Now that Trump has called for Iran to surrender unconditionally, maybe he'll demand that Russia get out of Ukraine
At last
Dear Mr. President, who are you and what did you do with the real Donald Trump?
Instead of positioning himself as a “peacemaker,” Trump now appears to have joined the “war mongers” and “neocons”—the very people he campaigned against. He had been drifting that way as Israel’s warcraft has been as successful and creative as any that the world has ever seen.
Trump’s guiding light is winning, and as he unsuccessfully brokered a deal to end the hostilities between Iran and Israel, he might have worried that he stood on the sidelines and gave up his peacemaker role.
Today he called for an “unconditional surrender,” and warned Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamene that we know where you are. Trump had previously clearly opposed taking out Khamene. With Israel having skillfully killed the hidden military commanders, the Khamene might now be hearing an incoming.
Good for Trump. He at last came around to acknowledge the reality that the fanatical masters of Iran would never give up trying to build a nuclear bomb, no matter how much they get pounded.
Maybe that Russian tyrant that unleashed a war on Ukraine might now think he’s dealing with a different Trump. The president’s attempts to broker a cease fire, if not an end to the Russian-Ukrainian war, also has been dismal. Looked at objectively, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s stalling has made Trump look like a loser—the thing that the president most detests.
America’s imposed strategy on Ukraine reminds me of the Vietnam War. American forces, with the exception of bombers, were withheld from North Vietnam, which like Russia, had invaded a sovereign nation—South Vietnam. Look back to the 1950s, North Korea had essentially conquered South Korea until America stepped in. Our military preserved the South.
And now Ukraine has been restrained from retaliating against the aggressor Russia. Ukraine didn’t start the war and the cost that Trump would have imposed as a peacemaker for Ukraine to give up a good hunk of its nation to Russia. Trump’s attempt to broker a cease fire without the removal of Russian troops from Ukraine is to reward Putin for his invasion of a sovereign nation.
Maybe it’s time for Ukraine be unleashed to take the war to Putin. Ukraine has been denied the arms that would make that possible. But for Trump to endorse a cease fire that chops a hunk of Ukraine as a gift to Russia is a dangerous strategy.
Anything that rewards Putin for his appetite to reestablish the Soviet Union is dangerous. The Soviet Union once controlled all of Eastern Europe, that now includes NATO members. Must we wait until Putin has eyes set of some of them like Poland?
It’s all risky and complex. But the West once before sought peace with USSR by giving Hitler Czechoslovakia. That led to the worst war the world had ever seen.