I am old enough to remember when it was considered a disgrace to even countenance the idea American could lose a war. Under Joe Biden, losing a war is a regular occurrence.
Vlad Putin took a victory lap in our latest defeat, the Ukraine War, by ruthlessly killing one of his few living Russian opponents -- Alexei Navalny. Joe Biden promised there would be reprisals if Navalny died back in 2021, but of course, that was an empty threat. Instead, buoyed by cynical regimes from China to India to North Korea willing to break international sanctions, Putin’s terror state keeps on humming.
Ukraine’s year-long offensive ran out of steam in the fall, just as I predicted. The Biden administration got way behind on weapon deliveries to Ukraine. There was already a huge ammo problem this summer when funds were supposedly in place.
All Biden’s people have now is the ridiculous supplemental military aid package. This has billions of dollars more in “humanitarian aid for Palestine” as the price for helping Israel. No actions to secure our own borders, and just enough money to keep Ukraine fighting, but not defeating Russia, for another year. Long-requested weapons that once might have made a difference, from F-16 jets to ATACMS missiles, are still nowhere to be found.
In other words, our strategy is to fight another “no-win war,” much as the Democrats ran the Korean and Vietnam wars of the 20th century, or later, the Afghanistan War.
Back in 2019, Donald Trump was impeached for wanting answers from Ukraine’s new president about the corrupt payoffs to Joe Biden’s family and briefly held up lethal military aid, to further this effort.
Volodymyr Zelensky tried to play it both ways; saying he had no problem with Trump, who unlike his predecessor Obama, was sending him massive amounts of weaponry to defend his country. But otherwise, not engaging on the issue.
In 2020, when the whole Hunter Biden laptop scandal broke, showing the scale of the Biden crime family’s foreign payday racket, Zelensky was conspicuously silent.
Had he stepped up back then and started talking about how Biden blackmailed Ukraine to fire Viktor Shokin, the highly-regarded man investigating Burisma, it would have destroyed Old Joe’s presidential run.
Instead, he kept his mouth shut while Biden was elected, leaving Biden to resume Obama’s policy of delaying weapons shipments, encouraging Putin to think he could invade Ukraine with impunity, especially after Biden’s insane comments about a minor incursion.
That didn’t work out so well for any of them. Zelensky lost big chunks of his country; Putin’s incompetent soldiers were shot to pieces, once U.S. aid belatedly arrived; and Biden had yet another fiasco to go with his growing collection.
Recently, Speaker Mike Johnson took my advice on further military appropriations -- trade Ukraine money for real border security. This was absolutely the right strategy. Biden and his people have complete contempt for our country and cannot be allowed to simply wave along tens of millions of foreign freeloaders into our nation, as part of their Make America Lousy Again policy.
Their bluff called, though, it looks like keeping the border open is all Democrats really care about. They won’t compromise on that, even for their no-win war in Ukraine.
The Europeans, who could easily fund Ukraine if they wanted, are not coming through either. The lefties all cheered when Poland’s Law and Justice party was defeated last year. But it still hasn’t dawned on any of them that the conservative Poles were the best European allies Ukraine has. Under the current European alignment, Ukraine will now get plenty of lip service, but very little military support.
One hopes that sensible D.C. Republicans, if there are any left, are explaining to Zelensky, as distasteful as this is, that it’s time to make a deal with Putin. Not a long-term one, nor one that recognizes border changes. Just some kind of cease-fire in place. Ordinary Ukrainians have fought and suffered enough. They don’t have the manpower nor weapons to keep going. Putin is ruthlessly using human-wave attacks of his conscripts to gain ground. This human cannon fodder is not unlimited, but when alternated with Putin’s regular army attacks, it can wear down the Ukraine lines, such as was done at Avdiivka.
What worries me most now is not the lost war in Ukraine, nor a possible Putin move against NATO. His army is an empty shell; losses in men and equipment are staggering. His economy is a joke, as anyone who can do so is leaving, in an enormous brain drain. Nikki Haley can relax -- Russia has launched its last war of aggression for decades to come.
What ought to concern everyone is the next war Old Joe is in the process of confecting and then losing, in the Middle East. Joe, along with Tony Blinken and company, think the best policy there is to keep appeasing Iran. Part of this is due to all the Iranian spies working for the administration. But most of it is due to the fact that these are the stupidest people to ever hold power in our national government. Just last month they made a show of reversing the terrorist designation for the Iran-backed Houthi rebels, but not to worry, U.S. taxpayer aid to Yemen keeps flowing through NGOs. The same switcheroo Hamas has pulled for years in Gaza.
Iran, through its missile shipments to Russia, has made Putin its junior partner in terror. Biden ended Trump’s sanctions on Iran immediately after taking office and predictably, work on nuclear weapons has resumed in earnest. If serious sanctions cannot be imposed quickly or some kind of limited strike is not made on Iran’s nuclear facilities this year, then the next real shooting war between Iran on one side, and the Gulf States and Israel on the other, will go atomic.
Let’s pray Team Biden is not around for another four years to lose that war.
Frank Friday is an attorney in Louisville, KY.
Image: Defense Visual Information Distribution Service
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