In your rush to criticize the Biden Admin, you may have missed that the WSJ editorial board believes that Russia can and should be repelled from Ukraine. And that we, the USA, (and NATO) should provide all necessary support to do so.old salt wrote: ↑Sun Apr 03, 2022 11:05 pm Poor Tony Blinken sounds like Baghdad Bob as he stands in front of a backdrop of smoke plumes from Odessa & declares Russia has suffered a strategic defeat.
https://thehill.com/news/sunday-talk-sh ... ic-defeat/
The WSJ dissents :https://www.wsj.com/articles/strategic- ... _lead_pos1
Ukraine Isn’t yet a ‘Strategic Defeat’ for Putin
by The Editorial Board, April 3, 2022
The human carnage and ruins of Bucha, a suburb of Kyiv, were on display this weekend after Russian troops withdrew. It’s a horror show, with bodies of unarmed civilians lying in the street, some reportedly shot in the back of the head. Some appear to have been executed. This is the gruesome legacy of Vladimir Putin’s invasion that the world will have to consider as part of its calculations as his war of attempted conquest continues.
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Western journalists were able to see and confirm the Bucha destruction as they entered the suburb after the last Russian troops retreated on Friday. Russian tank columns had moved through the town as they sought to surround and lay siege to Kyiv from multiple directions. They were stopped by fierce Ukrainian resistance, but not before laying waste to much of the city and, on the visual evidence, murdering its trapped population.
Readers can see the bodies in the streets in videos online, which appear to be real. They are proof of the modern world as it is. For liberal internationalists who think military force is no longer a dominant force in human affairs, behold the dead in Bucha, where illusions about the “rules-based international order” are buried with the bodies.
Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, called Russia’s war a “genocide” on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday. Antony Blinken, the U.S. Secretary of State, called the scenes from Bucha “a punch to the gut” on CNN, though he declined to call them war crimes. He said the U.S. will collect evidence in Ukraine and make a judgment.
There is already a strong prima facie case that Russia’s bombing of civilians is a war crime, even if it doesn’t meet the definition of genocide. Scenes like those in Bucha, Mariupol and Kharchiv will have to inform the extent of Ukrainian, and Western, cooperation with Mr. Putin even if he withdraws from all of Ukraine.
Is the U.S. really going to work with the Kremlin to implement another nuclear deal with Iran? And how is Russia still a member of the United Nations Human Rights Council? Its irrelevance in this conflict has exposed that the United Nations is worse than useless. It implicitly abets the world’s dictators by giving them political legitimacy.
The Russian withdrawal from the Kyiv region marks a setback for its original war aims, but it is still not a defeat for Mr. Putin. He might be regrouping his forces for another attempt on Kyiv later. Or perhaps he is changing his war aims to focus on conquering the east and south of the country. The Sunday bombardment by Russian ships suggests that Odessa, a city of about one million on the Black Sea, remains a Kremlin target.
Which makes it dismaying that Biden officials continue to assert that the war is a “strategic defeat” for Mr. Putin. They repeat the talking point as if they’re trying to persuade Americans that the war has already been won. “If you step back and look at this, this has already been a dramatic strategic setback for Russia and, I would say, a strategic defeat,” Mr. Blinken said on CNN Sunday.
No, it isn’t. Russia has killed thousands of Ukrainians, inflicted untold damage, and still controls more territory than it did before the invasion. If Mr. Putin secures a truce that ratifies those territorial gains, he will have snatched the part of Ukraine that contains the bulk of its energy resources. He would be able to re-arm and continue as a lethal threat to the rest of Ukraine, the Zelensky government, and the border nations of NATO.
This is no doubt why Mr. Zelensky continues to express frustration with the reluctance of the U.S. and NATO to provide the heavy weapons Ukraine needs to go on offense and retake lost territory. Leaks on the weekend suggest the U.S. may finally be helping to get old Russian tanks into Ukraine, but the country also needs advanced antiship missiles to protect Odessa, as well as aircraft to attack Russian tanks and artillery, and anti-aircraft systems.
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The West’s goal shouldn’t be some abstract “strategic defeat” but an actual defeat that is obvious to everyone, including the Russian public. Ukraine will have to decide how long it is willing to fight. But as long as it is willing, the U.S. and NATO should provide all of the military and sanctions support it needs. If Mr. Putin gains from this war, there will be more invasions, more war crimes, and more horrific scenes like those in Bucha in the future.
Here's my prediction: Calls like this from the right, and the images of the war crimes, genocide, now coming through, the lies by Lavrov and Moscow, and the sense that Ukraine can actually achieve success in repelling Russia, will lead to a collective will to do more to help, including the weapons systems needed...including those MiG's, S-300's, anti-ship missiles, drones...some of those challenges to moving the equipment into Ukraine, both psychological and practical, have shifted.