OPINION:
The conflict in Ukraine highlights our current lack of leadership and the negative consequences that can result. We can argue all day long about the Trump presidency, none of this would be happening if Donald Trump were still in office.
Since Ronald Reagan, Trump alone was the American leader to make clear to the rest of the world that we had a president who placed American interests first and that we would do whatever was needed to keep America secure. Bill Clinton was charismatic, smart and eloquent, but at the end of the day had no clear policies. Both Bush presidents were weak in foreign policy and too accommodating when it came to domestic policy. Barack Obama was a media darling with no record of accomplishment before or after his presidency other than to “fundamentally transform” America. He did that to our loss. President Biden, a weak and corrupt man, is now the leader of the free world. No wonder that our enemies rejoice.
It’s true that we have no treaty obligation to support Ukraine and that our escalation of military aid puts us in danger of a greater conflict with the threat of nuclear annihilation. We’re in the position of the western world before World War II, when a small military response to a relatively weak Nazi Germany would have ended Hitler’s political carreer. The same applies to our abandonment of the Nationalists in China that led to what we have in China today. Without China looming in the background, North Korea wouldn’t have dared invade the south. Had it done so under those circumstances, it would have been overthrown by MacArthur’s army in short order.
We’re all terrified of the consequences of conflict, and none of us wants our children or grandchildren to experience what a global military conflict will bring. Nonetheless, we need to face the alternatives and be ready to defend what we hold dear. Otherwise Taiwan will be next — and then we’ll have to face direct confrontation as the Bluffing Russian Bear moves toward Moldova and then into the former Soviet states of present NATO. By then it will be too late.
We must gather our courage and stop this aggression now, before it’s not too late.
J. LAURENCE EISENBERG
Sarasota, Florida
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