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| Blumenthal |
U.S. Senator Chris Murphy’s response to the largely successful assault by Israel and the United States on Iran’s terrorist regime was slightly schizophrenic when compared with U.S Senator Dick Blumenthal’s forthright op-ed in the Hartford Courant supporting the brave resistance of Ukraine in the face of continuing Russian aggression, Reality of Inhumanity I found in Ukraine.
At the beginning of Vladimir Putin’s unanswered assault on
Ukraine, Blumenthal visited the besieged country and beseeched the Biden
administration to send jets to Ukraine so that Ukraine might effectively answer
Putin’s aggression. His pleadings went unanswered.
From his first to his most recent visit to Ukraine,
Blumenthal’s messaging has been consistent and, much to his credit, persistent,
even though Democrat President Biden appeared to turn a deaf ear to his
pleadings.
Here is a takeaway from Blumenthal’s most recent op-ed:
Ukraine can win,
preserving its sovereignty and independence and even push back Putin’s
slaughtering invasion, if it has the right tools. It needs ammunition, not just
applause; weapons more than words. Tomahawk missiles, Patriot system
interceptors, 155 munitions, F16’s, and more. Speaking to our military leaders
as well as theirs, I was struck by the sense of hope about potential success… Against
Russia’s rising toll of hurt and harm, President Zelenskyy resists any
negotiated peace agreement that lacks sufficient security to deter Russia from
repeating its aggression. To be sure, he wants peace — as he emphasized during
our lengthy meeting in Kyiv — but he cannot even consider surrendering
territory without ironclad guarantees preventing another invasion.
Hence, the urgency of
this moment for American as well as European support: negotiations are
faltering and sputtering because Putin clearly has no interest in peace. He’s
been mocking and playing the United States, most especially President Trump,
seeking to stall and stonewall us. He is firmly convinced he can outlast us and
then overrun an exhausted Ukraine. Our European allies see through this malign
strategy— they made crystal clear in my conversations at the Munich Security
Conference. President Trump’s vacillation— seeming a lot like appeasement—
encourages Putin’s intransigence. Putin is a murderous thug. He understands
only strength. Peace through strength is the only stance he understands.
Now is the time for
decisive military aid and sledgehammer sanctions on major buyers of Russian oil
and gas like China and India who are fueling Russia’s war machine. Also, strong
steps against the Russian shadow fleet that surreptitiously transports energy
products, designation of Russia as a State Sponsor of Terrorism, and other
economic measures strongly penalizing Russia and aiding Ukraine. Also
repurposing Russian immobilized assets, hundreds of billions of dollars in
European bank accounts.
That is wise council, and it shows that Blumenthal is a
close student of history. In the 1930s, Joseph Stalin overcame Ukrainian resistance by means of a terror famine, the Holodomor, to which at least 4.5 million Ukrainians fell
victim. Blumenthal should be commended for such remarks.
Blumenthal’s op-ed may apply as well to the Iran/Israel/US multi-year
conflict. In Iran, the vacillation of the Carter, Obama and Biden administrations,
following the 1978 Iranian Revolution, seemed to many “a lot like appeasement”
and encouraged the intransigence of murderous thugs such as the Ayatollah
Ruhollah Khomeini and Iran’s lately deceased Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali. President
Donald Trump’s recent response to Iranian intransigence possibly may not
convince the “thugs” often mentioned by Blumenthal to relent from their
thuggery, but negotiations have been singularly unavailing in the Middle East
since the Iranian revolution 48 years ago, and war, military scholars tell us,
is negotiation by other means. Often in human history, peace is won by, rather
than through, strength.
“The lesson of history,” Blumenthal tells us in his op-ed,
“is that appeasement and hope are not a strategy against a bloodthirsty
tyrant.”
“If we seize the moment,” Blumenthal tells us in his op-ed,
“we can make a historic difference. We can stop Putin’s ongoing hybrid war
against democracies with cyber, misinformation, and much worse. Just ask
leaders in Moldova, Poland, Baltic States and others on the frontline at
Russia’s border what will happen if he succeeds in Ukraine. An investment now
in prevention will be worth a pound of cure later. If we fail, history will
judge us harshly. The lesson of history is that appeasement and hope are not a
strategy against a bloodthirsty tyrant.”
And if the people of Iran fail in their struggle against bloodthirsty
tyrants, what then?
In a March 1 interview with Margaret Brennan on "Face
the Nation,” Connecticut’s Junior US Senator Chris Murphy offered the following
sunbursts:
SEN. MURPHY: No.
Donald Trump precipitated this crisis, right? He inherited a nuclear agreement
that was working, that had put Iran more than a year away from a nuclear weapon
--
MARGARET BRENNAN:
--The JCPOA (The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action).
SEN. MURPHY: The
JCPOA. Against the advice of his advisers, he tossed that agreement out, which
brought us to this moment.
MARGARET BRENNAN: It
would have expired by now.
SEN. MURPHY: And there
- right, but I think Iran would have certainly been willing to extend those
provisions if we were still in the agreement. But second, there is no history,
there is no experience that shows an air campaign alone will result in positive
regime change. In fact, there's not a single example of it in the entirety of
American history. An air campaign without at least the threat of a ground
invasion, which the administration is ruling out, never results in a democratic
rebirth in an authoritarian country. So the plan they have laid out, sustained
air strikes without a ground invasion is destined to fail. All that will happen
at the end of this, most likely, listen, I'm rooting for democracy in Iran, but
the most likely outcome here is that hard liners take over the government. They
restart their missile program, they restart their nuclear program, and we're
just right back at bombing them again and putting American lives and regional
lives at risk again in a year or two.
Murphy may be the last person on earth to realize that the
JCPOA never worked and that it would have “expired by now” even if Trump had
not terminated it. The JCPOA agreement never prevented Iran’s production of a
nuclear weapon or the accommodations extended to Iran by three Democrat presidents.
And Murphy’s futuristic predictions are hasty and premature. The grateful people
in Iran and elsewhere who are now “rooting for democracy – other than the
thousands of victims murdered by Iranian tyrants for having prematurely
exercised their natural rights of free expression -- are those John Adams had
in mind when he said that the newly established American government is “the
friend of democracy everywhere, but the custodian only of its own.”
The sentiments Blumenthal expressed in his op-ed would seem
to place him among Adams’ “friends of democracy.” The brave state of Israel,
the only democracy in the Middle East, should be able to count on the fierce
and loyal support of Jewish politicians such as Blumenthal and New York Senator
Chuck Schumer. And Murphy would do well to put aside his manic hatred of Trump
long enough to imagine an Iran and free of Great-Satan hating tyrants and join
the joy.
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