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Bernie Biden and Joe Warren

Bernie Biden and Joe Warren

By John R Guardiano on May 2, 2021

Biden’s moderate public persona channels the political agendas of socialist Bernie Sanders and government-knows-best enthusiast Elizabeth Warren.

Joe Biden campaigned as a moderate who pledged a “return to normalcy.” But what’s become frighteningly clear during his first 100 days in office is that, despite his relatively relaxed and reassuring public persona, Joe Biden is no moderate, and what he is pushing legislatively is the antithesis of normal.

Mr. Biden seeks the biggest and most far-reaching expansion of the federal government in American history.

The dollar figures alone are staggering and defy all historical precedent: some six trillion dollars in new spending and an additional $3 trillion in new taxes, including a near-doubling of the capital gains tax for successful investors.

In short, the American people may have voted for normal and moderate Joe Biden, but what they got instead, policy-wise at least, was socialist Bernie Sanders and government-knows-best enthusiast Elizabeth Warren.

If Mr. Biden simply were proposing to spend a lot more money, that would be bad but reversible. Unfortunately, what he is trying to do is much worse.

The president seeks to legislate a slew of new entitlements that will exert government control over parts of our lives which, heretofore, have been relatively and blissfully free of state manipulation—pre-school education, childcare, and community college attendance, for instance.

As the Wall Street Journal editorial board explains:

The cost, while staggering, isn’t the only or even the biggest problem. The destructive part is the way the plan seeks to insinuate government cash and the rules that go with it into all of the major decisions of family life.

The goal is to expand the entitlement state to make Americans rely on government and the political class for everything they don’t already provide.

The problem is that entitlements, once established, become ticking financial time bombs that are immune to reform and modernization. Witness Social Security and Medicare, two badly-designed programs which consume an increasing share of the federal budget, and which are now politically sacrosanct and, sadly, untouchable.

“The Biden administration and President Biden have exceeded expectations that progressives had,” exulted Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) during a virtual town hall. “I’ll be frank. I think a lot of us expected a lot more conservative administration.”

So, too, did many Biden voters—especially middle class wage earners. They, ultimately, will bear the brunt of Biden’s entitlement burden through fewer jobs, slower economic growth, higher taxes, and less opportunity.

Feature photo credit: Elizabeth Warren, Joe Biden, and Bernie Sanders: three Democratic peas in a socialist pod, courtesy of Florida Politics.

Trump’s Impeachment Was Not ‘Rushed’ and He Has Not Been Denied Due Process of Law

Trump’s Impeachment Was Not ‘Rushed’ and He Has Not Been Denied Due Process of Law

By John R Guardiano on January 17, 2021

Refuting the Bad—and Bad-Faith—Arguments Against Trump’s Impeachment and Conviction.

There are lots of lame excuses, but no valid reasons, for not impeaching and convicting Trump.

Sadly, but perhaps not surprisingly, Congressional Republicans, Trump toadies, and their lapdogs in the media are making excuses for why Trump should not have been impeached and should not be convicted.

None of these arguments are persuasive or compelling, and most do not acknowledge the dangerous, precedent-setting implications of Trump’s actions and failures of action since Nov. 3 and especially since Jan. 6.

Instead, the argument essentially is that Trump should escape impeachment and conviction on legal or procedural technicalities.

Procedural Technicalities. Conservative Republicans historically have opposed letting criminals go free because of legal or procedural technicalities. So it’s surprising and disappointing to see many of them eager to let Trump escape Constitutional censure because of a legal or procedural technicality.

We will take up the objections to Trump’s impeachment and conviction in a series of posts. The first objection is that impeachment was “rushed through” Congress and that Trump, therefore, has been denied due process of law.

As Byron York puts it, the House of Representatives conducted a

quickie impeachment article on Wednesday—dispensing with the hundreds of hours of deliberation and due process that would precede a normal impeachment vote…

But of course, the Constitution does not specify any time requirement or procedural obligations for impeachment.

Moreover, as Matthew Continetti points out, “All the facts are in evidence. They are plain to anyone who can read or watch television.”

Due process or fairness thus did not require a lengthy investigation or fact-finding expedition because the public record already is quite voluminous and well-known. Trump’s tweets, public statements, actions, and inaction are available for all to see, read, and review.

Due process also is a subjective standard that is situationally dependent, and it is more relevant to a Senate trial than a House impeachment. As Andrew C. McCarthy observes:

If we woke up one morning to smoking-gun, undeniable proof that an American president was a spy for a foreign adversary, Congress would have to impeach and remove the president immediately…

No one in his right mind would say, “Let’s leave a foreign spy in the Oval Office for a few more weeks so we can have some hearings and make sure the Senate trial is fair.”

For this reason, the Constitution does not impose any due process standard on impeachment and conviction.

In short, the House of Representatives has handled Trump’s second impeachment fairly and lawfully. Critics who complain about a “rushed impeachment” are either disingenuous or ignorant.

In truth, the House had to act with dispatch and for several reasons:

First, Trump is leaving office Jan. 20, and there is legitimate legal disagreement as to whether a president can be impeached when he is no longer president.

Second, with a new president (Biden) about to take office and other pressing matters (such as the pandemic) to attend to, Congress cannot afford to waste time belaboring impeachment and conviction. Instead, it must act quickly and decisively and move on.

In fact, if anything, the House took too long (a full week) to impeach Trump.

Third, there is the old adage that justice delayed is justice denied. Indeed, Trump’s assault on the Congress, the Constitution, the separation of powers, and the rule of law was so blatant and egregious that it demands prompt and immediate redress.

All Americans must know and understand that such flagrant abuses of power will not be tolerated.

Pretending otherwise through weeks or months of haggling and debate over irrelevant legal and procedural technicalities is a disservice to the American people and an abandonment of the Constitution and Constitutional governance.

In our next post, we will consider whether the article of impeachment (incitement of insurrection) warrants Trump’s conviction. Critics contend that Trump did not incite an insurrection. Is this true and does it matter?

Feature photo credit: Joyce N. Boghosian, courtesy of WBNG.

The Scalia-Ginsburg Friendship Should Be Our Political Model Today

The Scalia-Ginsburg Friendship Should Be Our Political Model Today

By John R Guardiano on September 20, 2020

The battle over Trump’s next appointment to the Supreme Court should be heated and intense, but civil and respectful. Justices Scalia and Ginsburg would not have wanted it any other way.

The death of Ruth Justice Bader Ginsburg Friday means that there will be, as the Wall Street Journal rightly notes, a “titanic fight over her successor.” This is fitting and appropriate.

The stakes, after all, are very high: The future direction of the Supreme Court, our essential civil liberties, and the rule of law are all at risk.

Indeed, as Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) points out, the Second Amendment right to bear arms is being erased from the Constitution because of the high court’s neglect. And religious liberty decisions typically are decided by a 5-4 margin and on narrow technical grounds that fail to reflect the overriding importance of this essential First Amendment right.

Judicial Power-Grab. Moreover, more left-wing “progressive” justices may well mean that the Court will legislate new and costly entitlements into the Constitution—a “right to healthcare,” for instance.

Sounds farfetched? Maybe. But so, too, did a Constitutional right to homosexual marriage—until it became politically fashionable and the object of a concerted legal campaign.

The result was the Court’s 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision that redefined marriage to include same-sex unions—an idea genuinely never contemplated by the American Founding Fathers who wrote the Constitution.

So yes, there is a lot at stake with this newest Court vacancy: whether we will remain a free and self-governing people, or whether we will be ruled by nine unelected judges who, increasingly, usurp from us our decision-making authority under the Constitution.

Scalia and Ginsburg. That said, we all can and should learn from the example set by Justice Ginsburg and the late great Justice Antonin Scalia. These two legendary jurists were ideological opposites and long-standing judicial sparring partners; yet they enjoyed a deep and abiding friendship.

Justice Ginsburg, of course, was the leader of the Court’s left-wing “progressives”; Justice Scalia the leader of the Court conservatives.

Their judicial opinions frequently clashed, especially on big, high-profile cases involving the Second Amendment, religious liberty, affirmative action, property rights, and state sovereignty. Yet, these two opposing jurists had great affection for one another and were genuinely the best of friends.

Justice Scalia’s son, Christopher, relays this wonderful and telling story from Judge Jeffrey Sutton during a visit Sutton had with Scalia before the justice’s death in 2016:

The Scalia and Ginsburg families regularly socialized. They celebrated every New Year’s Eve together, for instance. And yet: the two justices never allowed the intensity of their judicial disagreements to ruin or obstruct their personal friendship.

How to Fight. “I attack ideas; I don’t attack people,” is how Justice Scalia wisely put it. Good and wonderful people, he observed, can harbor or espouse very bad ideas. That means they are mistaken; it does not mean they are bad or deficient in character or morals.

In other words, politics is one thing; character is another thing; and, if you cannot distinguish between the two, you are allowing your politics to blind you to the decency and humanity of your fellow citizens, both left and right.

This is something all of us would do well to consider as we prepare for what will no doubt be a pitched political battle involving the next and newest justice of the Supreme Court.

High-Stakes Battle. This battle promises to be highly emotional and deeply felt—on both sides. The intensity and passion will be palpable. Everyone knows that there is a lot riding on this appointment. The next justice may well serve on the Court for 40 years or more.

But let us all strive to be fair-minded, judicious, and even-tempered. Let us all realize that, in the United States of America, our domestic political opponents are not our enemies; they are our friends, neighbors, and family members. 

Let us all try to emulate the wonderful and worthy example of Justices Scalia and Ginsburg.

Civility. Let us disagree without being disagreeable. Let us vigorously engage the political debate without engaging in the politics of personal destruction. Let us recognize that, despite our profound disagreements, there is far more that unites us than divides us.

And, when the fight is over, let us come together as Americans who share a common political lineage and a worthy political goal: liberty and justice for all in these United States.

Surely, that is what Justices Scalia and Ginsburg would have wanted. And certainly, that is the example they set in their own lives through a deep and abiding friendship that transcended political and ideological differences.

May their example be our reality.

Feature photo credit: The Kalb Report, YouTube.

In the 2020 Election, It’s Not the Economy, Stupid, But Maybe It Should Be

In the 2020 Election, It’s Not the Economy, Stupid, But Maybe It Should Be

By John R Guardiano on February 6, 2020

James Carville, the colorful Democratic political strategist who helped mastermind Bill Clinton’s 1992 win, famously said, “It’s the economy, stupid!”

The notion that American presidents are reelected or thrown out of office based on the nation’s economic performance has since become conventional wisdom. Yet, that maxim doesn’t seem to apply this year because of all the political drama, Sturm und Drang, that surrounds President Trump.

Impeachment is the latest drama, but there have been many others—Charlottesville, the Mueller investigation, the crisis at the border, the Kavanaugh Supreme Court nomination, the government shutdown, Khashoggi, Syria, Ukrainian aid, et al.

Some of these crises, like the Kavanaugh Supreme Court nomination, are beyond Trump’s control and must be laid squarely at the feet of his political opponents, who are determined to stop the GOP’s policy agenda, either by hook or by crook.

To the diehard partisans of the left, it doesn’t matter who is president. They would fight to the political death against any Republican President, be he Trump, Bush, Romney, or Mother Theresa.

But it’s also true that Trump has been his own worst enemy; and that his utterly undisciplined, shoot-from-the-hip nature has seriously exacerbated his political problems and created crises that need not have occurred.

Charlottesville, for instance, was a completely self-inflicted wound that could have been avoided entirely had Trump simply chosen his words more carefully and been more disciplined when responding to reporters’ questions.

This is why, despite relative peace and prosperity, Trump has been unable to achieve a 50-percent job-approval rating.

So it was good to see the president use his State of the Union Address to deliver a clear, coherent, and compelling message of American renewal led by a strong and resilient U.S. economy that is very much the envy of the world.

Trump called it “the great American comeback
 The years of economic decay,” he declared, are over.

From the instant I took office, I moved rapidly to revive the U.S. economy—slashing a record number of job-killing regulations, enacting historic and record-setting tax cuts, and fighting for fair and reciprocal trade agreements.

Our agenda is relentlessly pro-worker, pro-family, pro-growth, and, most of all, pro-American


Since my election, we have created seven million new jobs—five million more than government experts projected during the previous administration. The unemployment rate is the lowest in over half a century


The unemployment rate for African-Americans, Hispanic Americans and Asian-Americans has reached the lowest levels in history
 The unemployment rate for women reached the lowest level in almost 70 years


Real median household income is now at the highest level ever recorded


U.S. stock markets have soared 70 percent, adding more than $12 trillion to our nation’s wealth, transcending anything anyone believed was possible. This is a record. It is something that every country in the world looks up to and admires.

Consumer confidence has reached new highs. Millions of Americans with 401(k)s and pensions are doing far better than they have ever done before, with increases of 60, 70, 80, 90 and 100 percent…

Critics will carp that Trump inherited a growing economy, and this is in part true. But it’s also true that wages were stagnant and the economy was slowing. Trump has reversed that, and the U.S. economy has performed far better than the critics predicted when Trump took office.

Indeed, three years ago we were warned that the sky would fall. Today, by contrast, it seems as if the sky’s the limit. 

“In just three short years,” Trump boasted, “we have shattered the mentality of American decline. We have rejected the downsizing of America’s destiny
 and we are never, ever going back.”

The 2020 election doesn’t seem to be about the economy, but maybe it should be. America could be doing a lot worse than it is now, and the choice in policy direction—more or less government, higher or lower taxes, a bigger or smaller private sector—could not be more stark, and certainly not more economically consequential.

Feature photo credit: Getty Images via the New York Post.

The New U.S. Command to Aid Ukraine is a Good But Insufficient First Step

The New U.S. Command to Aid Ukraine is a Good But Insufficient First Step

By John R Guardiano on October 1, 2022

Now increase defense spending, put ‘boots on the ground’ in Ukraine, and move U.S. troops out of Germany and into Poland and the Baltic States.

The New York Times reports that the Pentagon is establishing a new command to arm Ukraine over the long haul. This is a good thing, because arming Ukraine and ensuring that it has all means necessary to defeat Russian aggression is and ought to be an American priority.

As we’ve noted, Ukraine today is at the epicenter of the fight for Western Civilization. This means that their fight is our fight, and their victory will be our victory.

The threat from Russia, moreover, is not going away anytime soon, even after each and every last Russian is expelled from all of Ukraine. Thus American-Ukrainian defense cooperation and engagement will be required for many years and several decades.

The close relationships that the U.S. military has with the militaries of Japan, South Korea, Israel, and Australia is the model we should emulate. And there are other lessons we must heed.

  • Robust military aid must be procured and delivered quickly, and American and NATO armories must be replenished pronto through a long-overdue increase in defense spending.

The Times reports that 18 new High Mobility Artillery Rocket System launchers (HIMARS) will be delivered to Ukraine directly from the manufacturer, Lockheed Martin. However, these will take “a few years” to arrive in country.

Sorry, but that isn’t good enough. This delay underscores the Biden administration’s overly timid approach to arming Ukraine. It also underscores the disconcerting lack of available munitions in American and NATO armories.

Defense Spending. The fact remains: the United States and NATO simply are not spending enough on defense. We weren’t spending enough before Russia invaded Ukraine, and we still aren’t spending enough after the fact.

Witness the fact that few NATO countries meet their pre-war pledge to spend a mere two percent of GDP on defense.

The United States spends between three and four percent of its GDP on defense, but that is dramatically less than it spent at the height of the Cold War (roughly 5-10 percent of GDP, according to Brookings Institution defense scholar Michael E. O’Hanlon).

There is no “substitute for military strength,” explains Elliott Abrams, ” and we do not have enough. It should be crystal clear now that a larger percentage of GDP will need to be spent on defense.”

  • America and NATO must place “boots on the ground” in (western) Ukraine.

The Times also notes that America and NATO had “boots on the ground” in Ukraine after Russia’s first invasion there in 2014. Western military advisers played a crucial role in strengthening and professionalizing the Ukrainian military.

However, when, earlier this year, Russia threatened to invade Ukraine again, America and NATO meekly and foolishly pulled their military advisers out of the country, and they have not returned since.

To be sure, a relative few Ukrainian soldiers have journeyed to Poland, Germany, Britain and the United States for training. But as the Times observes:

With no U.S. troops currently in Ukraine, providing support by phone or computer has been challenging, American officers say.

“It is much more difficult now to communicate with our allies and partners,” Maj. Gen. Steven G. Edwards, the head of U.S. Special Operations forces in Europe, said at a security forum this month.

“Teleconference is good, but it’s not nearly the same as what we had before.”

The American and NATO phobia about “boots on the ground” must end. In reality, having “boots on the ground” in Ukraine for several years goes a long way toward explaining the surprising success of the Ukrainian military.

Iraq-Afghanistan Distortion. But again, because of the American tendency to see Ukraine through the prism of Iraq and Afghanistan, policymakers feared that, if U.S.  troops remained in Ukraine, they would end up fighting and dying there.

This fear might have made sense early on in the war when Russia was attempting to enter Kyiv. However, it made no sense several weeks into the conflict after the Russians were repulsed and forced to withdraw to eastern Ukraine.

When, in April 2022, the United States sent its diplomatic personnel back into Kyiv, it should have sent back in U.S. military advisers as well. We still should.

“World War III.” The fear that this might “provoke Putin” or cause “World War III,” as President Biden has suggested, is ludicrous. Putin knows America and NATO arm and advise Ukraine. Whether we do so in western Ukraine or Germany is a distinction without a difference in his eyes and meaningful only in Paris and Berlin, not Moscow.

Moreover, Russia demonstrated early on in this conflict that it is in no position to pick a fight with the United States or any NATO country.

Russian military incompetence and ineptitude is demonstrable and obvious. The West, not Russia, has the whip hand. We should act like it—not to “provoke Putin,” but to defend and liberate all of Ukraine.

  • Relocate NATO headquarters out of Brussels and into Warsaw; and, more importantly, redeploy the 38,000 U.S. troops now in Germany into Poland and the Baltic States (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania).

During the Cold War, it made sense to station hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops in West Germany. A Russian invasion there, after all, was a real possibility. However, this makes zero sense today, when the threat is not to Germany, but to Poland and the Baltic States.

Poland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania also are geographically much closer to Ukraine. Thus deploying U.S. and NATO troops there will facilitate Western aid to that besieged and battered country.

The bottom line: if NATO is serious about deterring Russia and defending against the Russian threat, then it must reposition its forces accordingly. The Cold War is over and new cold war has begun.

The Biden administration recognizes this, which is why it wisely has established a new command to aid Ukraine. But more can and must be done:

Increase defend spending to meet this new threat; put U.S. military trainers back on the ground in Ukraine; and reposition American and NATO forces eastward where the Russian threat now lies.

Feature photo credit: Wisconsin National Guard “Lt. Col. Clay Salmela, the chaplain with Task Force Juvigny, congratulates a Ukrainian soldier upon completion of initial entry training at Starychi Military Base near Combat Training Center–Yavoriv, Ukraine. Image by Cpl. Jared Saathoff / Wisconsin National Guard Public. Ukraine, 2020,” courtesy of the Pulitzer Center, Feb. 12, 2020.

Why ‘America First’ National Security Hawks Can No Longer Support Trump

Why ‘America First’ National Security Hawks Can No Longer Support Trump

By John R Guardiano on September 24, 2022

No one should be under any illusions that a second Trump administration would be anywhere near as hawkish as the first Trump administration.

Republicans who believe in a strong national defense and an assertive U.S. foreign policy, and who supported President Trump in the 2016 and 2020 general elections, cannot pull the lever for him again in 2024.

Why? Because of Trump’s own statements about Ukraine, Putin, Iran, and Russia. And because, in a second Trump administration, Trump almost certainly will be more isolationist and accommodating of Russian President Vladimir Putin and other anti-American dictators.

Perennial “never Trumpers” will say, of course, that they were never fooled. “America First,” they say, had tainted origins dating back to the 1930s before the Second World War. But whatever the history of the “America First” movement, there is no denying that, in his first administration, Trump was no isolationist.

To the contrary, thanks to Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, National Security Advisers H.R.  McMaster, John Bolton, and Robert C. O’Brien, Deputy National Security Adviser Matthew Pottinger, Ambassador Nikki Haley, Senator Lindsey Graham, and others, Trump often acted in a strong, Reaganesque fashion.

Trump 2017-2021. Thus he ordered and oversaw the quick destruction of ISIS, adoption of the historic and path-breaking Abraham Accords, and the killing of Iranian General Qassem Suleimani.

Trump withdrew from the fatally flawed Iran nuclear deal and Paris climate accord. He recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and launched retaliatory missile strikes at Syria to degrade its chemical weapons program.

And, perhaps most historic, long-lasting, and consequential: Trump became the first president to recognize that China posed the greatest strategic threat to American national security since the Soviet Union a generation ago during the Cold War.

Thus he began the necessary process of decoupling the U.S. economy from China’s, a process that will play out over the next two decades.

Now, to be sure, there are plenty of things about Trump’s foreign policy that deserve condemnation. He shamelessly, for instance, abandoned our Kurdish allies in Syria, while setting the stage for Biden’s disastrous withdrawal and surrender in Afghanistan.

Trump’s China policy also was lacking. He foolishly withdrew from the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement and failed to build and sustain an anti-China alliance on the world stage. Trump also was late to recognize the threat from COVID, mostly because he was too eager to reach a trade deal with China.

‘America First’ means…? But that’s exactly the point: “America First” was always a jump ball policy-wise in Trump’s first administration. It could mean either hawkish or dovish positions, depending on who proved most influential with The Donald. The two factions competed for Trump mindshare.

But that almost certainly won’t be the case in a second Trump administration. The hawks have mostly moved on. In fact, many of them—Ambassador Nikki Haley and National Security Adviser John Bolton, for instance—moved on well before Trump had completed his first term.

Trump’s isolationists supporters, meanwhile, have grown more vocal, more strident, and more influential. They also have big and consequential megaphones, thanks to Fox News and social media.

Ukraine. Tucker Carlson, for instance, rails regularly and often against American support for Ukraine. Laura Ingraham calls the war a costly disaster and a diversion from the real “America First” agenda.

Other prominent and influential Trump supporters call for the United States to negotiate a “compromise solution” that will end the war and bring peace to Ukraine. As a result, Trump now says that he would bring Putin and Zelensky to the negotiating table to end the war.

The problem is that by negotiating with Putin, Trump serves to legitimize and strengthen Putin. And any negotiated settlement now would result in the formal annexation of Ukrainian territory by Russia.

This is an obvious nonstarter. But who would convince Trump otherwise?

Maybe Senator Graham, but he would do so from the Senate and would face the opposition of a bevy of new isolationist Trump administration officials like Russian accommodationist Douglas Macgregor. The hawks have moved on and, for the most part, will be gone in a second Trump administration.

Trump 2025-2029. And it’s not just Ukraine, but NATO, Israel, and our Gulf States allies as well that would be endangered in a second and more isolationist Trump administration.

Trump has often flirted with withdrawing from NATO and he might well do so given a second term.

This, obviously, would be disastrous for American national security. It would immeasurably strengthen Putin’s hand and threaten the peace and security of Europe, especially Eastern Europe, in a way not seen since the 1930s just prior to the Second World War.

Trump also has expressed his desire to reach a deal with Iran. “I would have had a deal done with Iran one week after the [2020] election,” he boasts.

True, in his first term, Trump imposed severe sanctions on Iran, but given Trump’s eagerness to show that he is a great dealmaker, and given the absence of hawkish advisers in a second Trump administration, it is all too easy to see Trump agreeing to a bad deal that strengthens the hand of the mullahs and paves the way for their acquisition of nuclear weapons.

In short, no one should be under any illusions that Trump’s foreign policy in a second term would the same as it was in his first term of office.

To the contrary: there are deep-seated and disquieting reasons to believe exactly the opposite: that Trump’s foreign policy would swerve wildly and recklessly to the left precisely to appease his most fervent and fevered isolationist supporters on the populist right.

Conclusion. For this reason, no one seriously committed to a strong national defense and an assertive U.S. foreign policy can possibly support former President Trump in 2024. The stakes are too high; the risks are too great; and the resultant damage would be too deep-seated and widespread.

In 2024, “America First” necessarily means “Donald Trump last and never again.”

Feature photo credit: YouTube screen shots of “America First” national security hawks Ambassador Nikki Haley (L) and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo (R), courtesy of Fox News.

Russian Nukes are No Reason to Scale Back Western Support for Ukraine

Russian Nukes are No Reason to Scale Back Western Support for Ukraine

By John R Guardiano on September 15, 2022

Nuclear weapons are not a military game changer in Ukraine and Putin and his generals know it.

The Ukrainian counteroffensive has sparked renewed fears that a desperate Vladimir Putin might resort to nuclear weapons; and that, to forestall this possibility, Ukraine should be careful not to beat back the Russians too far too fast. Otherwise, Putin might lash out and do the unthinkable.

As dovish New York Times’ columnist Ross Douthat put it:

The danger is that desperation might push Moscow toward nuclear brinkmanship—especially given the Russian strategic posture that envisions using tactical nuclear weapons to reverse battlefield defeats.

As the United States learned to its cost in the Korean War, when our push to the Yalu River reaped an unexpected Chinese intervention, the question of how far a victorious army should push is not an easy one, and whether in Crimea or the Donbas, there may be a line that’s perilous to cross.

Military historian Victor Davis Hanson agrees: The Ukrainians, he warns,

are getting very close to the Russian border, and that raises the question: You have an ailing dictator, [Vladimir Putin], with 7,000 nuclear weapons, the world’s largest arsenal. And there are some scenarios that we don’t think about.

Is he just going to say, “I lost 100,000 dead, wounded, and missing. I’m sorry. We lost,” and then quit. I don’t think so…

I think he’s going to say:

“You’re getting very close to the Russian border. You’re hitting targets with NATO and American weapons inside Russia. You’re attacking ships,” and we’re back to 1962, [the Cuban Missile Crisis].

And he’s going to do something dramatic [engage in nuclear brinksmanship if not the use of nuclear weapons].

Excuse me, but this is ludicrous and nonsensical. Douthat and Hanson are serious-minded analysts, but what they are doing here is unserious. It is scaremongering, not serious analysis.

Nuclear Weapons. First, what is at issue in Ukraine are tactical or battlefield nuclear weapons, not strategic nuclear weapons. No one is suggesting that Russia might launch nuclear weapons at the United States or any NATO country.

That would be suicidal for the Russians because it would invite, obviously, a devastating counterstrike that would destroy Moscow. Putin knows this and so, it won’t happen.

The question is: might Russia use tactical or battlefield nuclear weapons on Ukraine?

International Politics. Of course, no one can never say never, because leaders sometimes do stupid things and make horrendous mistakes. But such a move would make no military sense, and it would isolate Russia, politically, to an extent rivaled perhaps only by Kim Jong-un’s hermit kingdom in North Korea.

Russia currently enjoys the good offices of China, India, Israel, Turkey, and other countries that are trying to have it both ways vis-Ă -vis Russia and Ukraine. Heck, even the Germans and the French sometimes suggest that they are ready, if not eager, to abandon Ukraine for the sake of “peace.”

All of these good offices end the minute Russia crosses the nuclear threshold and does the unthinkable. Putin knows this, and it is a big reason why he is highly unlikely to employ nukes in Ukraine.

Military Disadvantage. Moreover, Russia gains nothing, militarily, by using nuclear weapons.

“They [tactical nukes] don’t really do that much,” explains military analyst Ralph Peters. “You can do more in many cases,” he explains, “with a HIMARS, [the M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System]…

A tactical nuclear weapon, he adds, “is not gonna stop the Ukrainians… and it won’t change the course of the war.” Again, Putin knows this, or at least his military advisers know this.

Russia also “would have to worry about the fallout coming from the [nuclear] explosion drifting onto Russian soldiers, pro-Russian separatists, and Russian citizens,” notes Brent M. Eastwood.

Finally, as former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Admiral James Stavridis observes, Putin’s use of a tactical nuclear weapon, “while highly unlikely… would probably bring NATO into the conflict with the creation of a no-fly zone.”

Of course, the last thing Putin and his military commanders want is a direct engagement with NATO. The Russian military is being beaten by Ukrainian citizen soldiers and would be quickly decimated were NATO to enter the conflict.

The bottom line: Putin has every reason not to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine. And, to the extent he may be deluded on this score, it is important for the United States and NATO to disabuse him of his delusions: by communicating to him  and his military commanders the inevitable consequences should he dare to cross the nuclear threshold and do the unthinkable.

In short, although Russia has the world’s largest arsenal of nuclear weapons, this is of no real political or military significance in Ukraine. What matters is that the Russian military is incompetent at waging war.

What matters is that the Russian economy is incredibly weak and anemic and cannot long sustain Putin’s war of conquest, war of choice.

What matters is that although public opinion polls suggest most Russians support Putin, the Russian people have no appetite for fighting in Ukraine, which is why Putin has not imposed a draft or mass mobilization of the populace.

Support Ukraine. The possibility of a nuclear war always exists, of course, but it is highly unlikely and should not be used as a pretext to scale back Western support of Ukraine and limit Ukrainian political and military objectives.

Ukraine should aim to drive every last Russian out of their country, and America and NATO should stand by the Ukrainians until this objective is achieved.

In other words: don’t listen to the scaremongers. They don’t know what they are talking about. Slava Ukraini.

Feature photo credit: YouTube screenshots of military historian Victor Davis Hanson (L) and New York Times‘ columnist Ross Douthat (R).

Why Has the West Been So Late to Arm Ukraine?

Why Has the West Been So Late to Arm Ukraine?

By John R Guardiano on March 5, 2022

America and NATO viewed Ukraine through the prism of Iraq and Afghanistan—two countries that seemed to lack the will to fight for themselves. They did not realize: Ukraine is very different.

“We must get aid to Ukraine NOW,” tweeted Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas). “No half-measures.”

“Please NATO leaders, send all MIG fighter jets that we have—70 altogether, 27 alone in Poland—to Ukraine right now. NOW!” added Michael McFaul, a former U.S. Ambassador to Russia under President Obama and now a Professor of Political Science at Stanford.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi must “put the Ukraine aid bill on the floor Monday for the U.S. to send desperately needed military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine now,” agreed Senator Mitt Romney (R-Utah).

“Waiting on the congressional calendar is unacceptable when people are dying,” he tweeted.

Finally, albeit quite belatedly, America and NATO are arming the Ukrainians. What started out as a token gesture designed simply to show solidarity and friendship with Ukraine has morphed into a serious and sustained effort to enable the Ukrainians to fight off a brutal Russian invasion.

Will it be too little too late? Let us hope not. But it is instructive to understand why the West has been so tardy and myopic about the moral, military, and geo-strategic necessity of arming Ukraine early and earnestly.

The reason is Iraq and Afghanistan. Old generals sometimes mistakenly fight the last war. America and NATO viewed Ukraine through the prism of Iraq and Afghanistan.

The West’s two most recent wars required many American and NATO “boots on the ground” for more than a decade to achieve, ultimately, very little. Western policymakers feared that Ukraine would be another allegedly hopeless cause not worth the hassle and the expense.

The expectation was that, in the face of a vastly superior Russian military force, the Ukrainians would run, hide, and fold—just as, candidly, many Iraqis and many Afghans had abandoned the battlefield in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

“Three U.S. officials have told Newsweek they expect Ukraine’s capital Kyiv to fall to incoming Russian forces within days, and the country’s resistance to be effectively neutralized soon thereafter…

“They expect Kyiv to be taken within 96 hours, and then the leadership of Ukraine to follow in about a week’s time.”

That was written Feb. 24, in the early hours of the Russian invasion. Today, 10 days later, March 5, retired Army four-star General Jack Keane says that Russian military forces are “not even close” to Kyiv.

Ukrainians Fight. “They have not been able to encircle the city, which is their plan,” Keane told Wall Street Journal Editorial Page Editor Paul Gigot on Fox News.

The Ukrainians have held them up… You just can’t give them enough credit… They’re standing off a formidable force in the north [of Ukraine], and that force has stalled.

The [Russians] have lost their operational momentum, and there’s nobody behind them.

I mean, there’s not 50,000, 60,000, 70,000 troops that they’re [the Russians] gonna be able to bring up here. They [the Russians] have committed their forces…

So when Zelensky’s screaming [that] he needs arms and ammunition, and the rest of it, we better be getting it to him.

Because he has real opportunity here to do some serious damage to the Russians, and it certainly, [will] impact what an occupation would look like.

Volodymyr Zelensky. Western policymakers, obviously, did not know or understand Ukraine. They did not know Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, and they did not understand the Ukrainian people.

Far from running, hiding, and folding, Zelensky and the Ukrainian people have been profiles in courage, tenacity and determination.

“I need ammunition, not a ride,” said Zelensky when the United States offered to evacuate him from the country, warning that Russian mercenaries had been sent to find and assassinate him.

France 24 reports from Kyiv:

“Our fighting spirit is 120 percent. We’re ready to defend our country. “We’re not going to surrender. Never,” says Mikhail, a military engineer.

“Eight years of war in Donbas and still Putin hasn’t admitted his troops were there. But in those eight years, the Ukrainian military has learned how to fight its vile enemy. And now the Russians are suffering heavy losses.”

Another soldier says, “We’re not afraid. We’ve grown tired of fear. We have no other choice but to defend our country. We have to win for our next generation of children—for our future and our freedom.”

The New York Times reports:

In a matter of days, Kyiv went from a busy, cosmopolitan European capital to a war zone—with many citizens abandoning their day jobs and taking up the arms being shipped in en masse.

Now, the newly armed civilians and members of various paramilitary groups are fighting under the loose command of the military in an organization called the Territorial Defense Forces.

“The national call to arms and the mobilization of ordinary citizens to repel the Russian invader does not have any obvious parallels in recent global conflicts,”Mats Berdal, a professor of conflict and security studies at King’s College London, said.

Indeed, Ukraine ain’t Iraq or Afghanistan, and Western policymakers should have known this. Iraq and Afghanistan were, in many ways, civil wars within existing countries. Ukraine, by contrast, is being invaded by a foreign country, Russia, that seeks to conquer and subjugate it.

Ukrainians recall the horrid brutality of life under Soviet occupation during the Cold War, notes Eugene Bondarenko, a lecturer at the University of Michigan’s Department of Slavic Languages and Literature.

Thus they see Russia’s latest attempt to subjugate them “as nothing less than an existential threat… Putin has come to destroy Ukrainian culture, language, society and statehood. That’s why Ukraine fights,” Bondarenko explains.

Cohen and Clausewitz. “Why did so many highly intelligent and educated observers get so much wrong?” asks Eliot A. Cohen, a professor at The Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies.

In large part because of the conventional Western “focus on technology at the expense of the human element in war.” Cohen references Carl von Clausewitz’s classic On War to understand why Ukraine ain’t Iraq or Afghanistan.

“War,” Cohen writes, echoing Clausewitz,

is a contest of wills; it is unpredictable; it is the domain of accident and contingency; nothing goes as planned; and events are smothered in a fog created by misinformation and fear.

Patriotic fervor, hatred of the invader, and knowledge of place and home weigh a great deal, and thus far so they have.

But a passionate desire for freedom and independence, coupled with an indomitable will to win, can carry a people on so far.

Brute Russian force and a clear Russian willingness to commit war crimes ultimately will prevail—unless America and NATO can rush arms and equipment to Ukraine fast enough to alter the political and military equation.

Will the West succeed or will it be a day late and a dollar short, as they say? We don’t know. Time will tell. Stay tuned.

What we do know is that the war in Ukraine is very different from the recent American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the West needs to respond accordingly.

Feature photo credit: Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky (L) and Russian dictator Vladimir Putin (R), courtesy of Newsweek.

Lefties Finally and Belatedly Call for an End to School Masking

Lefties Finally and Belatedly Call for an End to School Masking

By John R Guardiano on January 30, 2022

With the scientific evidence clear and irrefutable, the anguished cries of children and their parents finally are breaking through the blue wall of conformity and compliance. 

“Progressive” media organs, left-wing journalists, and Democratic Party partisans are belatedly acknowledging that the school masking regime, which has done so much to undermine the education of our children, needs to end.

The reasons: a belated recognition

  • that children are at very little risk of serious illness if they contract COVID;
  • that the science behind masking doesn’t exist or is weak at best; and
  • that masking can inflict real damage on children, especially disadvantaged children with leaning disabilities and cognitive challenges.

We reviewed a variety of studies—some conducted by the CDC itself, some cited by the CDC as evidence of masking effectiveness in a school setting, and others touted by media to the same end—to try to find evidence that would justify the CDC’s no-end-in-sight mask guidance for the very-low-risk pediatric population, particularly post-vaccination.

We came up empty-handed.

Who said that? Some Trump-loving right-winger who is anti-science? No, that was written by Margery Smelkinson, Leslie Bienen, and Jeanne Noble  in The Atlantic, an impeccably left-wing media organ.

Smelkinson is an infectious-disease scientist who works at the National Institutes of Health. Leslie Bienen is a veterinarian and faculty member at the Oregon Health & Science University–Portland State University School of Public Health. Jeanne Noble is an emergency-medicine doctor at University of California San Francisco.

“Recent prospective studies from Greece and Italy,” they write,

found evidence that masking is a barrier to speech recognition, hearing, and communication, and that masks impede children’s ability to decode facial expressions, dampening children’s perceived trustworthiness of faces,

Research has also suggested that hearing-impaired children have difficulty discerning individual sounds; opaque masks, of course, prevent lip-reading.

Some teachers, parents, and speech pathologists have reported that masks can make learning difficult for some of America’s most vulnerable children, including those with cognitive delays, speech and hearing issues, and autism.

Masks may also hinder language and speech development—especially important for students who do not speak English at home. Masks may impede emotion recognition, even in adults, but particularly in children.

Forcing students to wear face masks, writes Vinay Prasad, an epidemiologist at the University of California San Francisco, “isn’t a matter of protecting children, their teachers, or their grandparents. It’s delusional and dangerous cultlike behavior.”

Was that published in American Greatness, the house organ of Trumpian conservatism? No, Prasad wrote that in Tablet, “a daily online magazine of Jewish news, ideas, and culture.”

“I think it would be naĂŻve to not acknowledge that there are downsides of masks,” said Elissa Perkins, the director of infectious disease management in the emergency department of the Boston Medical Center.

I know some of that data is harder to come by because those outcomes are not as discrete as Covid or not-Covid.

But from speaking with pediatricians, from speaking with learning specialists, and also from speaking with parents of younger children especially, there are significant issues related to language acquisition, pronunciation, things like that.

And there are very clear social and emotional side effects in the older kids.

“That’s why,” writes far-left New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg, “I believe that mandatory school masking should end when coronavirus rates return to pre-Omicron levels.”

Whoa! Knock me over with a feather. Who would thunk it?! Michelle Goldberg and the New York Times now acknowledge that masks may pose a danger to children. Miracles really do happen. Lord have mercy!

Not to be outdone, National Public Radio (NPR) now admits:

Numerous scientific papers have established that it can be harder to hear and understand speech and identify facial expressions and emotions when people are wearing masks…

These are critical developmental tasks, particularly for children in the first three years of life.

The United States is an outlier in recommending masks from the age of 2 years old. The World Health Organization does not recommend masks for children under age 5, while the European equivalent of the CDC doesn’t recommend them for children under age 12.

Manfred Spitzer is a psychiatrist and a cognitive neuroscientist in Germany.

He published a scientific review of evidence on how masking could impact children’s development.

Spitzer says the negatives of masking are particularly clear for very young children. He believes that young children’s caregivers should be unmasked as well.

“Kids need to train up their face recognition,” he says, and they need to see full faces to learn to identify emotions as well as to learn language.

“Babies were never designed just to see the upper half of the face and to infer the lower half; even adults have a hard time doing this.”

…Germany doesn’t require masks for children under age 6.

“When speech no longer happens, when communication is interfered with, I think if that happens for a week, that’s OK,” he explains. “But if that happens for half a year, that’s eternity when it comes to brain development, at a very young age.”

He points out that COVID-19 is usually mild for young children, but it’s a critical period for development.

“If you’ve got compelling medical evidence [for masking students],” that’s one thing,” says Virginia State Senator Chap Peterson, a Democrat who represents bright blue Fairfax County in Northern Virginia.

But the evidence to me is showing the exact opposite… School districts need to define an exit strategy for masking… They need to find a way. We need to find a way… The current policy is not best for kids.

“On Monday,” notes National Journal’s Josh Kraushaar,

the Washington Post published an op-ed from three medical experts calling to end mask mandates in schools. The Atlantic joined in on Tuesday. Today, it’s NPR’s turn and @michelleinbklyn in the New York Times.

The dam is breaking.

The only question is when will Dem political leaders in blue cities/ counties/ states follow suit. In Virginia, because [Republican Governor Glenn] Youngkin stuck his neck out on the issue, they’re going to do it so it doesn’t seem like they’re following the GOP’s lead.

True, it would be nice if lefties and “progressives” admitted that conservatives were right all along to be skeptical about the efficacy of masks and the dangers of masking children.

But as Harry Truman once said, “it is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.”

Parents and children throughout the United States really don’t care who gets the credit for ending the misguided school masking regime. They just want it to end, and the sooner the better.

Feature photo credit: The Atlantic magazine logo and New York Times’ left-wing columnist Michelle Goldberg, care of The Atlantic Monthly Group and U.C. Berkeley, respectively.

Lies, Damn Lies, and Mask Lies

Lies, Damn Lies, and Mask Lies

By John R Guardiano on January 17, 2022

Public health experts now admit what the empirical and scientific evidence has shown all along: cloth masks don’t work.

Like a bad dream that won’t go away, our public health experts’ unhealthy mask fetish continues, albeit with an important qualification:

Public health experts now acknowledge that cloth masks—which they foisted upon the American people for at least the first 18 months of this pandemic—don’t stop or slow the the spread of viral respiratory infections.

“Cloth masks are little more than facial decorations,” admits CNN Medical Analyst Dr. Leana Wen, an emergency physician and visiting professor of health policy and management at the George Washington University Milken Institute School of Public Health.

“I wish we’d get rid of the term masking,” adds Michael Osterholm, Director of Infectious Disease, Research and Policy, at the University of Minnesota. “Because, in fact, it implies anything you put in front of your face works…

We know today that many of the face cloth coverings that people wear are not very effective in reducing any of the virus movement in or out—either [that] you’re breathing out or you’re breathing in.

Mr. Osterholm made those comments more than five months ago, Aug. 2, 2021; and Dr. Wen’s comments were recorded by CNN three weeks ago.

CDC. Yet, only three days ago (Fri., Jan. 14, 2022), did the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) finally acknowledge (sort of) this empirical, scientific reality.

I say sort of because the CDC still refuses to acknowledge that the efficacy of cloth masks has not been demonstrated in any real-world population setting (as opposed to an artificial laboratory setting). “Masking,” asserts the CDC

is a critical public health tool for preventing spread of COVID-19, and it is important to remember that any mask is better than no mask.

Historical Evidence. This is simply not true, as even mask fetishists Mr. Osterholm and Dr. Wen readily acknowledge. And while cloth masks are even less effective against the more contagious and fast-spreading Omicron variant, their utility against any respiratory virus, COVID included, is sorely lacking.

“More than a century after the 1918 influenza pandemic,” write researchers from the Cato Institute,

examination of the efficacy of masks has produced a large volume of mostly low- to moderate-quality evidence that has largely failed to demonstrate their value in most settings.

“COVID is so dangerous,” notes Cato’s Thomas A. Firey, “that masking doesn’t provide much benefit—and cotton masks seem to provide no benefit at all.”

In short, the evidence is clear, consistent, and definitive: cloth masks don’t work. They don’t stop or slow the spread of viral respiratory infections. Let’s end the charade and give up the fetish—and let’s focus, instead, on things that really do work: vaccines, social distancing, and therapeutics.

Feature photo credit: Screen shots of Dr. Leana Wen and Michael Osterholm from the PBS News Hour and CSPAN, respectively.

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