American presidents in the last few decades, after the end of Ronald Reagan’s presidency, have had a terrible experience when it comes to US geopolitical relations with Russia and Vladimir Putin.
Of course, some presidents are worse than others, but no one seems to really understand or want to understand the great existential threat from Putin and his thirst for blood for the glorious days of the USSR.
President George W. Bush has said disgracefully that he has looked into Putin’s eyes and seen his soul.
When my father was campaigning for 2008 republican The party’s primary primary, he responded to Bush’s comment.
My father said he looked into Putin’s eyes and saw “three letters: K, G and B.”
No one looks back on the Bush years in terms of his foreign policy instincts or his intellectual strength as president, but it was still a silly thing for the former president to say.
And he stands out for his incompetence in light of what is happening today amid Putin’s ongoing quest to strengthen his murderous regime.
President Obama was caught on a live microphone in 2012 when he told Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that he would “have more flexibility” to negotiate missile defense after the November election.
My father said he looked into Putin’s eyes and saw “three letters: K, G and B.” (Above) US Senator John McCain arrives to attend a pro-European Union rally in Independence Square in Kiev, Ukraine, on Sunday, December 15, 2013.
In another scandalous video from the 2012 presidential debate against Senator Mitt Romney, Obama mocked the governor for highlighting the looming existential threat from Russia and Vladimir Putin.
Obama said that “the 1980s have called and they want their foreign policy back.”
At the time, lapdog journalists, including CNN’s Chris Cillizza, welcomed the moment instead of taking Romney’s warnings seriously.
They applauded like seals over Obama’s cheap line – calling it the best moment of the debate.
Unfortunately for these journalists, these tweets are reappearing.
Cillizza has since written an article saying he was wrong. Too little, too late in my opinion. But he was far from alone in mocking the threat from Russia.
In 2013, my father took part in freedom protests in Kiev with Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy and spoke to thousands of protesters.
He told them: “We support your just cause, Ukraine’s sovereign right to determine its own destiny freely and independently. And the destiny you are looking for is in Europe.
In 2014, after the invasion and annexation of Crimea by Russia, my father urged the United States to arm the Ukrainians.
What did Obama do? Almost nothing.
The Obama White House will provide only non-lethal aid, fearing that the provision of weapons will provoke Putin.
Obama has adhered to his bold approach to foreign policy in the Ivy League classroom and made the world a safer place.
If he had followed my father’s advice, we might have avoided all this.
My father became so beloved to the figure because of his devotion to Ukraine that in 2019 the Kyiv City Council voted to rename a street after him.
In 2013, my father took part in freedom protests in Kiev with Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy and spoke to thousands of protesters. (Above) McCain joined about 200,000 anti-government protesters in the Ukrainian capital on Sunday, December 15, 2013.
On Tuesday, Obama’s director of national intelligence, James Clapper, acknowledged that they should have been tougher on Putin.
“I wish we as an administration were more aggressive in 2014,” he told CNN.
And then there’s President Trump.
President Trump with his strange, unforgiving and insidious relationship with Vladimir Putin.
There are too many examples of his extremely dangerous admiration for assassin dictators, so I will instead focus on what he said yesterday in a radio interview after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
President Trump has said that Putin’s military invasion of Ukraine is “genius” and that he will be a “peacemaker.”
Trump went on to say that this is something America must do on the southern border of the United States and praised Putin as “very reasonable.”
I’m not quite sure what to do about it. I just hope Republicans don’t accept Putin’s model and invade Mexico.
President Trump has become even more insane and detached from any form of reality in his post-presidential life.
And now we have Biden.
If the president’s recent actions in Afghanistan are an example, we can expect little or no consequences for the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Biden has shown that he shares the isolationist foreign policy view of the progressive left, not the moderate. The foreign policy point of view he chooses.
Biden is a man who had no problem abandoning our allies in Afghanistan and watching the massacre of innocent people.
That was the moment when I and millions of other Americans saw him and his administration as it really is and really is.
It was also a time when many of us panicked at how weak America looked on the world stage, expecting it to get much worse.
In another scandalous video from the 2012 presidential debate against Senator Mitt Romney, Obama mocked the governor for highlighting the looming existential threat from Russia and Vladimir Putin. (Above) President Obama and Republican presidential candidate Romney at the Second Presidential Debate in Hempstead, New York, October 16, 2012.
A serious debate and debate on foreign policy is welcome.
I think it is quite clear where I stand, but I welcome respectful arguments to the contrary.
What I do not accept is the disgusting KGB, pro-Kremlin propaganda coming out of so many far-right conservative mouths.
Some have gone so far as to say that it is America’s fault (blaming America is something that is usually reserved for the progressive left).
What I look at makes me sick to my stomach.
America’s moral equating with Russia is nothing but national disgrace.
Vladimir Putin is a murderous dictator who poisons and kills his critics or imprisons them under false pretenses, as he did with Free Russia activist Alexy Navalny.
There is no moral equivalence between America and Russia.
Anyone who says this suffers from forms of delusion.
How did so many people I know become this? Putin fraudsters and KGB propaganda.
I have no idea, but it is shocking and extremely dangerous.
There is a difference between concerns about putting American boots on the ground in Ukraine against actively defending Putin’s success and undermining the sovereignty and independence of Ukraine and Ukrainians.
This is against freedom and is not American by nature.
In the first place, I believe, as President Ronald Reagan believed, that America is a brilliant city on a hill.
I believe that we, as Americans, lead the rest of the world, and that the threat to democracy everywhere is a threat to democracy everywhere.
I believe that we have a moral obligation to fight for freedom on a global scale.
We have disappointed the people of Ukraine, and we must send a strong and clear message to which country the United States is.
I would start by expelling Russia from the world community and freezing the assets of Putin and his oligarchs.
My friend Bill Browder is boldly lobbying and advocating for the Magnetic Act worldwide.
Hit them where it hurts the most, with their money.
If we do not show strength in the face of this invasion, Putin will not stop in eastern Ukraine and America will cease to be a superpower that is feared.
There may also be more expectations of expansion and invasion from other tyrannical countries, such as China in Taiwan.
I have a broken heart. I’m disgusted. I am afraid of the future. The time for action is now.
We call on President Biden and Congress to take swift and aggressive action, or I fear that the severe consequences will be felt for generations to come.