The Failure Of Vision Of The 'Not Our Problem!' Crowd
I'm still waiting for an answer from the 'Ukraine's not our problem' crowd.
What happens if we pull out of Ukraine and let Putin run wild in Europe? With his success and our weakness, retreat and surrender he'll just stop? Like he did after Georgia, Moldova and Crimea? In reality wouldn't we just end up having to face a much stronger, more powerful Russia later on down the road? Wouldn't this make direct combat with Russia and WWIII a certainty? How in the hell could this possibly be 'not our problem'?
They will never answer these questions. They know they have no sane answer for them. Their entire premise is thus indefensible.
These folks will (correctly) claim the left has zero grasp the of consequences of their ideas. Yet in this case they suffer from exactly the same syndrome; cognitive dissonance blinders blocking any thought about the results of a knee-jerk emotion-based policy. 'Not our problem!' just makes it all disappear. Fa-get a-bout it! Bada-bing!
We've been through that before. In the 1920s and 30s there was a very strong isolationism sentiment in America. With the rise of Hitler we said 'we aren't going to get involved in more European wars!' The result was 400,000 dead Americans, over 80 million dead worldwide and the Holocaust. Then in the 1990s we got tired of the War On Terror. We ignored the first World Trade Center bombing and the many, many other attacks. We just accepted it as 'the way things are today'. The result was America's next Pearl Harbor, the 9/11 attacks. Over 2000 dead American civilians on American soil.
Fortunately this time we didn't cower behind our borders and leave the rest of the world to burn, hoping it wouldn't touch us. After his unopposed Crimea invasion Putin had every reason to believe the decadent west was a bunch of cowardly eunuchs that would never stand up to him. He miscalculated badly. America and Europe retaliated in a sane, measured way. We enabled Ukraine to fight the invaders and defend its sovereignty. Russia arrogance and overconfidence has exacted a horrific toll.
That's not to say our response has been perfect. The waffling on providing the heavy armor that Ukraine needs to drive invading Russian forces from their land cost many Ukrainian lives. But now that political hesitancy has ended. Leopard tanks, Bradley IFVs and Patriot missile defense systems are on the way. And down the road M1 Abrams tanks. Possibly even western fighter aircraft. This is what Ukraine needs to survive and prevail.
Regardless of how this war ends Russia will be a shattered, broken nation for a generation to come. Putin's imperial ambitions are stopped dead in their tracks. There will be no general war in Europe, no new massive butcher's bill of dead American troops, no WWIII, no global thermonuclear Armageddon. And that's only because we ignored the 'not our problem!' crowd and did the right thing.
“All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing”.