While Gaza catches its breath, time to talk Ukraine again.
We must support Ukraine... NOW
Happy Thursday TAT readers,
Phew! We’re almost to Friday and the holidays are now moving from expectation to full steam ahead. We all wish to enjoy what lies before us in the next few weeks, but we must keep one eye on the door, to ensure that the Russian wolves and bears, don’t continue to spoil everyone’s holiday experiences via their omnipresent threats.
While that the Israeli brokered cease fire is still holding, it is imperative that we catch up, on the acute threat to our national security posed by Putin’s genocidal invasion of Ukraine.
Today, we’ll catch up briefly by looking at a couple of specific issues:
A Sitrep/ military speak for situation report
The prominent GOP refusal to fund Ukraine
First and foremost, and as I have long written about, Putin’s invasion of his sovereign neighbor, Ukraine, is a genocide in progress. It’s not only the second genocide imposed by Putin and Stalin on the Ukrainian people in the past century, but is built on a pack of lies, conspiracy theories and the most gruesome barbarism, akin to that of Hamas on Oct. 7th.
Please see this information on Stalin’s version in the early 1930s, called the Holodomor, in the embedded link.
As of August of 2023, the best estimates show roughly 300,000 Russian military casualties and about a third of that, within the Ukrainian military. Then, there are somewhere between 27,000 and 100,000, Ukrainian civilian casualties. Civilian casualties are among the most difficult numbers to parse.
Putin’s troops continue to focus rockets and missiles on civilian targets like schools, apartment buildings, cafes, hospitals, public gatherings, etc. Ukrainian targets are exclusively military. There is nothing new about this and to be quite frank, the Russian way of war is stark brutality against civilians and their own troops.
Russian assaults are pure bloodshed with officers pushing human waves forward and quite often, anyone retreating is gunned by their own soldiers. Life means absolutely nothing. During WW I and under the last Tsar, Nicholas II, things were very much the same and led to his abdication and his death, along with his entire family. WW II assaults under the Soviets, little different. Now in Ukraine, foreign troops, Russian troops, conscripts and prisoners suffer the same fate.
Rape against civilians is a war crime and also a tactic of genocide dating back thousands of years. Then there is the unimaginable kidnapping of Ukrainian children that are put up for adoption in Russia to Russian parents. As of this summer, Russian children's commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova has said that more than 700,000 Ukrainian children have been taken from Ukraine to Russia since the start of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine. She is also indicted for war crimes by the ICCT, International Criminal Court. Not only is this kidnapping a crime against humanity but is also one of the tactics of genocide.
To close out the argument that Putin is engaged in genocide, look no further than one of his most pervasive narratives for his war. He claims, against all historical evidence that Ukraine and Russia are the same cultural identity and that he must save Ukrainians from having their Russian identity watered down. If anything is true, it is that Russia is built on the identity of the Kievan (now Ukraine) Russ who helped the principality of Moscow to establish a foothold as the seedling of imperial Russia.
Okay, okay, we get it that Putin is a thug and that the Russian people, brutally abused by him and his oligarchs are forced into genocide against their mostly, fellow Slavs, next door in Ukraine. So, what does this mean to US and NATO security? The short answer… is everything!
There is no shortage of intelligence that clearly shows that had Putin had his intended success in Ukraine, he would have continued to assault other eastern European nations in an attempt to regain the perceived glory of former Imperial Russia and the former sphere of influence of the now long-deceased, Soviet Union. This would have been a direct threat to NATO and thereby, the stability of the globe.
At the heart of NATO is Article 5, which speaks to the principle of collective defense. In other words, any attack on any NATO nation demands the response of all NATO Treaty nations. It has been the single most effective treaty that kept the Soviets and today’s Russia at bay, throughout the Cold War and until today. Whether under the Tsars and Imperial Russia or the Soviet Union, conquest has always been part of the plan, to include global domination.
Here’s where Putin’s imagination has gotten the better of him. His military turned out to be a “paper” bear. Over the past nearly two years, his KIAs (killed in action) are three times higher than Ukraine’s. His equipment and weapons systems, a poor match against Western systems and his logistics are not even as good as the failed last Tsar in 1917, abysmal. In a war of attrition which is where we now stand, he is as they say where I’m from, “being beaten like an old rug.” Still, Russia is a much larger nation where forced conscription still is a thing. He can continue to force more Russians into uniform, but they will be pathetically trained, worse equipped and essentially cannon fodder. Without a steady and expanding stream of NATO support, Ukrainians will suffer immeasurably, and this includes cultural as well as actual, genocide.
Enter now, today’s MAGA controlled GOP who consistently strives to defund Ukraine’s resistance to genocide, while concurrently exposing NATO’s Eastern flank to invasion, another massive war across Europe, and maybe the world. Here I must be blunt, if we do not continue to invest in our fellow democracy in Ukraine and their fighting and dying, we will again be at war, doing it ourselves. The Ukrainian people are not only fighting to save their lives and culture, but they are defending the Western world, against the now expanding bloc of nations, hellbent on global conquest and headed by China.
Yes, all-out war against Russia by NATO, presents the distinct possibility of expanding into a war with Russia, China and their underlings. The world has been in an ongoing transition to a new world order since the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 and now, it’s not Russia who is the kingpin, but it is Xi in China that is the most significant threat while Putin plays second fiddle. There are a variety of reasons that the Chinese military is not yet ready for such a conflict but the US and NATO both, have been exceptionally diligent about keeping this war between Russia and Ukraine. This for the moment, is keeping the world from inching closer to a massive, global conflict.
On the Asian continent, we have China, Russia, N. Korea, Pakistan, Iran and a delicate situation with India. Modi’s India is not the democracy that we tend to assume is a partner or ally. Modi is more like Putin, Xi, Trump, Orban’, Milei etc. than he is an actual democracy. The Indian people are under intense pressure to succumb to Modi’s brutal, far-right BJP party that mitigates their claim to an active democracy. Rather than the WCN or White Christian Nationalism prevalent in the US and much Europe, in India, it is Hindutva that threatens democracy.
Back to the GOP and more pointedly, the new Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, a brazen White Christian Nationalist that displays a NAR/ New Apostolic Reformation flag outside of his congressional office. For the record, WCN is the opposite of democracy. It is an authoritarian, xenophobic and racist theology. Since 2015, the GOP has become almost exclusively, WCN and a threat to American democracy. This perspective still controls the party and more pointedly, it underpins the Trump era, party dedication to supporting Putin, not US national security.
WCN is nearly synonymous with Christian Nationalism. Below are links to the NCC/ National Council of Churches on the threat of Christian Nationalism and others:
Pentecostal leaders condemn Christian nationalism, NAR theology (newsweek.com)
Statement from Christians Against Christian Nationalism — Christians Against Christian Nationalism
The Dangers of Christian Nationalism in the United States: A Policy Statement of the National Council of Churches – National Council of Churches
White Christian Nationalism, Hate and Extremism: An Interview with Dr. Joseph Wiinikka-Lydon • GBCS (umcjustice.org)
I do not intend for this article to take a religious turn but… the ideological connectivity between Speaker Johnson, the MAGA controlling faction of the GOP is nearly synonymous with Putin’s version wrapped around the Russian, Orthodox church. The actions of the GOP in the Trump era are eerily similar to the ideology shared between the heart of the global far-right movement in Russia and the US version (s). In fact, it is shared globally between the US, Russia and other far-right global thugs like Putin, Modi, Bolsonaro, Marine le Pen, Viktor Orban’ etc. In the 1930s, the ideology of record for the Axis, was fascism. Today, Fascism is sold on religious grounds, albeit fake religious grounds.
Why does Speaker Johnson, his hero Trump and the party leadership seemingly support Putin’s Russia? First, there is the pursuit of authoritarianism, power, corruption and oppression. Religiously inspired oligarchy is still oligarchy and no one as they say, “gets out alive.” These are the belief systems that not only threaten US democracy, but the entire Western, Liberal Order that has produced so much progress over the last several decades.
Anyway, regardless of how today’s GOP gets there, they are a threat to our republic and global stability. Defunding Ukraine is but one step is destroying the current RBIO, Rules-based Global Order, which is underpinned by democracy in one form or another. Defunding Ukraine exposes the US and NATO to the whims of a collaboration of Chinese and Russian authoritarianism. Xi has a plan and a strategy. Putin is part of this although he may not understand it fully. Where Modi ends up is anyone’s guess. At any rate, global stability requires funding Ukraine’s victory.
Okay, let’s wrap this up. I have turned this into a far more diverse topic than I intended but, it was necessary to help to explain things more clearly.
How well Ukraine performs in protecting the West from a much more dangerous world, must be priority number one. Anyone, regardless of party, nation, ideology or otherwise that gets in the way of this is directly supporting Putin and Xi. It is truly that simple. Being a principled conservative or liberal is not a threat. Being an extremist is.
Mike Johnson and his fellow MAGA anti-patriots, hold global security in their hands. Their voters who put them in office, the same. If the voters don’t put an end to this pervasive MAGA extremism, it may be another few decades before the world recovers from what falls after Ukraine.
As I tend to always close with, and because it is true, every voter has a duty of citizenship to put dangerous, uninformed and anti-democratic ideology aside. Our nation is not, never has been and as long as our constitution holds, will never be a theocracy. These days, I want my grandchildren to remain free, have the world available to them and know the values that our founders bequeathed to us. I don’t want them growing up under the thuggish rule of religious zealots, oligarchs and thugs. The only way this can be accomplished is for our votes to be as intended, well and accurately informed.
My very best for the end of your week,
Paul