“Progressive” Democrats Are Still Warmongers

On Monday, October 24, thirty of the most “progressive” Democrats in the U.S. Congress, comprising one-third of the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC), sent a letter addressed to President Biden concerning the ongoing Russian–Ukrainian conflict. Despite lavishing the Biden administration’s militarization of Ukraine, on which the U.S. has spent more than $50 billion dollars since February, with praise, the CPC Democrats also implored President Biden to “pair military and economic support … with a proactive diplomatic push, redoubling efforts to seek a realistic framework for a ceasefire.” The CPC Democrats claimed that the U.S. has a responsibility to “reduce harm” and urged the president to “seriously explore all possible avenues,” to a “peaceful settlement,” including “direct [talks] with Russia.”

“If there is a way to end the war while preserving a free and independent Ukraine, it is America’s responsibility to pursue every diplomatic avenue,” argue the CPC Democrats in their letter.

That the CPC Democrats did not rule out direct negotiations is particularly noteworthy. The political climate in the U.S. over the last several years has become dominated by Cold War-style jingoism and Russophobia. The Democrats and their mouthpieces in the capitalist media have made, and are making, a concerted effort to demonize Russia and whip the American public into a state of frenzy — to psychologically prepare the American public for a full-scale war with the Russian Federation. It was thus remarkably clear-headed for the CPC Democrats to continue advocating diplomacy.

It has become worryingly normalized for liberal political commentators to make absurd comparisons between the ongoing Russian invasion and the Holocaust, and betweeen Putin and Hitler — a glaring instance of the new wave of Holocaust revisionism that’s become mainstream in liberal political discourse.

Adding irony to absurdity is the Western liberal whitewashing of a phenomenon that has been euphemistically termed Ukraine’s “Nazi problem.” Since the 2014 CIA-manufactured Euromaidan coup, in which the current regime seized power, the Ukrainian government has armed and mobilized thousands of Ukrainian fascists, most notably the infamous neo-Nazi Azov Battalion, and carried out numerous war crimes againt ethnic minorities in Ukraine. The Russian government’s stated goals for the 2022 invasion, to “denazify and demilitarize” Ukraine, are obviously cynical, but have nonetheless drawn attention to the unavoidable fact that the CIA-installed, NATO-backed Ukrainian regime is thoroughly fascistic.

The CPC Democrats soberly noted that, in addition to its thousands of deaths, combatant and civilian, and millions of refugees, the ongoing Russian–Ukrainian conflict has also heightened the threat of nuclear war between the two military powers with the greatest stockpiles of nuclear arms — the U.S., with over 5,000 warheads, and Russia, with over 6,000. The consequences of such a war are nearly unthinkable. In their letter, the CPC Democrats rightly caution against “the catastrophic possibilities of nuclear escalation and miscalculation” and a potential “World War III,” going on to state that “it is in the interests of Ukraine, the United States, and the world to avoid a prolonged conflict.” 

The CPC Democrats made room in their letter to praise the U.S. puppet president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, for making a statement to the effect that a diplomatic solution with Russia would be necessary. This is rather hypocritical, as President Zelenskyy has repeatedly demanded, as recently as this month, that NATO carry out “preemptive” nuclear first strikes on Russia.

Still, for all their hypocrisy and American exceptionalism, we must acknowledge that the CPC Democrats were remarkably principled to advocate diplomacy and a “peaceful settlement,” not least because, despite being the “right” thing, the anti-war position is highly unpopular in today’s frenzied political climate, and out of step with the aggressive imperialist policies advanced by the Democratic Party’s established leadership. A letter signed by only thirty representatives, and lacking any definite demands, wouldn’t have really affected the Biden administration, but it at least broke from the Democratic Party’s apparent consensus on perpetuating U.S. imperialist aggression.

But this small act of political “courage” — if we could be generous enough to call it that — didn’t last long.

The Democratic Party’s majority center-right wing, principally led by President Biden and Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi, took the letter as an opportunity to castigate their political opponents on the CPC and to consolidate Democrat support for the Biden administration’s policy of continuing to militarize Ukraine. Within 24 hours, bending under political pressure from the Democratic Party leadership, as well as from the Ukrainian government, the thirty Congressional “progressives” rescinded their letter to the president, abandoned and disavowed their calls for diplomacy, and obediently fell in line behind the Biden administration’s warmongering.

On Tuesday, October 25, House Representative Pramila Jayapal (Washington), chairperson of the Congressional Progressive Caucus (and the first signature on the CPC’s letter), released a statement apologizing for the letter, claiming that it had been “drafted several months ago” and “released by staff without vetting.” Needless to say, this “excuse” sounds unconvincing, and in fact, an anonymous source cited by Politico stated that Rep. Jayapal had personally approved the letter for release on Monday. Pinning the “mistake” on staff was an attempt to save face.

Rep. Jayapal characterized the call for a diplomatic resolution as a “distraction at this time,” adding that the CPC Democrats have “strongly and unanimously supported and voted for every package of military, strategic, and economic assistance” to Ukraine, and would not “seek to pull the plug on American support for President Zelensky [sic.] and the Ukrainian forces.”

Rep. Jayapal’s “excuse” was reiterated by other CPC Democrats, including in tweets posted by House Representatives Sara Jacobs (California) and Mark Pocan (Wisconsin), who each backtracked on the letter’s call for diplomacy in a similar fashion.

Among the thirty Congressional Progressive Caucus Democrats who signed and subsequently backtracked on the CPC’s letter to President Biden are four self-avowed “socialists” who hold membership in the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).

The Marxist Unity Group, a significant faction of Communists struggling within the DSA, posted a statement concerning this betrayal on Twitter:

Every DSA member in Congress has voted, against DSA’s official position, for tens of billions of dollars in arms for an imperialist proxy war. Now the Congressional Progressive Caucus retracts its weak criticism of U.S. policy in Ukraine after only a day. DSA members must speak with one voice against militarism and war. We need a socialist caucus in Congress separate from the pro-imperialist “Progressives.”

What the Marxist Unity Group, as with many U.S. Communists, failed to say, is that the Democratic Party is fundamentally an imperialist party. Both it and the Republican Party exist to serve the interests of differing factions of the U.S. imperialists — the most powerful stratum of the capitalists who, through military and economic power, have conquered, carved up, and divided among themselves the majority of land and water on Earth. When the prevailing faction of the imperialists demand war, as they do now, even the most “progressive” Democrats in Congress will, before long, bend under pressure and abandon even the most threadbare commitments to diplomacy, to peace, and against militarization.

The 2022 midterm elections are just around the corner, and as election day nears, the duty of Communists is to speak with absolute clarity: A vote for either major party, for either the Republicans or the Democrats, for either the “right-wing” or the “left-wing” of American imperialism — even a vote for a “progressive” or “socialist” Democrat — is inevitably a vote for endless wars of aggression. World peace will never be on the ballot in the U.S. Empire. Only by smashing this whole rotten political system can we once and for all end America’s imperialist wars.