Putin is a bad man. It is terrible to see what his troops are doing in Ukraine. However, one would think that the last two years would have taught people to stop taking seriously anything that “everyone” is suddenly saying.
The USA should be de-escalating the situation, not ramping up the pressure on Putin. They should work validating the brave people of Ukraine and on finding a way for Putin to extract himself without losing too much face.
What is the USA’s end game? Nuclear war? A new Soviet Sino Union? Putin being replaced by an even worse situation al. la the mess they made in Libya?
The way establishment are beating the war drums makes the way George W. beat them for Iraq look like a peacenik hippie from the 60’s.
The establishment’s childish fantasy war on Trump for the crime of churlish behaviour has resulted in them drinking their own cool-aid to such an extant that they can no longer tell the difference between reality and their own exaggerations.
This stupid war would never have happened if the USA would have followed their OWN bipartisan foreign policy of years of having an arm’s length relationship with Ukraine.
I imagine the Democratic Party’s temptation to use their favourite boogeymen of Russia -a boogeymen, by the way, that they seem to have copied out of the movies who love using Russians as bad guys, probably because they are too afraid for business reasons to use China or extremists of a certain faith as villains - was too tempting. The need to focus attention on anything besides White House’s failures is too intense. So instead of working to de-escalate over the last few months, they ramped it up.
Biden should have pity on the poor people of Ukraine. Find a sentient half competent professional diplomat, along the lines of a Richard Holbrooke or a Christopher Hill (not a creep like Yovanovitch) who will work on publicly de-escalating the situation. Maybe have the Russians agree to pay damages to the Ukrainians in oil. Find some carrots for the Russians. Maybe have elections in the two separatist areas to allow them to be more separate from Ukraine if they want.
This isn’t a video game.