LETTERS TO THE EDITOR (01/04/04)

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

UWC president should resign from his position

Dear Editor:

In your "Interview: Askold Lozynskyj, president of the Ukrainian World Congress" (December 21) Mr. Lozynskyj persists in his apologetic attitude towards the present regime in Ukraine.

Prior to the UWC he praised the "relative press freedom in Ukraine (his televised interview with "Kontakt"). Earlier, after the damning "Melnychenko tapes" were publicized and authenticated, Mr. Lozynskyj stated, on the pages of The Ukrainian Weekly, that all that Mr. Kuchma may be accused of is "using bad language."

Even after being publicly humiliated by the Kuchma administration prior to the UWC conclave in Kyiv last August, in his biased perception of reality (shades of Walter Duranty) he is unable to see the difference between the "advantages enjoyed by incumbents in the U.S" and the ruthless power grab and suppression of all opposition in Ukraine, including blatant falsifications of elections, disrupting political rallies, complete domination and censorship of all press and television, physical intimidation of deputies, shameless disregard of the Constitution, and serial murders of opposition journalists and politicians. According to Mr. Lozynskyj's enlightened view "there are very few morals in politics," so "anything goes" and should be excusable.

That "we have what we have," as opposed to progress made in other post-Communist societies, now full-fledged members of the European Community, is nobody's fault but our own. Our submissive acceptance of evil, on both sides of the Atlantic, is part of the syndrome.

This problem of too few people daring to actively resist the "inexorable submergence of Ukraine in the sticky Eurasian morass" has recently been decried by Mykola Ryabchuk, one of Ukraine's leading political journalists. A tactful but firm rebuke to our diaspora community for "being exceedingly gentle to Mr. Kuchma's regime" was also voiced by Stepan Khmara, one of the members of the opposition delegation to Ottawa, on the "Kontakt" program of December 21.

Mr. Lozynskyj's attitude provides help and comfort to the terrorist regime. He does not deserve the trust of the Ukrainian diaspora and should promptly resign the UWC presidency.

Roman Wolchuk
Jersey City, N.J.

Thanks for publishing a wonderful paper

Dear Editor:

Please accept my congratulations on the occasion of the 70th jubilee of The Ukrainian Weekly.

I do well remember Dr. Luke Myshuha's visit to Detroit in 1930, when he was seeking a competent person to receive journalistic training to become editor of The Weekly. Dr. Myshuha, my brother John and I discussed the problem over dinner - I was 22, a student at Wayne State University and had plans to return to Canada.

Congratulations, Ms. Hadzewycz, you are publishing a wonderful Ukrainian newspaper.

Michael Ewanchuk
Winnipeg

Honoring our veterans and those who serve

Dear Editor:

In response to Mykola Holinaty's outrage (November 30) over the opinions that I expressed in my letter (November 2), I would like to say that I am profoundly disturbed by his assumption that those who have served in the military are not entitled to question the actions of our government or to express dissenting opinions.

The answer to his question as to whether I served in World War II is: No, I wasn't born yet. My father, however, did serve with the U.S. Marines in World War II. He said that he was really gung ho when he went into the Marines in 1943 at the age of 17 and not at all gung ho when he got out three years later. A Republican, like myself, he believed that the Republican Party was the party of peace and claimed that it was Democrats who started wars. He didn't live to see the current Republican administration.

I am amazed at how consistently war supporters cite World War II, which Studs Terkel called "The Good War." It seems that one has to go that far back to find a major war in which the U.S. role can easily be justified and which was followed by a clearly positive outcome. Tyrants were toppled, though too late for millions of victims; genocide was finally stopped; and former enemies became prosperous and democratic allies.

But 9/11 was not Pearl Harbor, and Saddam Hussein was not Hitler. Yes, Hussein, too, was an evil dictator who murdered many of his own citizens, but he was not trying to conquer the entire Middle East in the way that the Germans and Japanese were trying to conquer Europe and Asia. The traditional doctrine of containment may have applied to the first Gulf War; it does not apply to this one. The so-called Bush Doctrine, which basically says that we can intervene militarily in response to any real or imagined present or future threat to ourselves or anyone else, sets a dangerous and anarchistic international precedent and threatens to completely overextend us.

I personally believe that stopping a genocide is a legitimate reason to fight a war, but it was not originally cited by President Bush as a reason for invading Iraq. Furthermore, Hussein's genocidal activities had been pretty much relegated to the past, along with whatever weapons of mass destruction he may have possessed, by the time of the invasion. What did we do to stop those genocidal actions while they were actually taking place in Iraq, or for that matter, Yugoslavia or Rwanda? These examples are just from the past decade.

There may be those who think that President Bush is God's gift to international relations, domestic security, the economy and civil liberties. I am of a different opinion. If retired Gen. Wesley Clark, a Vietnam veteran, can express his opposition to the policies of the current commander-in-chief, so can I, a person who served in the Army for four years a couple decades ago, and so can any other civilian. Surely, freedom means more than just the freedom to "Heil Hitler," or to vote for the Communist Party candidate, or to acquiesce in the policies of a president for whom I did not even vote.

The best thing that can be said about war is that sometimes it is a necessary evil. There is a very important and fine distinction to be made between, on the one hand, honoring the service and sacrifices of veterans and current members of our armed forces and, on the other hand, mindlessly promoting a cult of war. I strive to do the former and not the latter.

Karen Bapst, Ph.D.
Port Charlotte, Fla.

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