As I speak today, Europe for the first time in almost 80 years is faced with the threat of a major invasion. A large nation threatens a smaller, less powerful neighbor, surrounding it on three sides with tens of thousands of troops, tanks, and artillery.
My friends, as we have painfully learned, wars have unintended consequences. They rarely turn out the way the planners and experts tell us they will. Just ask the officials who provided rosy scenarios for the wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq, only to be proven horribly wrong.
Just ask the mothers of the soldiers who were killed or wounded in action during those wars. Just ask the millions of civilians who became "collateral damage."
The war in Vietnam cost us 59,000 American deaths and many others who came home wounded in body and spirit. In fact, a whole generation was devastated by that war. The casualties in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, are almost incalculable.
In Afghanistan, what began as a response to those who attacked us on September 11, 2001, eventually became a twenty year-long, $2 trillion war in which over 3500 Americans were killed along with tens of thousands Afghan civilians.
George W. Bush claimed in 2003 that the United States had "put the Taliban out of business forever." Sadly, as we all know, the Taliban is in power right now.
The war in Iraq - which was sold to the American people by stoking fear of a "mushroom cloud" from Iraq's non-existent weapons of mass destruction led to the deaths of some 4,500 U.S. troops, and the wounding - physical and emotional - of tens of thousands of others.
It led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, the displacement of over 5 million people and regional destabilization whose consequences the world continues to grapple with today.
The military intervention in Vietnam started slowly, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq began much more quickly but what they all share is that the foreign policy establishment insisted that they were necessary. That there was no alternative to escalation and war.
Well, it turns out that they were wrong. And millions of innocent people paid the price.
That is why we must do everything possible to find a diplomatic resolution to prevent what would be an enormously destructive war in Ukraine.
No one knows exactly what the human costs of such a war would be. There are estimates, however, that there could be over 50,000 civilian casualties in Ukraine and millions of refugees flooding neighboring countries as they flee what could be the worst European conflict since World War II.
In addition, of course, there would be many thousands of deaths within the Ukrainian and Russian militaries. There is also the possibility that this "regional" war could escalate to other parts of Europe. What might happen then is even more horrifying.
But that's not all. The sanctions against Russia that would be imposed as a consequence of its actions and Russia's threatened response to those sanctions could result in massive economic upheaval - with impacts on energy, banking, food, and the day to day needs of ordinary people throughout the entire world.
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