PAT BUCHANAN
"By bragging
publicly that we helped engineer the killing of Russian generals and the
sinking of the cruiser Moskva, we taunt Russian President Vladimir Putin. We
provoke him into retaliating in kind against us, thereby raising the
possibility of a wider U.S.-Russia war that could escalate into World War III."
Last week, sources leaked to The New York Times
that, in Ukraine's targeting and killing of Russian generals and the sinking of
Russia's Black Sea flagship, the Moskva, U.S. intelligence played an
indispensable role.
Apparently, our intel people identified and
located for the Ukrainian forces what became the targets of their deadly
attacks.
Why U.S. intelligence would do this seems
inexplicable.
By claiming credit for Ukraine's most visible
military successes, we diminish the achievements of that country's own forces.
By bragging publicly that we helped engineer the
killing of Russian generals and the sinking of the cruiser Moskva, we taunt
Russian President Vladimir Putin. We provoke him into retaliating in kind
against us, thereby raising the possibility of a wider U.S.-Russia war that
could escalate into World War III.
Moreover, U.S. boasting like this plays right into
Putin's narrative that Russia is facing and fighting in Ukraine a U.S.-led
alliance that is out to crush Russia.
Indeed, why are we going beyond assistance to the
Ukrainians in defending themselves, into making this American's war?
When Speaker Nancy Pelosi arrived in Poland
following her visit to Kyiv, she virtually embraced the idea of the
Ukraine-Russia war as now being America's war, declaring, "America stands
with Ukraine. We stand with Ukraine until victory is won."
Accompanying Pelosi to Kyiv was a delegation of
House Democrats, one of whom, Rep. Jason Crow of Colorado, echoed Pelosi in
Poland:
"The United States of America is in this to
win."
Their visit followed that of Defense Secretary
Lloyd Austin, who came out of Kyiv and declared the U.S. strategic goals in
Ukraine's war:
"We want to see Russia weakened to the degree
that it can't do the kind of things it has done in invading Ukraine."
These statements by U.S. leaders reinforce Putin's
line that Russia is besieged by a U.S.-led Western alliance that fears and
detests Mother Russia and wishes to see her defeated and diminished.
Our enemies in the West who seek to destroy Russia
are like those we fought in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945, Putin now
claims. And intervention in Ukraine was necessary to prevent today's neo-Nazis
from dragging Ukraine into their larger conspiracy to destroy Russia.
Consider Putin's words of a week ago:
"The forces that have always pursued a policy
of containing Russia ... do not want such a huge and independent country that
is too big for their ideas ... They believe it endangers them simply by the
fact of its existence, although this is far from reality. It is they who
endanger the world."
We are hated for who and what we are, says Putin.
And our military operation is an act of legitimate self-defense against the
same kind of "Nazi filth" we fought in the Great Patriotic War.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov describes
the recent surge in heavy Western weapons shipments to Ukraine as "NATO
... going to war with Russia through a proxy and arming that proxy."
By cutting Republicans out of her delegation to
Kyiv, Pelosi appears to want to make the war not only America's war, but her
party's cause.
That seems to be a motive as well behind Biden's
consciously exceeding any Western leader in the language he uses on Putin,
calling him a "killer," a "murderous dictator," a
"pure thug," a "butcher," a "war criminal,"
guilty of "genocide," who "for God's sake ... cannot remain in
power."
Such language is designed to showcase Biden as the
world's leading anti-Putinist and the most morally outraged of all the world's
leaders at what Russia is doing in Ukraine.
But, again, like the public boasting of U.S. intel
agents over our role in the sinking of the Moskva and killing of the Russian
generals, the effect is to disqualify the U.S. president from any role in
negotiating a truce or an end to this war.
How do we benefit from having no leader-to-leader
communication with the Kremlin, which President John F. Kennedy retained in the
Cuban missile crisis to end it?
NATO Europe, which is supporting the Ukrainian
resistance, is not on board with the U.S. plans to cripple Russia permanently.
America needs to recognize that our objectives in
this war are not the same as Ukraine's.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy would like to have
the U.S. plunge in and fight alongside Kyiv, devastate and defeat the Russian
army, and expel Russia not only from the regions invaded this year but also
from Crimea, which Putin annexed in 2014 .
America's vital interests in this war, however,
are to prevent it from becoming a U.S.-Russia war or a third world war or a
nuclear war.
The U.S. goal of imposing a crushing defeat of
Russian aggression is secondary to our far more vital interest in avoiding a
U.S.-Russia war.
America's interests are best served by an early
and negotiated peace. Such a goal rules out imposing humiliating terms on
Russia, which cause Moscow and Putin to escalate militarily — to survive
politically.
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