Trump Is the Only America First Candidate on Russia-Ukraine War

The former president’s statement leaves no question as to where he stands or how he would lead our country should he return to the White House.

by Paul Ingrassia for American Greatness

Tucker Carlson recently surveyed prospective Republican presidential candidates about their views on the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Respondents included declared and undeclared candidates such as Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, Mike Pence, Mike Pompeo, Vivek Ramaswamy, and a few others. Their answers covered the gamut of possible foreign policy outlooks, ranging from noninterventionism and a kind of modern-day pragmatism to complete revanchist, Bushite neoconservatism.

The diversity of responses is what one might expect from a deeply fractured party with a bustling populist wing—the latter’s tenacity being testimony to MAGA’s enduring prominence within the GOP. 

Underscoring MAGA’s prominence are the responses from Trump and DeSantis, who are the leading contenders going into the 2024 presidential primaries. Each man submitted a response that appeared to buck the Washington consensus, which has been overwhelmingly supportive of providing crucial military hardware and virtually unlimited financial support to Ukraine, even to the point of deepening our already pervasive economic woes and crippling the international supply chain. 

In short, Washington’s uniparty consensus has internalized the precept that the Ukrainian war is a war of apocalyptic significance, and therefore, the end goal—ousting Vladimir Putin and wholesale regime change in Russia—is apparently justified by any means whatsoever.

So, it’s no surprise that many Republicans submitted run-of-the-mill talking points, echoing the received wisdom of the so-called military industrial complex or “Washington blob.” These statements were replete with Cold War-era buzzwords like “the Reagan doctrine” and countless comparisons of modern Russia with old the Soviet Union. 

There was, of course, no shortage of moralistic lecturing on behalf of preserving the “rules-based global order,” an order that allows “no room for Putin apologists in the Republican Party,” as Mike Pence intoned with the indignation of a 1980s televangelist. Though Pence’s statement went the furthest in denouncing Putin, other candidates, from Chris Christie and Kristi Noem to Vivek Ramaswamy, similarly inveighed to varying degrees against “Russia’s aggression” and Putin’s “tyranny,” signaling a frame of reference still rooted in the Cold War.

In contrast, Trump and DeSantis both made efforts to distance themselves from the Washington blob. Rather than pantomime Raytheon and Lockheed Martin catchphrases, they instead either eschewed or outright denounced the suggestion that opposing Russia in the Ukraine was a “vital American national strategic interest.” 

Trump denied this in the most emphatic of terms of all, arguing that our commitment in the region was simply not in America’s strategic interest. 

Retaining his transactional view of diplomacy, Trump spoke like a dealmaker by asserting that it is Europe’s responsibility to pay “far more than [the United States].” He also promised that, as president, he would end the war “in 24 hours.” Given Trump’s foreign policy achievements while president—ranging from North Korea, where he got Kim Jong Un to agree to a nuclear ceasefire, to Afghanistan, where he set into motion the end of a nearly two decades-long conflict, to Ukraine itself, where Russia ceased aggressive maneuvers in the region while he was in office—there is reason to take his claim as something more than bombast.

For his part, DeSantis offered his best Trump impersonation on foreign policy. The Florida governor’s insistence that the United States should not become “further entangled in a territorial dispute between Ukraine and Russia” at least seemed to incite the ire of David Frum, Bill Kristol, and Jonah Goldberg. At any rate, DeSantis’ supporters have pointed to these reactions as proof that their favored candidate has fully adopted MAGA noninterventionism, a claim ardently contested by Trump supporters who argue the Florida governor’s unexceptional record, which pretty much toed the establishment line on foreign policy, as well as the questionable personal ties some of DeSantis’closest acolytes have to Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Given that nothing in DeSantis’ background, prior to becoming governor, screams populist or nationalist bonafides on foreign policy, it is important to read DeSantis’ statement carefully. Criticisms from neoconservative pundits aside, many of those mobilizing behind DeSantis’ presidential campaign, including Paul Ryan, Karl Rove, the Murdoch family, and Jeb Bush, might be called neoconservatives or neocon-adjacent. With that consideration in mind, DeSantis’ statements seem far less radical. For instance, his argument that the United Should not become “further entangled in a territorial dispute between Ukraine and Russia” could well be read to mean that the current situation, in which well over $100 billion of U.S. taxpayer dollars has already been expended, is acceptable under a would-be DeSantis doctrine. Not too long ago, Biden himself said he would be interested in meeting with Putin to find “a way to end the war”—suggesting an approach not unlike that advocated by DeSantis. 

Beyond that, DeSantis also said that “[t]he U.S. should not provide assistance that could require the deployment of American troops or enable Ukraine to engage in offensive operations beyond its borders.” That statement may appear revolutionary at first glance, but it is totally in keeping with statements made by Joe Biden (“Our forces are not and will not be engaged in the conflict”) and Mitch McConnell (“There will be no American troops on the ground in Ukraine. No one is suggesting that. And that is not something I would advocate either.”).

DeSantis’ declamations against “regime change” in Russia may rally a certain breed of populist pundit, who will try to convince readers that this position represents a radical departure from the uniparty consensus. But that argument quickly loses steam when placed alongside Biden’s repeated denunciations of regime change, to say nothing of similar statements issued by NATO and the international community.

Finally, the telltale sign that DeSantis may not be serious about spearheading a fundamental shift from the uniparty consensus was his usage of the term “blank check.” The phrase, used in the context of critiquing the Biden Administration’s wasteful management of the conflict to date (“The Biden administration’s virtual ‘blank check,’ funding of this conflict for ‘as long as it takes’ . . .  distracts from our country’s most pressing challenges”), has repeatedly been offered by other leading Republican establishment figures, from House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and former Vice President Pence to Texas Governor Greg Abbott and Senator Tim Scott (R-S.C.). The “blank check” language sounds like a talking point out of the playbook of establishment candidates. For that reason, it is a red flag and in turn signals DeSantis’ propensity to rely on the same interest groups and lobbyists that most other presidential candidates, manicured by the D.C. establishment might use.

In sharp contrast, the “blank check” language is totally absent from Trump’s statement, or from any public statement the 45th president has issued so far about the Ukrainian conflict. Instead, what we see are statements written in his recognizable cadence. Unlike DeSantis’ somewhat ambiguous language, Trump’s statements exhibit his trademark authenticity, and are to the point: totally unequivocal about where he stands on the conflict. That level of precision is ultimately missing from any other candidates’ statement—including the Florida governor’s. 

Though it is undeniably good that DeSantis finds it necessary to pay lip service to noninterventionist strategies in order to win over the base, there is still cause to question whether his allegiances are truly aligned with the MAGA base or with the war lobby that remains hellbent trying to involve us deeper in yet another winless war in Eastern Europe. 

The world is on the precipice of war. Accordingly, this conflict demands clarity even more than ever, and it is for this reason why Donald Trump towers above the rest. Trump’s statement is one that leaves no question as to where he stands or how he would lead our country should he become president again. The same cannot yet be said about Ron DeSantis.

UPDATE: DeSantis Walks It Back 

DeSantis' Ukraine U-turn: Florida Governor now says his 'territorial dispute' comments to Tucker were 'mischaracterized', calls Putin a war criminal with grand ambitions and says Russia is 'basically a gas station with a nuclear weapons'https://t.co/iU5HDCZdoW

— Jack Posobiec 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) March 22, 2023

NCIS LA sneak peak, X22, and more- March 23

 

Got 1 very amusing NCIS LA sneak peak from Sunday's episode included here. :)) It's Hetty related, and it's sooooo satisfying!

Here's tonight's news:

Questions Without Answers About Ukraine ~ VDH

Americans trying to understand the current administration’s obsession with Ukraine will note a number of unanswered questions surrounding the crisis.

by Victor Davis Hanson for American Greatness

Ukrainians, and many Europeans and Americans, are defining an envisioned Ukrainian victory as the complete expulsion of all Russians from its 2013 borders. Or, as a Ukrainian national security chief put it, the war ends with Ukrainian tanks in Red Square.

But mysteries remain about such ambitious agendas.

What would that goal entail?

Giving Ukraine American F-16s to strike bases and depots in Mother Russia? The gifting of 1,000 M1 Abrams tanks? Using American Harpoon missiles to sink the Russian Black Sea Fleet?

A huge arsenal that would guarantee total victory rather than not losing?

Russia’s cruel strategy is to grind down Ukraine and turn its eastern regions into a Verdun-like deathscape.

So is a brave Ukraine really winning the war when it loses about 0.6 soldiers for every Russian it kills?

Russia plans to leverage its extra 100 million people, its 10-times larger economy, and its 30-times larger territory to pulverize Ukraine and tire its Western patrons—whatever the costs to Russia.

Yet why were only a few in past administrations calling for a joint Western effort to expel Putin’s forces from the borderlands and Crimea captured in 2014?

Why are Putin’s 2014 invasions now seen as urgent rectifiable crimes of aggression in 2022, but were not regarded as reparable during the prior eight years?

Is the United States economically capable or politically unified or socially stable enough to wage a huge proxy war on the frontiers of a nuclear Russia?

During the last comparable multibillion-dollar military efforts—the First Gulf War in 1990-1991 and the 2003 invasion of Iraq—the ratio of American debt to GDP was respectively 40 and 50 percent.

Today it hovers at nearly three times that figure at 129 percent, given some $33 trillion in accumulated debt.

Currently, the American economy is entering a stagflationary crisis. Banking, real estate, and financial sectors seem on the brink of imploding, especially after the near-record multibillion-dollar collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX, and the meltdowns of the Silicon Valley and Signature banks.

Around 7 million illegal entries have occurred across the southern border since January 2021 alone. Millions of new impoverished foreign nationals tax social services, spike crime, and strain relations with an increasingly antagonistic Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

An emboldened Obrador now brags that 40 million of his countrymen have cumulatively crossed the border, many illegally. He urges them to vote for Democratic candidates to ensure more open borders.

Last year, over 100,000 Americans died of opiate overdoses. Most of the deaths were attributable to Mexican cartels’ brazen export of fentanyl across an open border.

Nearly a million Americans have likely died of such overdoses since 2000—more than double the number of fatalities in World War II.

Given its shell-shocked inner cities and toxic downtowns, America is beginning to resemble mid-19th-century England that sent forces all over its global empire while novelist Charles Dickens chronicled the misery and poverty at the imperial core in London.

Is the Ukrainian war also creating the most dangerous anti-American alliance since World War II?

China is buying cheap Russian oil, while stealthily supplying its weapons.

India, normally a rock-solid democratic ally, keeps buying both banned Russian oil and armaments.

Most of the major countries in South America have not joined the sanctions.

Clients like nuclear North Korea and soon to be nuclear Iran are empowered by overt help from Russia.

NATO member Turkey and once-allied Saudi Arabia appear now friendlier to Iran, friendlier to China, and friendlier to Russia, than they are to America.

In terms of combined oil reserves, nukes, population, area, and GDP, this new loose coalition of apparent anti-Americans seems more powerful than the United States and its squabbling friends in Europe.

Why were those now calling for a veritable blank check for Ukraine formerly quiet when the United States fled in humiliation from Afghanistan?

Why were they mostly silent when an appeasing Joe Biden begged Vladimir Putin at least to spare some U.S. targets on his otherwise extensive anti-American cyberwar hit list?

Or why were they indifferent when Biden said he would have fewer objections if Putin’s anticipated attack on Ukraine would be “minor”?

Or why were they not so eager for confrontation when Putin earlier acquired the Eastern Ukrainian borderlands and Crimea in 2014 in the first place?

Or why so subdued when the United States in 2015-16 refused to sell Ukrainian offensive weapons?

Why does the United States discount the serial and ascending nuclear threats from Russia, but we remain careful not to antagonize China?

After all, China sent a spy balloon brazenly across the United States to surveille and spy on American strategic locations.

And why is the administration so quiet about a likely leak of an engineered deadly COVID-19 virus from a Chinese virology lab that killed 1 million Americans?

These are Ukrainian war-related questions that never seem to be answered—but should be as the carnage rises and the nuclear threshold falls.

Israel passes new law protecting PM from removal as protests continue

 

Israel's parliament has passed a new law that would prevent a prime minister from being declared unfit to hold office by the attorney general.

It is considered to be in the interests of the incumbent, Benjamin Netanyahu, who is on trial on corruption charges.

The law is the part of his right-wing government's contentious plan to limit the powers of the judiciary, which has led to months of protests.

Hours after the vote opponents began what they called a "day of paralysis".

Tens of thousands of demonstrators gathered in Tel Aviv and other cities, and blocked major roads. A large Israeli flag and a banner with the declaration of independence were also draped over a wall in the Old City of Jerusalem.

Police used water cannon and mounted officers to disperse a crowd on a busy Tel Aviv highway and said they had arrested dozens of people across the country for public disturbance.

In the evening, protesters began marching towards the ultra-Orthodox Tel Aviv suburb of Bnei Brak, where there is widespread support for the government.

Ahead of the event, protesters set up chairs and tables, surrounded by Israeli flags, and invited members of the community to meet them for reconciliation talks about the planned law changes. There were heated conversations.

Photos emerged on social media of one of the protest leaders, a doctor, lying bloodied on the ground after being hit by a car. But the organisers later said that it had been an accident, not a deliberate act.  

The new Incapacitation Law, which passed by 61 votes to 47 in the 120-seat Knesset following a heated all-night debate, makes it far harder to remove a sitting prime minister against their will.

It stipulates that only the prime minister or three-quarters of their cabinet can declare them unfit to hold office on physical or psychological grounds.

The governing coalition introduced the legislation last month after Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara said Mr Netanyahu could not be involved in its judicial overhaul due to the potential conflict of interest arising from his ongoing court cases.

He is standing trial on charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust in three cases. He denies any wrongdoing and says he is the victim of a "witch hunt".

The new law would effectively prevent Ms Baharav-Miara from declaring Mr Netanyahu unfit to hold office if she believes that he is attempting to halt his trials.

Ofir Katz, a member of Mr Netanyahu's Likud party, argued the legislation would bring "stability" by making it harder to remove a prime minister against their will.

But opposition leader and former prime minister Yair Lapid tweeted: "Like thieves in the night, the coalition has now passed an obscene and corrupt personal law."

National Unity Party leader and former defence minister Benny Gantz tweeted that it was "all about strengthening Netanyahu's rule" and urged people to take part in Thursday's demonstrations.  

The protests have continued to grow since Mr Netanyahu returned to power at the end of last year, leading the most right-wing, nationalist coalition in Israel's history and promising to curb the powers of the judiciary.

The changes would give the government full control over the committee which appoints judges and would ultimately strip the Supreme Court of crucial powers to strike down legislation.

Mr Netanyahu says the reforms are designed to stop the courts over-reaching their powers and that they were voted for by the public at the last election.

Most legal scholars say they would effectively destroy the independence of the judiciary, while opponents describe them as an attempted "regime coup".

Earlier this week, the coalition announced it would delay part of the judicial overhaul until after the Knesset's break for the Jewish Passover holiday.

But, crucially, the coalition also said it would attempt to push through key changes to the judicial appointments committee before the recess starts on 2 April, albeit with some modifications it sees as a gesture to soften the reforms.

The opposition immediately rejected the move, while protest leaders said the announcement was not a compromise but a declaration of war against Israeli democracy and its citizens. 

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-65049937   

The 80-20 Rule and Crime

The solution to escalating crime is very straightforward. 

There is no philosophy to it. No “root causes” 

Just mathematics.

by John Conlin for American Greatness

Maybe you have heard of the 80-20 rule. It’s a pretty basic concept that states 80 percent of all outcomes are derived from 20 percent of causes. It even has a name, the Pareto principle or Pareto distribution.

In my consulting business, I was always amazed at how closely the 80-20 rule would describe reality. Eighty percent of your sales come from the top 20 percent of your customers. This was true in every company for which I ever worked. It might be 75- 25 or 85-15 but if you want a good estimation of most things, 80-20 is a good place to start.

Eighty percent of all chocolate is consumed by 20 percent of consumers. Eighty percent of all booze is consumed by the top 20 percent of consumers. Eighty percent of all auto accidents are caused by 20 percent of the drivers. It’s just the way it works.

So if you want to have the maximum impact with the least effort, you focus on those 20 percent.

One area where this concept falls apart is crime, especially violent crime. If violent crime followed the same pattern, 20 percent of the criminals would commit 80 percent of the crimes.

But it is far more skewed than that. It’s more like five percent of criminals committing 95 percent of the violent crimes. From a crime fighting perspective this is actually good news. By focusing on this five percent—and taking them off the streets—a huge reduction in violent crime is possible. It’s really quite simple.

You would weep—then spit and curse—when realizing how small a slice of the population commit the vast majority of all rapes. All these women’s lifelong pain, anguish, and fear can be traced to a miniscule percentage of criminals.

And although it is anecdotal, it seems more and more liberals are tired of having their street-parked cars broken into. In many of these neighborhoods, it seems it is a 100 percent probability and one that will be burgled over and over again. Again, these victims would weep—then curse—if they knew how small of a group of criminals are committing almost all of this mayhem.

But the solution is very straightforward. There is no philosophy to it. No “root causes” B.S. Just mathematics.

If you want to reduce crime, take the 5 percent off the streets and it is a certainty that crime will fall by a tremendous amount.

It’s no more complicated than that. If politicians don’t take this surefire, science-bound way to reduce crime and protect citizens, one must ask them what their true goals are—because reducing crime and protecting the vulnerable certainly isn’t one of them.

Returning to Neocon Roots – DeSantis Backtracks on His Ukraine Position as Territorial Dispute

posted by Sundance at Conservative Treehouse 

After attempting to navigate through the politics in order to curry favor with the base republican voters on a Ukraine position, when confronted by Piers Morgan who is a pro-NATO war voice, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis now says his former position on Ukraine has been “mischaracterized” and Vladimir Putin “is a war criminal.”

The walk back highlights once again that Ron DeSantis is an empty vessel using poll testing to formulate his policy stances.

The reversing comments on Vladimir Putin and Ukraine come from the interview DeSantis gave to Piers Morgan as noted in a recent New York Post article:

(Piers Morgan, NY Post) – Florida’s Gov. Ron DeSantis has branded Vladimir Putin a “war criminal” and demanded he be “held accountable” for his barbaric invasion of Ukraine.

Taking a tougher tone from his statement last week appearing to dismiss the year-long war as a “territorial dispute,” DeSantis now says Russia was WRONG to invade Ukraine and was WRONG to invade and take over Crimea in 2014, and won’t win the war. And he’s made his strongest attack yet on Russia’s dictator, calling him a loser who is “basically a gas station with a bunch of nuclear weapons.”

His assertion, in a statement to Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson, that it is not in America’s “vital national interests” to become “further entangled in a territorial dispute between Ukraine and Russia” was strongly criticized by numerous senior Republicans — including Sen. Lindsey Graham and Sen. Marco Rubio.

When I asked him specifically if he regretted using the phrase “territorial dispute,” DeSantis replied, “Well, I think it’s been mischaracterized. Obviously, Russia invaded (last year) — that was wrong. They invaded Crimea and took that in 2014 — That was wrong.

[…] “There is a move now to hold [Vladimir Putin] accountable for war crimes,” I told DeSantis, “bombing maternity hospitals and genocidal activity in parts of Ukraine wiping out whole cities like Mariupol. Would you support that?”

“I think he is a war criminal,” he replied. “This ICC … we have not done that in the US because we’re concerned about our soldiers or people being brought under it. So, I don’t know about that route, but I do think that he should be held accountable.” DeSantis is convinced Ukraine will eventually prevail in the war. (read more)

The DeSantis team has also hired the notorious dirtbag, Jeff Roe.

You might remember Roe as the former 2016 campaign manager for Ted Cruz who falsely told the people of Iowa on the night before the primary caucus that Dr. Ben Carson dropped out of the race.  The Cruz Crew amplified this false message and duped Carson caucus supporters subsequently switched candidates on election day to support Ted Cruz.  Jeff Roe created the lie, then tried to deny it.

(Via Politico) – […] Jeff Roe, who previously ran Sen. Ted Cruz’s 2016 presidential campaign, has signed on to be an adviser to the super PAC, Never Back Down, according to an operative with direct knowledge of the move.

Never Back Down is being spearheaded by executive director Chris Jankowski, another seasoned Republican operative. Ken Cuccinelli, a former top Homeland Security official to Donald Trump, is serving as chair of the super PAC. Over the last several weeks, Cuccinelli has visited four key early GOP primary states. (read more)

A DeSantis political group that would hire Jeff Roe highlights, yet again, how the DeSantis 2024 campaign is a mirror of Ted Cruz campaign in 2016.

Factually, almost all of the 2016 never-Trump Cruz Crew are now members of the 2024 never-Trump Desantis Crew.  To assist this overall ‘never-Trump’ endeavor, in 2024 Vivek Ramaswamy is now playing the former role of Evan McMullin in 2016.

The professional political class of the GOPe, the DeceptiCons, are never as vicious against Democrats as they are against candidates who do not conform to the Republican UniParty orthodoxy.   If you want to see the republicans fight dirty, just become a republican political candidate that does not comply with them… Then, and only then, will you see a side of the republican wing that doesn’t surface against democrats.

Threaten their GOPe Wall Street multinational corporate interests, ie. ‘their money‘, and the DeceptiCons get vicious.

If the professional republicans are NOT targeting a republican politician, you can be assured that republican politician is a member of the GOPe club operation.

Yes, it really is that simple, and Ron DeSantis is a member of that club.

The Bipartisan Iraq War Revisionists Are Dead Wrong On Ukraine

It’s no coincidence that attacks on sensible caution about open-ended war in Ukraine are being hyped by those who won’t admit they erred on Iraq.

Jonathan S. Tobin reporting for The Federalist

For those members of the Washington establishment who have observed the rise of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis with dismay, last week was a time to celebrate. The D.C. uniparty — liberal corporate media shills and Bush-era Republicans alike — cheered when the governor committed what they think is his first major blunder when he expressed skepticism about the uniparty’s current favorite project: an open-ended commitment to the war in Ukraine.

When asked to comment on DeSantis’s claim that fighting for Ukraine’s territorial claims was not a vital national interest of the United States, Sen. Lindsey Graham dismissed DeSantis’s statement last week, saying, “The Neville Chamberlain approach to aggression never ends well.” On March 21, Texas Sen. John Cornyn repeated the Chamberlain dig against Federalist CEO Sean Davis.

The jury of left-leaning, pro-war GOP and Never Trump talking heads on the networks allege DeSantis’s statement that the fighting in Ukraine is a “territorial dispute” was an unforced error that severely damages his 2024 prospects, if not disqualifies him for the presidency. They’re wrong both about the policy and the politics of opposing an open-ended commitment to an endless and unwinnable war in Ukraine.

Making the conclusions about this kerfuffle particularly misleading, it came in the same month the country observes the 20th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. While most Americans rightly remember that war as a catastrophic error, some of the same people attacking DeSantis are trying to rewrite the history of the last war they promoted.

Graham, along with the late Sen. John McCain and former Sen. Joe Lieberman, formed a bipartisan “three amigos” of true believers in the Iraq War. The latter claimed in The New York Post this week that “Our collective memory of the Iraq War is simply wrong.” In spite of all the evidence otherwise, Lieberman still claims the prolonged war was a brilliant success rather than an expensive, deadly quagmire that failed to produce the promised Jeffersonian democracy in the Middle East and immeasurably strengthened Islamist tyrants in neighboring Iran.

Chamberlain Comparisons

As a general rule, it’s best to avoid analogies to Adolf Hitler, Winston Churchill, and Chamberlain. Not every bad guy is a Hitler, not everyone who we perceive as a hero is a Churchill, and not everyone who thinks getting caught up in any particular war is a bad idea is a Chamberlain. Yet somehow the temptation to frame the discussion about Ukraine as similar to the choice Britain and the West faced when Nazi Germany threatened Czechoslovakia in 1938 is something Iraq War revisionists can’t resist.

In his statement issued to Fox News’ Carlson, DeSantis said: “While the US has many vital national interests — securing our borders, addressing the crisis of readiness with our military, achieving energy security and independence, and checking the economic, cultural and military power of the Chinese Communist Party — becoming further entangled in a territorial dispute between Ukraine and Russia is not one of them.”

That last phrase about the war being a “territorial dispute” is being analogized to Chamberlain’s cowardly characterization of the German desire to conquer the Czechs as “a quarrel in a faraway country, between people of whom we know nothing.”

Republicans like Graham and Sen. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky are treating the opportunity to fight Putin as if this is another Cold War proxy battle or a post-9/11 moment. The invasion of Ukraine was a brutal act of aggression, but treating Russian President Vladimir Putin as if he were another Hitler and the idea that Moscow’s goal is a Hitlerian-style conquest of Europe is absurd.

One year into the war, with Ukraine’s independence no longer in doubt and the continuation of the fighting a matter of Kyiv’s desire to win back every inch of territory it held in 2014, DeSantis is also not wrong to declare it a “territorial dispute.”

Iraq Parallels

Post 9/11, President George W. Bush’s decision to launch a foreign war was popular on both sides of the aisle. Bush didn’t lie about the consensus among U.S. and Western intelligence agencies that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein posessed weapons of mass destruction, but it was nonetheless mistaken.

As Eli Lake observed in an article on the Iraq war anniversary in Commentary, the ouster of Saddam and his brutal regime was in many ways a net plus for humanity. Yet, the sincerity of its architects notwithstanding, it is equally true that the unintended consequences of that war, in terms of the cost to Americans, the impact on Iraqi society, and the way it magnified the power of an even more dangerous regime in Iran, must outweigh any satisfaction we might derive from Saddam’s justified fate at the end of a hangman’s rope.

Those who still seek, as Lake and Lieberman do, to argue that the war did more good than harm, are unpersuasive.

Our National Interest

Since 1945, Americans have veered back and forth between a willingness to see every potential threat as another Munich-style test of will and courage and the desire to avoid any foreign entanglements. How can leaders decide whether a willingness to engage in wars is as necessary as it was when Chamberlain failed to act against Hitler in 1938 or whether it is a function of hubris and a misjudgment of the stakes involved, as it was 60 years ago in Vietnam and 20 years ago in Iraq?

A good place to start would be to ask the question DeSantis is posing. Is the willingness to back Ukraine for, as President Joe Biden has pledged, “as long as it takes,” really in the national interests of the United States?

Pretending, as Ukraine war hawks in both parties do, that Putin’s forces could conquer NATO countries is risible, especially after their dismal performance in the last 12 months. It is possible, however, for Washington to blunder into a direct confrontation with Moscow that poses World War III-like nuclear Armageddon that should be avoided at all costs.

A wise leader might understand that treating Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as if he were Churchill is at odds with the truth. It makes sense to seek a peaceful resolution to a war that has now become a “territorial dispute” that neither side can probably win outright. That would also allow the United States to devote its resources to preparing to contain a far more lethal threat from Communist China.

To those who see every challenge as another Munich, reasonable caution will always look like Chamberlain-esque appeasement. But not every war is an existential struggle against a Hitler bent on the destruction of Western civilization, and fighting sometimes leads to worse outcomes. Americans should have learned that lesson in Iraq. Those Iraq War revisionists who think DeSantis’ sober analysis of American interests is disqualifying are drawing false conclusions from history they refuse to understand.