OPINION:
One of President Abraham Lincoln’s greatest challenges prosecuting the Civil War, he reportedly once lamented, was that all of his best generals were otherwise occupied writing editorials for newspapers across the North.
No one has ever compared President Biden to Lincoln. But Mr. Biden faces a similar challenge as he resists the ocean of bloodlust in Washington to go to war against Russia in Ukraine. Luckily, Lincoln did not have to contend with the brave warriors of Twitter, or we would still be fighting the Civil War.
It has become a near-universal Truth in Washington today that the United States has a moral obligation to get into this conflict to defend the territorial integrity of Ukraine — after more than 30 years of ignoring our own territorial integrity here in America.
The mere suggestion that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy might consider his options carefully as he is on his own and his people are suffering brutally brings particularly blood-curdling howls from the press jackals in Washington.
How dare we surrender to a freedom-killing bully like Russian President Vladimir Putin, the warrior journalists ask?
Serious question: Why are all these armchair generals fat, balding, moonfaced and prone to profuse sweating even in air-conditioned newsrooms?
They are not exactly “tip of the spear” when it comes to actual fighting. These people could not battle their way out of a half-eaten bag of Doritos.
Yet they are delighted to urge Americans to send their own sons to die in foreign wars that have no bearing on U.S. national security interests. And they come unglued at the mere mention that Mr. Zelenskyy might want to consider options to avoid the annihilation of his entire civilian population.
Traitor! Russian propaganda! Putin stooge!
These charges often come from Republican ranks these days or supposed “conservatives” who only qualify as “conservative” in a twisted sewer like Washington. They are the new “woke.” Proudly beating their chests over their own vaunted virtue, though actually accomplishing nothing.
Strike that. The only thing they might accomplish is prolonging carnage in Ukraine. But what the hell? It’s not their children dying.
These so-called conservatives have adopted the favorite playbook of The New York Times, American government apparatchiks and Democrats in Congress who suffered a five-year psychotic episode chasing phantoms about urinating hotel hookers, Russian collusion and the most unhinged conspiracy theories ever believed by man.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian women and children are being slaughtered by Mr. Putin’s forces.
All the armchair war talk in America leaves such a giant vacuum that it has fallen to the nation of Turkey to step in and try brokering a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia. Indeed, America’s beacon of freedom has been snuffed out.
Now, it turns out, Russia spent the past 20 years developing hypersonic missiles that the United States does not have. In fact, America doesn’t even have defensive weapons that can keep up with Russia’s hypersonic missiles.
Thanks to these very same armchair warriors in Washington, we spent the last 20 years losing a war to goat herders in Afghanistan.
Obviously, nobody deserves more blame for all the carnage than Mr. Biden himself. Few people in Washington have been more central to the foreign policy decisions that led to the situation we find ourselves in today. And, of course, Mr. Biden deserves every bit of the credit for his catastrophic withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Thankfully, Mr. Biden took his 64th vacation from the White House this past weekend to go bike riding at the beach in Delaware.
He wore a helmet. But, as Captain Renault noted about his own heart on the tarmac in Casablanca, Mr. Biden’s head is his least vulnerable spot.
• Charles Hurt is the opinion editor at The Washington Times.
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