5 myths of Russia’s Ukraine invasion, or how Biden got it wrong at every turn.

Myth No. 1. President Joe Biden rallied the world in opposition to the Russian invasion.

The Democrats and the mainstream media (generally one in the same) are agog about how Mr. Biden rallied the world in opposition to Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine. Could that possibly be true? Well no, unless you want to exclude China, Pakistan, India, Iran, Saudi Arabia and most of the Middle East, most of Africa, most of South America and most of Central America including Mexico in your calculation of “world.” Those “forgettable” areas only encompass about three-quarters of the land mass of the world, the majority of nuclear armed countries and the overwhelming majority of the oil production in the “world.” They also account for the second and ninth largest economies in the world and nearly three-quarters of the “world’s” population. In point of fact it is the United States, Canada, NATO nations, Japan, New Zealand and Australia that have rallied in support of the Ukraine. Most of the “world” is sitting on its hands waiting to see which way the “winds of war” blow. And if the Ukrainians are successful then they will stand up and cheer. And if Russia is successful they can rest assured that, based on Mr. Biden’s appeasement history, the sanctions against Russia, Mr. Putin and its oligarchs will be lifted or not enforced in short order.

Even in the most generous assessment it is more the horrors of war seen in real time that motivated much of Europe to act – particularly Germany and Italy.

Myth No. 2 The economic sanctions imposed by Mr. Biden would stop Mr. Putin from invading the Ukraine.

Mr. Biden sent the unprepared and hapless Vice-president Kalamata Harris to Germany to – well, we will never know what she was supposed to do because she did nothing other than demonstrate her ineptness by simultaneous asserting that the planned sanctions by the United States, the members of NATO and other allies were an effective deterrent to Mr. Putin and Russia, all the while stating that Mr. Putin had already made up his mind to invade the Ukraine. Ms. Harris, as usual, was a “deer in the headlights” when challenged on the dichotomy of her talking points.

And despite the assurances of Mr. Biden, Ms. Harris. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the mainstream media that the threatened sanctions would deter Russia, they did not. Mr. Putin and his allied thugs didn’t even blink. Their preparations continued undeterred despite virtually everyone, including Ukrainian President Volodymer Zelensky calling for the sanctions to be imposed prior to the invasion. As usual Mr. Biden, Ms. Harris and Mr. Blinken were wrong – they are always wrong – and Mr. Zelensky was right.

Threatened rather than real sanctions by a leader known internationally to be an appeaser like Mr. Biden, leave the significant chance that they will never be enforced and thus will never deter a brute like Mr. Putin.

As the sanctions have rolled out after the invasion, they are relatively robust, well directed (with the exception of their lack of application to Russia’s energy sector) and are having a dramatic effect. Had those been put in place prior to the actual invasion, they may have had the effect of turning the oligarchs against Mr. Putin before it was too late. But Mr. Biden, with concurrence by Mr. Blinken, steadfastly adhered to a loser’s policy and wound up losing again.

What they should have done was impose the sanctions prior to the invasion while simultaneously arming the holy bejeezus out of the Ukraine including limited range missiles, military drones and more ammunition than you can shake a stick at. Just think, had Mr. Biden required the evacuation of our military equipment in Afghanistan prior to his disastrous exit and given that $85 Billion worth of equipment to the Ukraine, none of this would have happened.

Myth No. 3 Russian President Vladimir Putin has changed in recent years.

Representatives of the administrations of Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama quickly appeared before the television cameras to assure us that Mr. Putin had changed since their dealings with him. They did so because they turned their eyes away for the eight years of their respective terms to the ruthless thug that Mr. Putin was and is. He hasn’t changed. He was a ruthless thug as a KGB agent stationed in East Germany. And he became a more ruthless thug as he began to climb the ladder with a boost from former Russian President Boris Yelstin in 1996. In 1999 there were a series of bombings of residential apartment buildings in Russia that Mr. Putin blamed on Chechen separatists but were in actuality carried out by forces loyal to Mr. Putin . It was his first, but not his last, use of a “false flag” to justify a war with a neighboring country. That all seems pretty sterile on paper but it represents Mr. Putin’s willingness to kill his own people to justify his actions – there is no more ruthless act than that.

Others, more dense than Messrs. Bush and Obama have seized upon mental defect and/or the after effects of long form COVID as the rationale. And what do they present as evidence? Nothing. Nothing at all, because idle speculation has become the essence of news today. The March 4 edition of the Daily Mail reported:

“With the eyes of the world on Vladimir Putin questions are being asked about the Russian leader’s state of mind after he announced the invasion of Ukraine in ‘rambling, terrifying, apocalyptic’ fashion.

“Rumours surrounding the Russian leader’s health have been swirling for years, with  repeated reports suggesting that he is suffering from cancer and Parkinson’s disease.

“On top of that, the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on both the President’s physical and mental health can’t be underestimated, and it’s been suggested that brain fog as a result of Long Covid could be impairing his cognitive function.”

The Los Angeles Times, CNN, Washington Post and The Boston Globe, among others, trotted out there own theories and not a one was supported by a demonstrable fact.

The fact of the matter, as demonstrated by the remarkably consistent behavior of the world’s premier thug, is that Mr. Putin hasn’t changed at all. He was a thug, he is a thug and he will be a thug until he dies. The principle fault for this lies with the lily-sniffing brahmans of the State Department who have been wrong each and every time that they have convinced one hapless president after another that diplomacy will work with a bully. They are the same witless morons who manipulate foreign intelligence to support their appeasement-first agenda. How else would you explain their routine failures in Benghazi, Iran, Syria, the Afghanistan withdrawal, and the lead up to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

If you want a better intelligence force and better foreign policy advise you are going to have to clean house at the State Department – from the Secretary of State to the cleaning lady. Diplomacy has never worked in the face of a belligerent.

But these appeasement-first analysis by the intelligence community and state department provide cover for the politicians. After all, if the state department was to have issued a report twenty years ago about what a brutal killer Mr. Putin really was, the next question for the politicians would be – “what are you going to do about it?” And that presents a problem the solution to which may involve a high degree of risk. And here you thought that is why we elected these people to Congress. You would be right about the reason and dead wrong about your choices for those offices.

Myth No. 4. Mr. Putin really only sought a secure land bridge to the Crimea.

Well that is the clear message that Mr. Biden delivered. When asked about sanctions, Mr. Biden noted that imposition of sanctions would depend on the level of the incursion by Russia. So which morons in the State Department and the intelligence community delivered that estimation to Mr. Biden? Whoever delivered the estimate had to pass it through Secretary of State Antony Blinken who has been the chief advisor for one erroneous foreign policy recommendation after another during the entirety of the time that Mr. Biden has been in public office – basically forty years of ineptitude and yet Mr. Biden elevated him to be his Secretary of State.

Did not anyone in the intelligence community, the military community and/or the state department note that Mr. Putin was deploying his massive armed forces in a three-quarters circle in order to attack the Ukraine through at least four different corridors? For that matter, did not anyone in the intelligence community, the military community and/or the state department raise the alarm as Mr. Putin began to amass his military force beginning in April of 2021 and accelerating shortly after Mr. Biden’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan? Not an intelligent person in the Western world believed that Mr. Putin intended only a limited incursion.

Myth No. 5. Russia is a superior fighting force that would subdue the Ukraine in a matter of days.

While the Russian military has powerful weapons at its disposal it lacks several key ingredients to be designated as a “superior” fighting force. What we know from Russian engagement in Afghanistan, Syria, Chechnya and now the Ukraine is that it is a brute force lacking in logistics, communications, adaptivity, and tactical maneuvering. The result has been that its blitzkreig buckled almost immediately – a forty mile long caravan containing both equipment and supplies, including fuel, food and ammunition has been stalled outside Kyiv for nearly a week. (Had the Ukrainian military had “stand-off weapons” they could have destroyed that caravan and virtually the entire ability of the Russians to fight in a matter of minutes.) The Ukrainian army backed by armed civilians held off the Russians in city after city. In the end, however, Mr. Putin did as he has always done – used brute force. More artillery, more planes, more missiles, more bombs – a hammer beating the people of Ukraine to death. And in the process Mr. Putin is destroying the infrastructure, the markets and the residences of the very people he is now going to have to govern. So brutal is the treatment, so complete is the destruction that Mr. Putin must now govern in the face of an armed and fanatic guerrilla resistance.

This wasn’t a superior fighting force – it was simply a thug brutalizing a weaker opponent. The Ukraine military force held the Russians at bay in direct confrontations. It is only the access to stand off weapons (rockets, missiles, artillery and bombs) that turned the tide in favor of Mr. Putin and his barely able fighting force.

A Future Course. We are now left with a mess. Russia will systematically destroy the Ukraine, kill and impoverish its people and begin preparing for its next invasion. What should be done is to continue and strengthen the sanctions until they bleed both Russia and the oligarchs dry. (That should include confiscation of assets of the oligarchs and Mr. Putin, wherever possible, and dedication of those billions to the eventual reconstruction of the Ukraine. The sanctions have to continue until Mr. Putin is removed from office along with his advisors.  The sanctions have to break the back of not just Mr. Putin but the very architecture of the Russian state that would simply replace one dictator with another. That doesn’t mean that we attempt to impose a Western style democracy on Russia, rather it means we simply deprive them of the financial means to recreate another war machine.  And when Mr. Putin is removed from office he should be sent to the Ukraine to stand trial for war crimes.

But all of that will have to wait until Mr. Biden, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer are replaced.