Students of history know Russia must not win
Re: “Let’s all do the Desantis Shimmy!” Feb. 25 commentary
I appreciated David Brooke’s editorial regarding the “Desantis Shimmy.” It seems that most members of today’s Republican Party are still afraid of former President Donald Trump, and that makes them wishy-washy on important issues. There is no more important foreign policy issue than Russian (and Chinese) aggression. Students of history can tell these wishy-washy people that today’s Russia under Putin is eerily like 1933’s Germany under Hitler.
In the days before Pearl Harbor forced us to join in the fight against the Axis, the U. S. had plenty of people claiming that Hitler was Europe’s problem and that we should not get involved. Meanwhile, in England, Neville Chamberlain was intent on appeasing Hitler. Students of history can tell you how isolationism and appeasement turned out in the 1930s and early 1940s.
Surely most people in this country can understand that Ukraine is simply the first step for Putin (if we overlook his earlier interference in Georgia and Belarus). Putin wants nothing less than to restore the USSR. He views countries such as Georgia, Belarus, Ukraine, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, the Czech Republic, Moldova, Poland, etc., as vestiges of the USSR.
If the West shows weakness, Putin will interpret that as a form of appeasement and will then go to his next invasion. Like it or not, the United States is the key player in making sure that this scenario gets stopped in its tracks. I believe that NATO air power should have clobbered his troops the moment they set foot in Ukraine. That’s probably a minority opinion, but I believe it would have saved thousands of lives ( Ukrainian and Russian).
Unfortunately, the U. S. has been involved in too many misadventures, motivated by Cold War mentality, since World War II. The American people are understandably worn out by our bad behavior in places such as Vietnam, Iraq (the second war), and Afghanistan. I argue that being more involved in the defense of Ukraine is the right thing to do. If we don’t do the right thing now, World War III is a real possibility.
— James W. Craft, Broomfield