Thread by @moporobbie

Ukraine’s other enemy is 🇺🇸 complacency. A chain I wrote before @WarintheFuture’s fantastic thread on same subject. Mines a bit more 🇺🇸 politics focused and certainly not up to his standard. Worth a read maybe anyway? 🧵

Some famous comedian once said ‘with friends like these, who needs enemies’. Ukraine’s enemy 🇷🇺 is vicious, unscrupulous, cynical and relentless. They play by their own rules and change them without warning. They want to win. Or if not win, then burn the ground behind them. (2)

To defeat such a formidable & diabolical foe, Ukraine has summoned a degree of national courage, ingenuity, & sheer baddassery to match the revered underdogs of the modern age. Churchill’s RAF ‘few’, the Chosin Marines, the Viet Minh/Cong come to my mind. (3)

As with the UK in the Battle of Britain, defeat meant complete destruction & subjugation to a tyrannical regime. (🇺🇦 like WWII UK) simply could not afford to lose. They also could “never surrender”. (4)

But like those brave Brit’s if you ask most Ukrainians or read their journalists, or listen to their president, you will hear that defeat isn’t the only unacceptable outcome.

Like the Allies fought to the bitter end to free France, Belgium, Poland etc 🇺🇦 will not stop until (5)

Crimea, Donbas, Luhansk are free & (literally) hundreds of thousands of 🇺🇦 citizens that have been captured, deported, filtered, or kidnapped are safely returned.

The 🇷🇺 occupied territory of Ukraine is proportional to USA’s Pennsylvania.

🇺🇸 would never stop fighting. (6)

We would grind whatever grist the mill required to free our land and citizens.

Of late we have seen various ‘friends’ of Ukraine in 🇫🇷🇮🇹🇩🇪🇹🇷 advocate for an outcome less than this complete restoration of territory and citizens. Macron is the most recent culprit of course. (7)

Never mind that 🇮🇹🇫🇷🇩🇪 exist as free countries due to being liberated by WW2 allies who would not ‘settle’ or ‘negotiate’ or ‘seek offramps’ for Hitler/Japan. The US, Canada, UK etc understood that Hitler needed to be defeated utterly until every last country was free. (8)

And still some advocate for outcomes that 🇺🇦 rightfully won’t accept because they entail surrendering countrymen, brothers, sisters, daughters and sons to subjugation, degradation, torture and humiliation. No one with half a spine would stand for that and nor should we. (9)

And while 🇺🇸🇬🇧🇨🇦 support has only been outmatched by that of the Baltic states and Poland and a few others in the immediate vicinity, the propensity for complacency, at least in my country 🇺🇸 is an extreme danger. Politics being what they are. (10)

🇷🇺 has nothing to lose anymore & will murder & destroy & blackmail until they win or are utterly spent. They are not a real representative government. Rather a union of security operatives, mafias, & billionaires. Treating them with the dignity of a government is ludicrous. (11)

Western leaders seem not to understand this and continue to treat these abject criminals as if they are a legit state. The Allies did not make that mistake with Hitler. Churchill made no bones about labeling the Nazis a ‘gang of thugs’ & we should have no compunction now. (12)

Each nation will do what is in its strategic self interest. So it’s understandable-ish that 🇩🇪🇮🇹🇫🇷 for instance might want to toe a softer line. They have more economic ties with 🇷🇺 & as energy and food prices rise, so will their internal political pressure to end the war (13)

It’s fortunate for 🇺🇦 that by contrast it is in the clear strategic best interest for the USA to see 🇷🇺 utterly beaten. Especially for this administration, stung by the messy Afghanistan withdrawal & legitimately angry at 🇷🇺 for years of surreptitious attacks. (14)

Defense Secretary Austin recently stated as much & the rest of the US defense establishment, including such typically circumspect officials like Nakasone have been ‘saying the quiet part out loud.’

Russia is our enemy too & we will support 🇺🇦 until Russia isn’t a threat. (15)

But complacency is a hell of a challenge here. As are the midterms. What happens if the GOP takes Congress & bogs the Biden admin down with endless ‘Huntergate’ investigations, which (although completely false & debunked) will delay, distract, & divide our unified response. (16)

Our country is among the most loyal allies & friends in human history. We stayed in Afghanistan for 20 years, spending trillions to help that country. That it ended tragically doesn’t outweigh the overall longterm commitment in blood & treasure. (17)

Likewise, even when the cause is less just, America tends to stay a bad course rather than admit a strategic mistake. Just ask Vietnam.

This is good for the 🇺🇦 cause. If this will be a war of attrition, they will need our support for the long haul. (18)

But take it from this 🇺🇸 citizen. I am already seeing the fatigue. The distraction. The complacency. From Will Smith, to Amber Depp to Kanye & Pete, we follow shiny objects like meth squirrels while 🇺🇦 focus only on survival. 🇺🇦 has no such distractions. Can’t afford to. (19)

Add to these frivolities the legitimate 🇺🇸domestic challenges of mass shootings, Roe v Wade, inflation & gas prices etc & it will get harder & harder for even the most steadfast 🇺🇦 supporters to force our leaders to focus and STAY ON TARGET. (20)

I humbly believe Biden is one of the steadfast. He too has nothing to lose. He’s too old to care what you think & clearly remembers the Soviets. He knows how close a 🇷🇺-backed GOP came to irreversibly subverting our democracy & knows they still could. So he is all in to win. (21)

But he is perceived as old. His poll #s are poor. His congressional majority is razor thin. The midterms loom and with them a wave of obstruction, obfuscation & chicanery. All of this bodes poorly for 🇺🇦.

Complacency by Dems in the midterms could lead to disaster for 🇺🇦. (22)

Put plainly. Biden needs to keep his governing coalition (even as imperfect as it is) to maintain the freedom of action that allows the support 🇺🇦 will need to win.

This may sound partisan. It is.

One party has Ron Paul. One has Joe Biden. That’s a clear contrast. (23)