prove that they believe in the future, after all.
Won't there be dangers?
Sure they will be, especially wherever resumed fighting breaks out near the inspectors, during or after a ceasefire. The commissioners should possess some grit and courage and world civic-mindedness. Why? Is that a problem? Compared to the possible good outcomes from such heroism? From the most-genuine kind of patriotism?
Do you honestly expect Vladimir Putin to agree to this?
Why wouldn't he? If this will let him convince skeptics around the world and in Ukraine that all of his justifications for this slaughter and ruination of a beautiful country are valid and true?
Of course that was a bitter jest. Because there is no way that Mr. Putin or his supporters would agree to such a Grand Commission, digging deeply into things that are called Facts and Truth.
Then why did you make the proposal, if you don't think it will be accepted?
Because nothing better demonstrates the most basic difference between the two sides of this conflict.
One side slavishly follows a murderous liar, because of the hypnotic power of his lies. Lies that would be so-easily disproved, if the tyrant agreed to allow light to flow to his people.
The other side is a nation of people who love Russian poetry... but we are not and never have been Russian. People who know intimately well Russia's cruelly-depressing history, and who want no further part of it.
We all had friends across the former USSR... but Ukraine is not and never has been Russia.
And we can prove it, as we daily prove our utter determination never again to suffer under Moscow's boot heel.
Are we outnumbered? Certainly. But we have special regiments on our side.
Honor. Decency. Resolve. Democracy. The friendship of all free peoples around the World. And science, too.
But above all -- the Truth.