Open Letter to Noam Chomsky (and Other Intellectuals) on the Russia-Ukraine War
&quot;<i>In your interview to Jeremy Scahill at The Intercept from April 14, 2022 you claimed: “The fact of the matter is Crimea is off the table. We may not like it. Crimeans apparently do like it.” We wish to bring to your attention several historical facts:</i>&quot;<p>It then mentions the Budapest memorandum which has nothing to do with whether the people living in Crimea like it or not. Then it mentions that &quot;Crimeans&quot; is not a thing, it is clear that by &quot;Crimeans&quot; Chomsky meant the people living in Crimea. Then he mentions that Crimean Tatars are the indigenous people of Crimea, which while I expect it to be considered as true by most people, I do not think that it really matters, after all nobody really cares about the Anatolian Greeks in Turkey. It then mentions that the referendum was held at gunpoint, which I am not sure what it is supposed to mean, could they not vote whatever they wanted in it? As for whether it was declared invalid by the UN assembly, this is irrelevant as to whether the people living in Crimea like it or not.<p>&quot;<i>In contrast, we argue that prosecuting Putin for the war crimes that are being deliberately committed in Ukraine would set an international precedent for the world leaders attempting to do the same in the future.</i>&quot;<p>This open letter does not try to justify this argument. I would claim that it is false, just consider the various attempts to charge various fighters (in Iraq and other places) against the US with war crimes while at the same time the US refuses to do the same for its own solders.<p>&quot;<i>Unconditional surrender and then elimination of Ukrainians off the face of the Earth (see above)?</i>&quot;<p>Here they try to imply that the objective is to kill every Ukrainian while not explicitly mentioning it, while it seems that the goal is to instead eliminate the idea of Ukrainian separatism. (kinda like Spain and Catalonia)<p>&quot;<i>If you truly value Ukrainian lives as you claim to, we would like to kindly ask you to refrain from adding further fuel to the Russian war machine</i>&quot;<p>This open letter does not try to justify why they think that providing military assistance to Ukraine will lead to less deaths compared to what Chomsky thinks.<p>Edit: Please do not take this post as a sign of support of any side. Rather it is just criticism of the specific open letter.