How far should we go in defense of freedom?

By John Vincent

2/21/23

President Biden spoke in Poland the other day about the war in Ukraine, and how it’s up to all of us to fight for freedom.

This was the most coherent I’ve seen Biden look in years.

He spoke extensively without making any of the numerous misstatements that usually pepper his speech whenever he talks.

This war in Ukraine is an interesting thing.

No one wants to have their country invaded by another country.

For whatever reason when the Soviet Union broke up in 1991, Russia at that time did not make any moves to keep Ukraine from forming its own country. And even if they did, it was not successful.

But now 40 years later, Russian President Vladimir Putin orders his troops to invade the Ukraine, evidently planning on taking over the whole country and make it part of Russia, and at points seeming to hint that he would settle for just taking over certain areas near the Russian border and the Black Sea.

What is this guy thinking?

Is it the Dark Ages when a country can just invade its neighboring country and exert its rule over it?

My only rationale as to how this makes any sense is that before the U.S. Civil War, the southern states planned to cede from the country, make their own country, and the north wouldn’t let them. And they held a war to force them to stay as part of America.

You could say if America was a free country, states could just cede whenever they want, but I guess it doesn’t work that way.

It was obvious, despite the stated goals of the South, that they were just trying to perpetuate slavery and continue to subjugate one race of people to benefit another, which the North reasonably thought wasn’t a good enough reason to want to create a new country.

Putin has said that Ukraine is not really its own country, and is basically just part of Russia, going back ages, they speak Russian, and it was only right to reunite the two areas as one country.

I tried to look up some of the history, and it seems that throughout history the borders of different countries or empires were always changing as one country grew in strength and basically waged war on its neighbors and took over all the territory it could.

So, Putin is following a tried-and-true model, one that many people today say shouldn’t and doesn’t exist anymore, where you can just attack other countries, kill a bunch of their people and make that country part of your country.

It doesn’t work that way anymore, does it?

When Iraq attacked Kuwait in 1990, they seemed to think that was still possible, but the United States and other nations, working under the auspices of the United Nations, said they were not allowed to do that.

No more invading other countries.

Just about everyone had enough of that with World War I and World War II.

So, for whatever reason, we as a country have decided it’s OK to supply Ukraine with weapons, but not participate in the war.

Ukraine had asked to join NATO, which may have in part prompted the invasion, but is not a member of NATO.

As Biden said, for NATO countries, an attack on one is an attack on all. We would fight as if we were attacked if Russia invades Poland.

But Biden talked like he was almost ready to send troops into Ukraine.

And he “poked the bear” by openly calling out Putin and saying he was dumb as a rock and an evil man who will probably be up before an international war crimes panel soon.

So what’s keeping us from World War III?

Not very much.

Putin has withdrawn from the nuclear arms agreement it had with the United States, but commentators on TV pointed out that China never joined any of those agreements and has always just built as many nuclear weapons as it wants.

Based on Russia’s lack of success in capturing Ukraine, it doesn’t look like it would last very long in any war against the U.S., or NATO. But if China sides with Russian, it could get ugly.

We all want freedom, but are we ready to start World War III to protect freedom across the globe?