Totally Insane on Ukraine:

It is easy to be wrong about the future, but it is hard to be more wrong than our former president was when the Russian invasion of the sovereign nation of Ukraine was imminent last winter.

If you’re not a disciple of Fox “News” (or other sketchy far out media), you may have missed the following: Two days before the Russian invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, the previous president of the United States, anticipating the attack, gushed thusly in an interview on a conservative radio station: “I went in yesterday and there was a television screen, and I said, ‘This is genius,’ Putin declares a big portion of the Ukraine — of Ukraine — Putin declares it as independent. Oh, that’s wonderful. So Putin is now saying ‘It’s independent,’ a large section of Ukraine. I said, ‘How smart is that?’ And he’s going to go in and be a peacekeeper. That’s the strongest peace force … We could use some of that on our southern border.”

One would be forgiven for thinking that this was sarcasm. It was not. You can listen to it online. You may want to have a bottle of Pepto handy.

Given more than a year to think things over, the former president told Fox’s Sean Hannity earlier this year that if voters returned him to the White House in 2025, he would “solve” the now 15-month-long war in 24 hours. Not 48 or 72 hours, mind you, but 24 hours. It wasn’t specified if that included time for bathroom breaks and a round or two of golf.

POTUS 45 went on to boast last month that he gets along “very well” with Putin, who is widely viewed as being a war criminal and who is the absolute demagogue of Russia (for now). The International Criminal Court in the Hague issued an arrest warrant for Putin in March.

Let’s do a quick check of what this “genius” of a Russian “peacekeeper” has wrought in Ukraine:

Russia has sustained between 150,000 and 200,000 casualties, according to most estimates, almost twice as many as Ukrainian troop losses. That’s more dead and wounded than Russia suffered in nearly a decade of fighting in Afghanistan, from 1979 to 1989. That war was credited with hastening the breakup of the Soviet Union. Recently we have seen the cracks in Russian society exposed by Putin's inept military adventure.

Russian forces have been responsible for killing some 30,000 Ukrainian civilians as well as for committing countless war crimes, including torture, summary executions, rape, and targeting non-military infrastructure (such as hospitals, schools, and apartment buildings), and the unlawful deportation of children.

Russia has lost close to 2,000 tanks, about half of its pre-war inventory.

One of Putin’s stated objectives for invading Ukraine was to make Russia more secure in relation to NATO, the western alliance of primarily democratic countries. In fact, the invasion has catalyzed NATO nations into taking their collective security far more seriously, to spend more on defense, to position more combat ready troops on their eastern peripheries—and, perhaps most significantly, to welcome previously neutral Finland and Sweden into the alliance, thereby more than doubling NATO’s land border with Russia. Having observed the atrocities of Russian occupiers in Ukraine, NATO nations are switching to a more assertive defense strategy geared toward denying attackers from gaining even a foothold in their territory.

One can only wonder what “genius” geopolitical moves Putin will unveil next.

Although the outcome of the war in Ukraine remains in doubt, one thing is eminently clear: the bromance between our former president and Vladimir Putin is still hot and heavy. If POTUS 45 gets the Republican nomination for president in 2024, the position of vice-presidential nominee will be up for grabs. Putin may be available.