Vladimir Putin launched an unprovoked land, air and sea attack on the sovereign nation of Ukraine.
This is Putin’s war.
America and the international community must, at long last, confront him as the world’s most dangerous man.
History informs us that this is a time for national unity, and for international resolve among all freedom-loving people. We must stand in solidarity for free people and free nations, and we must condemn the acts of Putin as those of a brutal dictator.
We Americans have seen this all before. Small men with big chips on their shoulders never care how much blood is spilled, how many people are killed, how much the world is plunged into darkness and misery. They only care that their thirst for power, for dominance, is quenched.
In this regard, we can say without hyperbole that Putin at this moment is acting precisely like Adolf Hitler did in 1938. The German fuhrer said then that his invasion of Czechoslovakia was for the benefit of the German citizens living in the Sudetenland. Within years, the world was plunged into the deadliest war in history.
Likewise, Putin annexed Crimea and portions of Ukraine not quite a decade ago, and before Thursday, he used “defense of Russian speakers” in Ukraine as his pretext for a broad invasion.
Putin is determined to remake the mistakes of the past. The international community has, until now, shrugged off his despotic designs on reassembling his beloved USSR.
The Russian president was a middling apparatchik — a KGB agent in what President Ronald Reagan labeled an evil empire — in the final days of the USSR. Some 40 years later, Putin is an unstable agent of international chaos, bitter but emboldened, nostalgic for a new Cold War or a new hot war.
Putin is a kleptocratic who to date has gotten away with looting his nation, converting its treasury to his own, empowering himself and a small circle of oligarchs to become some of the world’s richest men. His thuggish regime tolerates no dissent or criticism. It jails, poisons or kills dissidents, political rivals, critics and perceived enemies. None of this is news, or new to Russia, frankly. All that’s new is that Putin, this time, finally followed through on his bluster.
President Joe Biden had warned about an imminent invasion for weeks as Russian troops and military hardware massed around Ukraine’s borders. Biden was so open about intelligence around the threat that he was criticized for being overly dramatic.
But Indiana Republican Sen. Todd Young was among thoughtful leaders wise enough to acknowledge the threat. Young recognized the national and international interests at stake. He praised Biden’s leadership and backed sanctions against Russia. Young also made clear the need for Americans to stand united.
“All of us need to be clear that Vladimir Putin is a threat to the democratic, rules-based order that has benefitted countless Americans,” Young said.
Young realizes that if ever there was a time that Americans need to speak with one voice, it is now. Ukraine is a sovereign nation. And Russia is better than Vladimir Putin.
This is a time to stand up to Putin, a singular bully whose time on the world stage must end. The fate of freedom-loving people depends on it.
