This photo taken on Feb. 3, 2023 shows the White House in Washington, D.C., the United States. (Xinhua/Liu Jie)
by Yang Shilong, Zhang Mocheng
NEW YORK, Feb. 24 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. involvement in the conflict in Ukraine is "really an awful thing." "They don't care about Ukraine. They care about world hegemony and defeating Russia," a renowned U.S. anti-war activist has said.
"If we keep going in the direction we're going, not only will we bankrupt ourselves, but we could destroy the world. And that's very, very scary," said Eric Garris, director of Antiwar.com, of Washington's one-year support for arming Ukraine against Russia in an interview with Xinhua on Wednesday.
On one hand, the U.S. involvement in the conflict in Ukraine is hurting Americans by taking so much money away from them to support arming another conflict. "But the other problem is that the United States has tried, has succeeded in killing peace talks on multiple occasions," said Garris, 70, who has been an anti-war activist since his childhood.
Garris noted that in the early part of the ongoing Ukraine-Russia conflict, there was a peace deal that "could have been agreed to," but the United States tried hard to keep the crisis going.
"It makes no sense. It's like a big bully who goes around the world and tries to tell every other country what to do, what the outcome of things should be," Garris said.
Photo taken on Aug. 16, 2022 shows the White House in Washington, D.C., the United States. (Xinhua/Liu Jie)
It seems like the U.S. administration's only solution "is not to promote diplomacy, is not to promote ways to resolve differences, but rather to stoke them. And this is really, really bad," Garris said.
"And it's really not our business. We need to get out of the foreign affairs of other countries ... the only thing we should do is to help them make peace, not make war. We need to stop arming all of this belligerence," Garris said.
"Unfortunately, a lot of the politicians here are heavily influenced by and contributed to by the defense industry," which is really pushing this crisis and "bought the politicians," lamented Garris, adding the United States has spent over 100 billion U.S. dollars on the conflict in Ukraine, with "close to 50 billion is just for weapons."
"I hope the American people can tell their politicians that this is too much. Enough is enough. We need to stop this. We need to focus on trying to make peace and nothing else abroad," said Garris.
"That's why we have to build a movement in this country that relies on talking to people and getting out this information. That's why we have Antiwar.com, we publish every day the news of what's happening," he said.
Garris said he founded Antiwar.com in 1995 and it is the premier anti-war website in the United States.
"Unlike a lot of anti-war organizations, we are very broad-based and ecumenical. We have people from across the political spectrum who support peace ... We have tried to be non-sectarian ... and it's completely reader supported," he said. ■
