Kansas City Quakers know the only way to respond to Russia’s Ukraine horror: peace

In peace

Without question, the invasion of Ukraine is an assault that demands response. It is an appalling violation against the Ukrainian people and a frightening attack on peace everywhere. As members of the Kansas City-area Penn Valley Friends (Quakers) Meeting, we write to urge our neighbors, friends, co-workers, colleagues and especially our elected officials to oppose without reservation the violent, illegal invasion of Ukraine and pursue diplomacy.

War is only ever the advent of chaos, loss and more violence. We urge our leaders to consider how the supply of weapons has backfired in past conflicts and caution against the use of economic sanctions that might hurt those toward whom we most want to show care and support.

As Quakers, we write from a 350-year tradition of peaceful resistance to war. The Quaker peace testimony expresses our strong conviction that war is never an answer. We hope our fellow Kansas Citians will speak, too, by reaching out to local and national leaders to raise up the full power and creativity of diplomacy so that a peace reached in Ukraine is not merely a pause in the march toward war.

- Angelika Shafer, Clerk, Penn Valley Religious Society of Friends, Kansas City

Learn this time

The parallels are not perfect, but there is an eerie symmetry between the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine and Germany’s annexation of part of Czechoslovakia in 1938.

Twenty years after Germany was defeated in World War I, Fuhrer Adolph Hitler had dreams of a Third Reich. He demanded that the Sudetenland, an area of western Czechoslovakia, be ceded to Germany under the pretext that Sudeten German-speakers were being discriminated against and persecuted by Czech authorities. Horrified by the thought of another world war, Britain and France appeased Hitler with the Munich Agreement. Hitler said that was all he wanted. A year later, Germany attacked Poland. World War II was on, and tens of millions died in the next six years.

Thirty years from the dissolution of the USSR and independence for Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin appears to be reconstructing its former empire in eastern Europe. Georgia was first; now it is Ukraine. Putin accuses Ukrainians of subjugating their Russian-speaking citizens.

We can only hope that leaders of the civilized world have read and learned from their history books. And, to paraphrase philosopher George Santayana, we are not doomed to repeat it.

- Graham Marcott, Fairway

Lesson for US

The president and citizens of Ukraine have earned their right to become members of NATO and be provided the support and protection awarded to the existing 30 members. Their courage and patriotism are something to behold and we should be honored to stand beside them.

We sure wouldn’t want to abandon these courageous people. I would rather be with them than against them. If they can withstand the onslaught of the tyrannical leader of Russia against all odds, they deserve everything we and the world can do to help them.

Some of our so-called fellow “patriots” here in the United States should learn the real definition of patriotism from the people of Ukraine: You fight for your country and not against it.

- Diana Garcia, Raymore

Clearer picture

Thank you for David Hudnall’s interview with Christopher Leonard. (Feb. 27, 1C, “‘The Lords of Easy Money’: A Q&A with Christopher Leonard”)

My only background in economics and financial policy is one macro course taken in the hyperinflated 1980s, when “supply side” and “trickle down” economics were the buzzwords and Milton Friedman was the new kid on the block. And yet, so much of what I have experienced in these past years as an employee, consumer, homeowner and more has seemed so contrary to any economic theory I was ever exposed to and contrary, it seems, to logic and common sense as well.

I’ve been left baffled and unbelieving at what does in fact occur, asking, “But exactly how?” In defiance of all logic, that’s for sure. And maybe now I understand a bit more why.

- Catherine Dobson, Atchison