“So, Ukraine is a country in Europe. It exists next to another country called Russia. continued. Russia is a bigger country. Russia is a powerful country. Russia decided to invade a smaller country called Ukraine. So, basically, that’s wrong, and it goes against everything that we stand for.” — Vice President Kamala Harris (D)
“We don’t just need to be sanctioning Russia’s yachts—we need to be sanctioning their oil tankers!” – Vice President Mike Pence (R)
Reality: The simple truth is that if Russia stopped fighting there would be peace. If Ukraine stopped fighting there would be no Ukraine.
Biden Financing Putin’s War: The fact that the Biden Administration continues to buy Russian oil on a daily basis, is more than financing Putin’s war. The strongest and most effective tool the west has is to cut off Russia’s ability to sell its oil to the west.
The U.S. has also demonstrated its ability to not only be self-sufficient when it comes to oil production, but we can help supply the world with the oil it needs.
The Democrat’s “Green New Deal” could cost millions of lives, destroy a free country, and empower the most vicious war criminal in our lifetime by allowing Putin to win the war in Ukraine…another “genie out of the bottle” the Democrats won’t be able to put back.
Yachts & Condos: Wow, leave it to millionaire Joe Biden to “really punish” Putin and his friends by seizing their yachts and condos around the world?!? The arrogance and aloofness of Biden to think that cutting off these guy’s vacation spots is going to stop war criminal Putin is absurd!
Biden is a disaster…and unfortunately still around for another 3 years. Pray for America.
Post Cold War Strategy: In a Washington Post opinion piece below, Robert Gates lays out a realistic strategy for the world to consider. It’s worth the read.
–Saul Anuzis
Click Here for Past Commentary from Saul
60 Plus Weekly Video Rewind
Calls increase for tougher economic sanctions on Russia, Joe Biden fumbles his way through his first State of the Union address, and the Senate GOP disagree on the way forward.
Links to the articles discussed in the video:
https://thefederalist.com/2022/03/01/17-absurd-lies-biden-told-during-his-state-of-the-union-speech/
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/596631-scott-says-his-plan-could-change-after-mcconnell-rebuke
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Buckle Your Seatbelts For Three More Years Of Biden Making The World More Dangerous
Year one of Biden’s foreign policy has damaged our republic. Unfortunately, things can easily get a whole lot worse, and fast.
Fifty years ago this week, President Nixon signed the Shanghai Communique with the People’s Republic of China. It was a bold act of statecraft that helped drive a wedge between Communist China and the Soviet Union.
For most of the Cold War, the United States had a clear and guiding mission: defeat the Soviet Union and communism, divide our enemies, and protect our allies. Today, the enemies of the United States have taken on the reverse mission: defeat Western democracy, divide the United States and her allies, and protect autocracies.
The Sino-Russian alliance and the regimes they prop up from Caracas to Tehran form a dangerously formidable opponent. It is vital that our elected leaders meet that challenge. Sadly, they are far from meeting that task.
As a candidate for president, Joe Biden promised he would mend our supposedly broken alliances, “bring the adults back in charge,” stand up to Russia by arming Ukraine, and make America more prosperous. Across all these accounts, he has failed.
Biden has isolated our allies and partners in the Middle East so badly they would not even vote with us at the United Nations to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. His administration repeatedly blocked and stalled military assistance to Ukraine, and only promised Stinger missiles to them last week after dovish countries like Germany and the Netherlands had already committed them as well. Inflation is higher than it’s been in 40 years and gas prices are on the rise even further.
Pence hits Trump: No room in GOP for ‘apologists for Putin’
Former Vice President Mike Pence urged Republicans to move on from the 2020 election and declared that “there is no room in this party for apologists for Putin” as he further cemented his break from former President Donald Trump.
Pence, in a speech Friday evening to the party’s top donors in New Orleans, took on those in his party who have failed to forcefully condemn Russian President Vladimir Putin for his unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.
“Where would Russian tanks be today if NATO had not expanded the borders of freedom? There is no room in this party for apologists for Putin,” Pence said, according to excerpts from the speech, which was closed to reporters. “There is only room for champions of freedom.”
Pence did not directly reference the former president. But Trump has repeatedly used language that has been criticized as deferential to Putin, including calling the Russian leader “smart” while insisting the attack never would have happened on his watch.
‘Yes, He Would’: Fiona Hill on Putin and Nukes
Putin is trying to take down the entire world order, the veteran Russia watcher said in an interview. But there are ways even ordinary Americans can fight back.
or many people, watching the Russian invasion of Ukraine has felt like a series of “He can’t be doing this” moments. Russia’s Vladimir Putin has launched the largest ground war in Europe since the Second World War. It is, quite literally, mind-boggling.
That’s why I reached out to Fiona Hill, one of America’s most clear-eyed Russia experts, someone who has studied Putin for decades, worked in both Republican and Democratic administrations and has a reputation for truth-telling, earned when she testified during impeachment hearings for her former boss, President Donald Trump.
I wanted to know what she’s been thinking as she’s watched the extraordinary footage of Russian tanks rolling across international borders, what she thinks Putin has in mind and what insights she can offer into his motivations and objectives.
Hill spent many years studying history, and in our conversation, she repeatedly traced how long arcs and trends of European history are converging on Ukraine right now. We are already, she said, in the middle of a third World War, whether we’ve fully grasped it or not.
“Sadly, we are treading back through old historical patterns that we said that we would never permit to happen again,” Hill told me.
Those old historical patterns include Western businesses who fail to see how they help build a tyrant’s war chest, admirers enamored of an autocrat’s “strength” and politicians’ tendency to point fingers inward for political gain instead of working together for their nation’s security.
But at the same time, Hill says it’s not too late to turn Putin back, and it’s a job not just for the Ukrainians or for NATO — it’s a job that ordinary Westerners and companies can assist in important ways once they grasp what’s at stake.
“Ukraine has become the front line in a struggle, not just between democracies and autocracies but in a struggle for maintaining a rules-based system in which the things that countries want are not taken by force,” Hill said. “Every country in the world should be paying close attention to this.”
Russian Troop Deaths Expose a Potential Weakness of Putin’s Strategy
Videos and photos show the bodies of soldiers left behind on the battlefield, officials say, and the charred remains of tanks and armored vehicles.
When Russia seized Crimea in 2014, President Vladimir V. Putin was so worried about Russian casualty figures coming to light that authorities accosted journalists who tried to cover funerals of some of the 400 troops killed during that one-month campaign.
But Moscow may be losing that many soldiers daily in Mr. Putin’s latest invasion of Ukraine, American and European officials said. The mounting toll for Russian troops exposes a potential weakness for the Russian president at a time when he is still claiming, publicly, that he is engaged only in a limited military operation in Ukraine’s separatist east.
No one can say with certainty just how many Russian troops have died since last Thursday, when they began what is turning into a long march to Kyiv, the capital. Some Russian units have put down their arms and refused to fight, the Pentagon said Tuesday. Major Ukrainian cities have withstood the onslaught thus far.
Why the Russians Are Struggling
As the sun goes down in Kyiv, the city has not yet fallen to the Russians. This is unquestionably a defeat for Vladimir Putin.
It’s important to not get carried away here: The Kremlin is still favored to win this fight. But the last three days of combat should put a serious dent in the reputation of this new Russian army. We should, however, try to understand why the Russians are struggling. First, the Russian army’s recent structural reforms do not appear to have been sufficient to the task at hand. Second, at the tactical and operational level, the Russians are failing to get the most out of their manpower and materiel advantage.
There has been much talk over the last ten years about the Russian army’s modernization and professionalization. After suffering severe neglect in the ’90s, during Russia’s post-Soviet financial crisis, the army began to reorganize and modernize with the strengthening of the Russian economy under Putin. First the army got smaller, at least compared to the Soviet Red Army, which allowed a higher per-soldier funding ratio than in previous eras. The Russians spent vast sums of money to modernize and improve their equipment and kit — everything from new models of main battle tanks to, in 2013, ordering Russian troopers to to finally retire the traditional portyanki foot wraps and switch to socks.
But the Russians have also gone the wrong direction in some areas. In 2008, the Russian government cut the conscription term from 24 to twelve months. As Gil Barndollar, a former U.S. Marine infantry officer, wrote in 2020:
Putin’s War Crimes: Is Russia’s “Meat Ginder” Multiplying War Crimes
Vladimir Putin may be the greatest proof of John Steinbeck’s claim that “war is a symptom of man’s failure as a thinking animal.” For most of us, there seems no plausible endgame for Putin in his invasion of Ukraine other than death and destruction for both countries. Putin seems to be thinking in a different century but using this century’s weapons.
For criminals, there is often a calculus of risk that is done in looking at the costs and penalties of a crimes. The same is true for most war criminals and Putin is clearly now in that class of criminals. There is mounting evidence of war crimes, particularly in attacks on civilian areas.
Putting aside the legal avenues for action in the short term, there is no question about the violation of international law in Russia’s invasion. The invasion was done without provocation or necessity. The response was far beyond any claim of just cause or threat. Moreover, Russia appears to be moving dangerously with in shift military tactics that will greatly increase civilian losses.
What was most notable today was the reported use of rockets and other munitions against the second largest city in Ukraine, Kharkiv.
The Kremlin always falls prey to pride and paranoialike previous Russian rulers, Putin obsesses over historical injustices and restoring his nation’s place at the top table, whatever the cost in blood spilled.
During the 1962 missile crisis, on the evening of October 23, a curious episode took place in Moscow. A few hours after President Kennedy announced the discovery of nuclear weapons in Cuba, the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev determined to show the world that he was unafraid. He thus led a troop of Kremlin functionaries to the Bolshoi Theatre to attend a performance of Modest Mussorgsky’s operatic masterpiece Boris Godunov, based on Pushkin’s play.
This tale of an ill-fated 16th-century Russian leader was incongruous entertainment for an embattled 20th-century successor. Khrushchev never recorded whether he heeded Godunov’s howl of anguish: “Mine is the highest power!/ Year after year my reign was calm and peaceful and yet my heart has never known peace…
Wielding the threat of war, a new, more aggressive Putin steps forward
As Russia continues its invasion of Ukraine, the United States and western allies have imposed a new round of economic sanctions. But these won’t achieve the desired effect as long as there is a carve-out for Russia’s energy sector.
Last week, the United States imposed sanctions on four large Russian banks and restricted certain Russian state-owned enterprises from raising money in international markets. On Monday, the U.S., the European Union, and the United Kingdom took an extraordinary step to sanction Russia’s central bank, the Bank of Russia, preventing it from moving assets it held abroad to stabilize Russia’s economy, or “using other government and private banks to manage central bank operations.” Additionally, the U.S. Department of Treasury prohibited Americans from doing business with Russia’s central bank, finance ministry, and Russia’s sovereign wealth fund. No country’s central bank had ever been sanctioned like this before. According to officials from the Biden administration, these latest sanctions targeting Russia’s banking and financial systems represent the West’s “biggest sanctions campaigns in the past half-century.”…
… The energy sector plays the most vital role in Russia’s economy, which is about the size of South Korea’s. Russia’s energy sector accounts for 14 percent of the country’s GDP. The country is the world’s largest natural-gas exporter and one of the main oil suppliers. Revenue from the energy sector has helped Russia accumulate $630 billion in foreign exchange reserves in recent years and contributed to more than 40 percent of the country’s federal budget.
Ukraine has shown remarkable resolve, resilience, and military capacity as it defends itself against Russia’s unprovoked and massive attacks.
By contrast, Russian forces have performed poorly, with failures in planning, execution, and logistics. They have suffered far greater losses of equipment and personnel than expected and have bogged down in what they clearly thought would be a war of a few days.
Despite Ukraine’s early successes, however, there is no guarantee this situation will remain this way. Russia is regrouping its forces and bringing in fresh, additional Russian (and perhaps Belarussian) units. It is massing them around major cities and preparing for major sieges, especially of the capital, Kyiv. Russia is preparing to use missiles, airpower, and shelling to attempt to subdue the city and its defenses. It has already caused over 2,000 civilian deaths, but the upcoming attacks will produce far more.
President Biden has drawn a clear line that the United States will not engage in direct fighting against Russia to help defend Ukraine, but will provide substantial amounts of equipment to help the country defend itself. The total amount committed this year now reaches $1bn.
Even so, US military assistance provided thus far is inadequate to the magnitude of the challenge Ukraine faces. There must be more aid, delivered far more quickly, to help Ukraine survive for the next week. Here are six specific ideas to implement within 24 hours:
Six Ways to Help Ukraine Survive Right Now
Ukraine has shown remarkable resolve, resilience, and military capacity as it defends itself against Russia’s unprovoked and massive attacks.
By contrast, Russian forces have performed poorly, with failures in planning, execution, and logistics. They have suffered far greater losses of equipment and personnel than expected and have bogged down in what they clearly thought would be a war of a few days.
Despite Ukraine’s early successes, however, there is no guarantee this situation will remain this way. Russia is regrouping its forces and bringing in fresh, additional Russian (and perhaps Belarussian) units. It is massing them around major cities and preparing for major sieges, especially of the capital, Kyiv. Russia is preparing to use missiles, airpower, and shelling to attempt to subdue the city and its defenses. It has already caused over 2,000 civilian deaths, but the upcoming attacks will produce far more.
President Biden has drawn a clear line that the United States will not engage in direct fighting against Russia to help defend Ukraine, but will provide substantial amounts of equipment to help the country defend itself. The total amount committed this year now reaches $1bn.
Even so, US military assistance provided thus far is inadequate to the magnitude of the challenge Ukraine faces. There must be more aid, delivered far more quickly, to help Ukraine survive for the next week. Here are six specific ideas to implement within 24 hours:
We need a more realistic strategy for the post-Cold War era
Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has ended Americans’ 30-year holiday from history. For the first time since World War II, the United States faces powerful, aggressive adversaries in Europe and Asia seeking to recover past glory along with claimed territories and spheres of influence. All in defiance of an international order largely shaped by the United States that has kept the peace among great powers for 70 years. The Russian and Chinese challenge to this peaceful order has been developing for a number of years. Putin’s war has provided the cold shower needed to awaken democratic governments to the reality of a new world, a world in which our strategy in recent years — including the “pivot” to Asia — is woefully insufficient to meet the long-term challenges we face.
Though we have a number of security challenges — Iran and North Korea, as well as terrorism and global problems — Russia and China are the main threats to our economic, political and military interests. The two nations each pose a different kind of hazard.
The threat from Russia is a megalomaniacal leader convinced that his historical mission is to restore the Russian empire and rewrite history since the collapse of the Soviet Union. He is willing to use the most brutal measures to achieve that goal, at home and, as we are seeing, even beyond Russia’s borders. When he passes from the scene, though, a different Russia could emerge. We caught a glimpse of such an alternative during the presidency of Dmitry Medvedev from 2008 to 2012.
What do Trump’s Putin comments at CPAC mean for the future of the GOP?
To learn how the definition of conservative has changed in America, consider the story of Saul Anuzis.
His parents were fans of Democratic president John F. Kennedy, but on campus at the University of Michigan one day in the late 1970s, a Republican congressman from Illinois named Phil Crane caught his attention.
“He gave a speech to the students,” Anuzis recalled. “He said, ‘I’d rather stand on my principles and lose than lose my principles and win. And as a young ideologue college student, I’m like, ‘Yeah, that’s me.'”
Principles were big for Anuzis, specifically staunch anti-communism, borne of childhood lessons from a family that had fled Soviet-controlled Lithuania after World War II. Anuzis joined a Republican Party then animated by its fierce opposition to Moscow’s oppression, with universal human rights atop the conservative agenda along with limited government at home.
In 1979, when Anuzis first started going to a young gathering of activists called the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), former California Gov. Ronald Reagan was launching what would ultimately become a successful bid for the White House.
Reagan was a CPAC mainstay in those years; read through his speeches now and you quickly see how, to enthusiastic responses, he talked liberally of freedom at home and abroad.
“Throughout the world the Soviet Union and its agents, client states and satellites are on the defensive: On the moral defensive, the intellectual defensive, and the political and economic defensive,” Reagan said at CPAC in 1985, months after his second inauguration. “Freedom movements arise and assert themselves. They’re doing so on almost every continent populated by man — in the hills of Afghanistan, in Angola, in Kampuchea, in Central America. In making mention of freedom fighters, all of us are privileged to have in our midst tonight one of the brave commanders who lead the Afghan freedom fighters — Abdul Haq. Abdul Haq, we are with you.”
“They are our brothers, these freedom fighters, and we owe them our help,” he continued.
The Right ‘Loves Putin’ And Other Lies The Media Tell About Trump And Russia
That right-wingers are cozying up to Putin is a myth generated by a news media that seemingly can’t do anything regarding Russia but lie.
What is it about Russia and Vladimir Putin that forces the American national media to lie, make things up, and blurt out statements that have no basis in reality? The latest fiction is that Republicans and conservatives have a newfound affinity for Putin.
If you only watched MSNBC or read The New York Times, you’d be forgiven for holding the impression that all of Fox News and the Republican party have draped themselves in Russian flags and set up GoFundMes for the invasion of Ukraine.
The Times on Sunday ran the headline, “How the American Right Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love Russia,” by Emily Tamkin. According to the piece, the “American political right” has in recent years “shifted toward fawning praise for autocrats” and now views authoritarian regimes like Russia’s as “symbols of U.S. conservatism — a mirror for the right-wing worldview.”
That sounds awful! Tamkin’s examples of this “fawning praise for autocrats” include Tucker Carlson telling his audience to ask, “Why do I hate Putin so much?”; former President Trump referring to Putin as “smart” and “savvy”; and GOP candidate for the U.S. Senate J.D. Vance remarking in a recent podcast interview that “We did not serve in the Marine Corps to go and fight Vladimir Putin because he didn’t believe in transgender rights.”
I guess others can decide whether any of this constitutes “fawning praise,” but Tamkin nonetheless called the comments “yet another way in which the political right is weaponizing culture wars to further divide Americans.”
Her argument might have been a little stronger if she included more searing examples of praise for Putin, like the time Trump called him a “master tactician.” Wait, sorry. That was actually how The New York Times itself described the Russian president in mid-February. And also in October 2020.
Seriously?!? UAE stance on Ukraine war reflects ‘strong alliance’ with Russia
UAE toes fine line as it navigates increasingly strong ties with Moscow amid Western fallout over Ukraine conflict, say analysts.
As the Western world moves to diplomatically isolate Russia amid widespread global condemnation over its war on Ukraine, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) stands out as one of a few countries keen to maintain a neutral, if not supportive, stance towards Moscow.
On Wednesday, it was among an overwhelming majority of states that backed a resolution at an emergency session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) reprimanding Russia over its invasion of Ukraine and demanding Moscow immediately withdraw its forces.
That stood in stark contrast with its decision on Friday during a UN Security Council (UNSC) meeting to abstain from a vote on a similar text.
In a Twitter post on Sunday, UAE presidential adviser Anwar Gargash said the Gulf state “believes that taking sides would only lead to more violence” and that the UAE’s priority was to “encourage all parties to resort to diplomatic action”.
Biden’s energy strategy helps Putin and hurts Americans. Biden should put America back on the path to energy security.
The United States imports nearly 600,000 barrels of oil a day from Russia—an amount that could have been made up for by the more than 800,000 barrels of oil the Keystone XL pipeline is capable of delivering each day if the Biden administration hadn’t stood in the way. As Vladimir Putin conducts his evil and unprovoked attack on Ukraine, now more than ever, we must cut off our energy dependence on Russia while turning up our energy production here at home.
Over the last decade and half, hard work and strategic policies set the United States on the course to energy independence. The shale oil and gas revolution led to the creation of tens of thousands of high-paying jobs, lower energy costs for Americans, and eliminated a key leverage point previously held by adversarial countries.
On his first day in office, President Joe Biden signed an executive order to block the Keystone XL pipeline. With the stroke of a pen, he wiped out thousands of jobs and set the tone for how his administration would approach the U.S. energy industry. The president even doubled down on this strategy by banning new oil and gas development on public land.
And in May of last year—despite his own administration’s report that the company behind Russia’s Nord Stream 2 pipeline had engaged in activity meriting sanctions—Biden gifted Putin even greater leverage by waiving off sanctions. Simultaneously blocking the U.S. pipeline and green-lighting Russia’s pipeline sent the message that American security would be sacrificed in order to appease European leaders and environmental extremists.
After much delay, and in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Biden administration has finally relented and took steps in the right direction on financial sanctions. Now, we must keep up the pressure on Putin by eliminating reliance on Russian energy.
