In its own wars over the years, the United States has not been without sin. But this is 2023 and the war we’re talking about right now is Ukraine and there is only one sinner in that war: Russia. It illegally invaded a sovereign nation, it unselectively destroys schools and hospitals, water and electrical plants, its missiles indiscriminately kill innocent citizens, its soldiers inhumanely rape and torture non-combatants. Its strategy unreservedly is to scare and starve the population into submission.
By contrast, between rallying Western democracies to Ukraine’s defense and by giving more than $110-billion in aid— that’s military, economic, and humanitarian aid combined— the United States in this war is the saint.
That’s why it’s shocking to see that many Americans are reconsidering their level of support. The latest Associated Press survey shows it dropping from 60-percent of us in the early months after the invasion to less than half of us today. We know of course who’s driving that: short-sighted politicians who have become the disquieting face of the Republican Party, like Marjorie Taylor Greene who said unequivocally this week, “America needs to stop pushing the war in Ukraine.” And Matt Gaetz, whose “Ukraine Fatigue” resolution calls for the United States to cease its financial support. And presidential wannabe Ron DeSantis, who says of America’s help to reclaim lands Russia has stolen, “I don’t think it’s in our interest.” And Donald Trump, who coddled and validated Vladimir Putin when he was president and says without corroboration, if elected again, he will “end the Ukraine conflict in 24 hours.” And of course Fox News’s Tucker Carlson, who has praised Putin since the war broke out and wrote a week ago on the anniversary of the invasion that the “conflict… has nothing, strictly speaking, to do… with America.”
These deluded right-wingers are enabling the invaders and regurgitating rhetoric straight out of Putin’s playbook. On New Year’s Eve, with soldiers as his backdrop, Russia’s president said that “moral and historical righteousness is on our side.”
His foreign minister Sergey Lavrov said that America’s shipments of arms to Ukraine exceed “all limits of decency.” His spokesman at the Kremlin complained that the U.S. is “adding fuel to the fire,” conveniently omitting the fact that this is a fire that Vladimir Putin set. And in the ultimate illustration of deceptive double-talk, Putin used his annual state-of-the-union address last week to blame it all on the West: “It was they who unleashed the war. And we used and continue to use force to stop it.”
“Alternative facts” aren’t just an American disease.
The truth is, Russia is doing nothing to stop the war. Another truth is, only with American help can Ukraine stop Russia. So this war has everything to do with America. Because Russia must be stopped.
For starters, the United States is the flag bearer of the free world and for that reason alone, there is a moral imperative to help innocent underdogs stay free. The persevering people of Ukraine have shown us time and again that against the prospect of living under Russia’s harsh hand, they will suffer for the sake of freedom.
But helping Ukraine is about more than just that moral motivation. I have written in the past about the time in Moscow when I heard Vladimir Putin tell a crowd, “We were a superpower once, we will be a superpower again.” That is the lens through which I gauge everything Putin does. So this war is about defeating a tyrant whose eyes look far beyond Ukraine. It is about stopping a megalomaniac bent on restoring a fallen empire. It is about defending democracy. It is about protecting the free world. It is, in an ironic way, about keeping the peace.
Our allies within missile distance of Ukraine certainly think so.
After calls in Russia’s parliament to overwhelm not just Ukraine but Estonia, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, and Poland, all once part of the Soviet Empire but now Western allies, a high Polish official worriedly warned, “If we don’t support Ukraine now, there will be new targets for Putin.” Moscow’s military already occupies a piece of tiny Moldova, whose president says the Russians there are stoking unrest. Sweden and Finland, which has Europe’s longest border with Russia, both are willing to forsake their long-treasured neutrality to join NATO.
If Russia isn’t stopped, it will set a petrifying precedent for those nations and others. It will create a new world order in which a huge country can make a smaller country disappear. And it will leave Putin thinking he can get away with even more. It will put our allies in his crosshairs, igniting the possibility that they can be subjugated by a man who is turning his own nation into a repressive facsimile of the Soviet Union.
And finally, since our fate is inextricably interwoven with our allies’, if Russia threatens their security, it threatens ours. Put another way, weaker allies mean a weaker America.
I wish it weren’t so, but it is.
Critics complain that we already have spent a lot of money to help Ukraine. Yes we have, but it hasn’t broken our economy. They complain that by staunchly standing with Ukraine, we might provoke Putin to unleash nuclear weapons. From what we’ve seen though, if he’s going to use them, he’ll do it whether provoked or not. He knows though that if he crosses that red line, the West will respond.
Those who would stop American arms and aid seem to forget that it is Vladimir Putin who invaded the sovereign nation of Ukraine, not us.
It is Vladimir Putin who bombarded its buildings and ruined its economy and stole its riches and kidnapped its soldiers and deported its survivors and killed its citizens, not us. It is Vladimir Putin who raised the stakes with threats about nuclear weapons, not us. It is Vladimir Putin who set the fires to Europe, not us. What they also seem to forget is, while the United States has sent tons of weapons to Ukraine, we haven’t fired a single shot.
A former editor at the conservative Weekly Standard wrote,“The West… is giving the conflict a momentum that may be impossible to stop. Should bigger guns fail to dissuade… they lead to bigger wars.” What he should have written is, “Should the West fail to keep assisting Ukraine, it may lead to bigger wars.”
That is part of our goal, to prevent bigger wars that might be impossible to stop. We’re the saints here. The Russians are the sinners.
Over almost five decades Greg Dobbs has been a correspondent for two television networks including ABC News, a political columnist for The Denver Post and syndicated columnist for Scripps newspapers, a moderator on Rocky Mountain PBS, and author of two books, including one about the life of a foreign correspondent called “Life in the Wrong Lane.” He has covered presidencies, politics, and the U.S. space program at home, and wars, natural disasters, and other crises around the globe, from Afghanistan to South Africa, from Iran to Egypt, from the Soviet Union to Saudi Arabia, from Nicaragua to Namibia, from Vietnam to Venezuela, from Libya to Liberia, from Panama to Poland. Dobbs has won three Emmys, the Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists, and as a 36-year resident of Colorado, a place in the Denver Press Club Hall of Fame.
Seems like the republicans were happy to spend a trillion dollars, not to mention thousands of American lives fighting a war in Afghanistan but are ready to pull the plug on Ukraine. Do they love Putin too much to oppose anything he undertakes even if it includes crimes against humanity? If we cut off aid to Ukraine, I think we are complicit in those crimes against a brave people who are begging for our help.
It is astonishing...and how quickly the polling shifted....I believe based on many many corollary polls that the majority of these short-lived friends of democracy are the less educated and exclusive fox and newsman and breitbart info hounds....who are not able to draw the connection between defense of Ukrainian democracy and our own.....and who seem to want a king or a messiah as their autocratic leader