The CPC's Ukraine Letter Made Everyone Lose Their Minds

Everyone involved is showing their ass.

Wolfgang Schwan/ Getty

Wading into the fraught world of left-wing foreign policy is a daunting task. For one, almost no one will listen to you. For decades, the left — in this case meaning anyone who wants a different set of international priorities from the U.S. defense industry — has been largely shut out of the halls of power. This means that the precious few elected leaders who do care about creating a more peaceful world that is less beholden to the industrial forces of murder need to pick their battles. And this week, clearly, they crapped the bed.

I am referring, of course, to the briefly released and then swiftly retracted letter to President Biden which was drafted by the Congressional Progressive Caucus and signed by a long list of anti-war stalwarts like Barbara Lee and Ilhan Omar. The letter itself, it is absolutely vital to point out, was an extremely mildly-worded missive. All it did was urge Biden to basically keep lines of communication open and seek, wherever possible, a diplomatic end to the Russian invasion—a desire grounded in a kind of wishful thinking that Russia is or will be interested in a diplomatic solution no matter what the West offers, but nothing to go crazy over. Yet, thanks to one of the most poorly timed and incompetently-executed rollouts in recent memory, almost everyone completely lost their minds.