{"id":35378,"date":"2022-02-24T15:45:10","date_gmt":"2022-02-24T21:45:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=35378"},"modified":"2022-02-26T11:39:10","modified_gmt":"2022-02-26T17:39:10","slug":"it-isnt-weakness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2022\/02\/24\/it-isnt-weakness\/","title":{"rendered":"It Isn&#8217;t Weakness"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Prior to the beginning of the tragic Russian invasion of Ukraine, and since its inception, the Republicans were and are using the upcoming conflict as a platform for attacking President Biden and the Democrats, said attacks including <em>It&#8217;s none of our business, we shouldn&#8217;t be there!<\/em> (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/politics\/ohio-senate-timken-vance-republicans-ukraine-foreign-policy\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">candidate for the Senator from Ohio&#8217;s seat and author J. D. Vance<\/a>), <em>It&#8217;s the fault of the environmentalists!<\/em> (<a href=\"https:\/\/ewerickson.substack.com\/p\/the-reality-of-the-situation?utm_source=url\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">radio host Erick Erickson<\/a>), and, most interestingly, this example, which stands in for a few other equivalent, if more shrill, examples from more prominent Republicans:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Lot of people will be angry by this&#8230; But I&#39;m convinced that Putin would be a lot, LOT more hesitant to invade if Trump was President.<\/p>\n<p>Biden simply does not evoke any sense of strength or danger to our enemies.<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Pradheep J. Shanker (@Neoavatara) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Neoavatara\/status\/1495867768310280196?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">February 21, 2022<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>In case the above disappears out of future embarrassment:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Lot of people will be angry by this&#8230; But I&#8217;m convinced that Putin would be a lot, LOT more hesitant to invade if Trump was President.<\/p>\n<p>Biden simply does not evoke any sense of strength or danger to our enemies.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>And this is quite mild; most others are hubristic claims that Democrats, using the examples of Obama and Crimea, Carter and the diplomats, and now Biden and Ukraine, are uniquely weak and thus unsuited to elected position.<\/p>\n<p>This from the same Party that gave us George W. Bush and Donald J. Trump, and about the latter Jennifer Rubin <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/opinions\/2022\/02\/23\/trump-praises-putin-ukraine-refuting-claims-tough-on-russia\/?utm_campaign=wp_post_most&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_source=newsletter&amp;wpisrc=nl_most&amp;carta-url=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.washingtonpost.com%2Fcar-ln-tr%2F3622048%2F6216735b9d2fda34e7a4cd8b%2F59ee10d9ae7e8a504fd8ecd3%2F17%2F70%2F6216735b9d2fda34e7a4cd8b\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">helpfully remarks<\/a> in context:<\/p>\n<div class=\"\">\n<blockquote>\n<p class=\"font-copy font--article-body gray-darkest ma-0 pb-md\" data-qa=\"drop-cap-letter\" data-el=\"text\">To believe this [the cited tweet, above &#8211; HW] is to suffer from temporary amnesia about how Donald Trump actually acted toward Putin while he was in office. Who can forget Trump\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/world-europe-44852812\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">kowtow to Putin<\/a>\u00a0at Helsinki in 2018? The U.S. president rejected the findings of the United States\u2019 own intelligence community about the hacking of the 2016 election and said: \u201cPresident Putin says it\u2019s not Russia. I don\u2019t see any reason why it would be.\u201d Or who can forget Trump\u2019s use of U.S. military aid to extort the government of Ukraine into helping him politically? Or all of Trump\u2019s anti-NATO animus? Trump mused about\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2019\/01\/14\/us\/politics\/nato-president-trump.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">pulling out of the alliance<\/a>,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/2018\/jul\/19\/very-aggressive-trump-suggests-montenegro-could-cause-world-war-three\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">questioned<\/a>\u00a0its Article 5 security guarantees and ordered a withdrawal of\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2021\/02\/04\/us\/politics\/biden-germany-troops-trump.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">12,000 troops<\/a> from Germany. [<strong>WaPo<\/strong>]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p data-qa=\"drop-cap-letter\" data-el=\"text\">But Rubin really doesn&#8217;t take this far enough. The key question is <em>Why are there, or not, attacks during various Administrations?<\/em> and since Rubin has certainly refuted the popular-on-the-right meme that Democratic military leadership is weaker than Republicans, thus inviting attacks, it&#8217;s worth asking just what&#8217;s really going on.<\/p>\n<p data-qa=\"drop-cap-letter\" data-el=\"text\">First let&#8217;s dispense with the ugly practicalities of attacks, which includes logistics, personnel, supplies, and failed diplomacy. Without any of these or a few other areas that may have slipped my mind, launching an attack is fool-hardy. You want your attack to succeed &#8230; whatever that means.<\/p>\n<p data-qa=\"drop-cap-letter\" data-el=\"text\">And that&#8217;s an important question, isn&#8217;t it? Everything a national entity does should, ideally, be in pursuit of a goal. The goal may be nebulous &#8211; Look at the stability and prosperity of Democracy! &#8211; or it may be very specific. The goal may even be to have that attack fail, also known as a <em>feint<\/em>. But it bears keeping in mind that what an entity <em>isn&#8217;t<\/em> doing can be as important as an action taken.<\/p>\n<p data-qa=\"drop-cap-letter\" data-el=\"text\">That is, if you can manipulate the other side into doing something for you, why waste military materials on a frontal assault? Sometimes it&#8217;s better to risk a spy than a brigade.<\/p>\n<p data-qa=\"drop-cap-letter\" data-el=\"text\">Keeping all that in mind, let&#8217;s look at the Republicans. On the matter of the Russians, they don&#8217;t present a united front, do they? There are still prominent Republicans ready to warn about the Russians. But then there&#8217;s also his #1 admirer &#8230; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nbcnews.com\/news\/world\/live-blog\/russia-ukraine-conflict-live-updates-n1288990\/ncrd1289563#liveBlogHeader\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">former President Trump<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p class=\"\">&#8220;I said, &#8216;How smart is that?&#8217; And he\u2019s gonna go in and be a peacekeeper. That\u2019s strongest peace force&#8230; We could use that on our southern border. That\u2019s the strongest peace force I\u2019ve ever seen. There were more army tanks than I\u2019ve ever seen. They\u2019re gonna keep peace all right,&#8221; Trump continued. &#8220;Here\u2019s a guy who\u2019s very savvy&#8230; I know him very well. Very, very well.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">Trump went on to criticize Biden&#8217;s handling of the crisis and claim Russia&#8217;s invasion of Ukraine would not have happened while he was in office. He did not offer any explanation or evidence for the claim, nor did he explain what he would do differently now.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">&#8220;You gotta say that\u2019s pretty savvy. And you know what the response was from Biden? There was no response. They didn\u2019t have one for that. No, it\u2019s very sad. Very sad,&#8221; Trump added. &#8220;I knew Putin very well. I got along with him great. He liked me. I liked him. I mean, you know, he\u2019s a tough cookie, got a lot of the great charm and a lot of pride. But the way he \u2014 and he loves his country, you know? He loves his country.&#8221;<em> [<strong>NBC News<\/strong>]<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Or, as Rubin implied, Trump was, and is, abjectly weak. But where Trump goes, so goes the <strong>MAGA<\/strong> cult.<\/p>\n<p>And that&#8217;s more than a reality-based insult. Trump was the selection of the Republican Party for the party&#8217;s Presidential nomination, and so he represents its strength on foreign policy towards Russia &#8230; or its weakness. President Putin of Russia, who&#8217;s nakedly driving this war, is no schmuck. I don&#8217;t doubt that he and his intelligence apparatus have evaluated the Republican Party as being the weaker of the two major American political parties when it comes to Russian policy: more friendly and less likely to oppose Russian strategic objectives &#8230; such as neutralizing American influence in Europe, or even world-wide.<\/p>\n<p>A lesser opponent would attack when the Republicans are in power. After all, you have a weak opponent, right?<\/p>\n<p>But why expend all that war material when patsies like Trump, Cruz, and Vance are ready to rollover for you? The Republican Party has been <strong>subverted<\/strong> by the Russians to the point where open attacks, when they&#8217;re in power, are unnecessary.<\/p>\n<p>No, if your goal is to destroy an opponent greater than yourself, then you have to find ways to destroy their <strong>strengths<\/strong>. The Democratic Party, in Russia&#8217;s estimation, is more likely to effectively oppose them than the Republicans, so they&#8217;ve arranged to put the Democrats under a lot of pressure by dividing the political scene using their pawns, the Republicans, and then starting a war. They flood an increasingly wary American public with disinformation and divisive messages via Vance and many others, and try to portray the Democrats as weak via defeat of an allied country. The Democrats and Biden don&#8217;t need to be destroyed.<\/p>\n<p>Just denied success at the ballot box.<\/p>\n<p>And that&#8217;s the substance of the story. There are other factors, too, mostly germane to Putin personally: his age, his dreams for his country, his physical and mental health, his desired legacy. These also play into this dangerous, foolish game.<\/p>\n<p>But I think the reality is that the Republicans are simply self-delusional when they credit themselves with strength and the Democrats with weakness. As Rubin points out, their record for the last few decades does not support their self-appraisal.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s something voters should remember next time they have to trek to their local voting location. Do you want Russian patsies and isolationists representing the country? Or experienced people who know what the hell is going on &#8211; and who is dangerous?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Prior to the beginning of the tragic Russian invasion of Ukraine, and since its inception, the Republicans were and are using the upcoming conflict as a platform for attacking President Biden and the Democrats, said attacks including It&#8217;s none of our business, we shouldn&#8217;t be there! (candidate for the Senator \u2026 <a class=\"continue-reading-link\" href=\"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2022\/02\/24\/it-isnt-weakness\/\"> Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr; <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35378","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35378","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35378"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35378\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35400,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35378\/revisions\/35400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}