Putin is the bad guy, but Biden is the enabler.
Though Putin ordered the troops in, without Biden, there would have been no invasion of Ukraine.
One has blood on his hands because of his evil, the other has blood on his hands because of his incompetence.
That’s not politics, that’s truth. This isn’t about 20-20 hindsight, it’s about an astounding lack of foresight, and the destruction of a nation of millions which appears to be the result.
Anyone familiar with the history of Eastern Europe would know that Putin – or any Russian nationalist – would want to reclaim Ukraine. It would have to be a basic assumption of diplomats and military leaders that Russia always has as a foreign-policy aim the conquest and control of Ukraine.
The two peoples have common origins – in fact and folklore – and have conquered one another repeatedly over centuries. Moscow has been the capital to which Ukrainians have looked, and Kiev has been the capital to which Russians have looked. They have together been conquered or enslaved by Finns, Lithuanians, Poles, Greeks, Vikings, Mongols, Goths, Ottoman Turks and whatever you call the people of Byzantium. They have allied with each other, allied against each other, and shared blood, language and religion just as often as they have fought over blood, language and religion.
Ukraine – a fairly modern word and concept – referred happily to itself as “Little Russia” for more than 200 years. The land once roamed by the Cossacks is – like most of the planet – a place of perpetual human turmoil, where the strong routinely decimate the weak – whoever the weak or the strong happen to be in that particular era.
The peoples of modern Russia, Ukraine, Poland and Belarus have moved chaotically from peace to war and back again for all of recorded history.
The only thing constant about Ukraine is that the Dnieper flows south.
And that Russia wants to take it over.
And the United States and NATO should have known that.
Russian children are raised with a perspective on history that tells them Ukraine is theirs. That goes for Putin, too. His inclinations are unchanging and obvious.
He knew what he wanted to do, he just needed a chance.
Barack Obama gave him his first chance in 2014, when Putin correctly surmised that the United States would look the other way if Russia took Crimea. Token European protests after that incursion likewise emboldened future action.
Under Donald Trump, Putin kept his troops in their barracks. Whether he judged Trump strong or insane, it doesn’t really matter, he didn’t dare invade when Trump was in charge.
But America has a new president, and one who was judged on the international stage to be weak and unprincipled before his decline due to age.
So Putin began quietly moving troops.
And then the Biden Administration abandoned Afghanistan, and astounded the world with the mishandling of the withdrawal from Kabul.
And Putin gave his military the green light. A full-scale movement of troops and materiel to Ukraine began.
Not because Putin was some new brand of crazy, but because he calculated that with the weakness of American leadership he had a free hand to fulfil a long-held aspiration.
And as his troops build up, ultimately to something near 200,000 off the borders or shores of Ukraine, and there was no effective deterrence from the Biden Administration, Ukraine’s fate was sealed. Putin pushed and Biden didn’t push back, and that’s all she wrote.
And the timeless tale of European genocide has begun to play out again. Millions are refugees now, millions more will be refugees tomorrow. The prospects for starvation and disease are high. Blood will be shed, lives will be destroyed, a nation will cease to be.
Because of Joe Biden.
When you have the power to act, and the opportunity to act, and you do not act, you are culpable.
When the evil of one man is facilitated by the incompetence of another man, they are partners in what results.
The United States of America has enough economic, diplomatic and military power to gut and castrate Russia. We can bend it to our will. But, under Joe Biden, we do not have a will. You don’t just need a big stick, you need a backbone and a brain.
And all we have is hair plugs.