The tactic was well used by the late Senator Joe McCarthy, to let everyone know that if you disagreed with him, you were a Communist.

I participated in the Weekend Open Thread on Patterico’s Pontifications, knowing in advance that if my comments were published, I’d be running into a buzz saw of opposition. The host, Los Angeles County prosecutor Patrick Frey, a conservative who has mostly withdrawn from the blog, leaving it up to a much nicer and better-looking Dana than me, is nevertheless a dedicated #NeverTrumper, as are the majority of commenters, a majority of whom also wholeheartedly support helping Ukraine in its war against Russian invaders. The commenters there are mostly well-educated, and many are lawyers, but it’s clear that many — certainly not all — view opposition to the kind of aid provided by former President Joe Biden is wholly unappreciated.

I posted this comment on Monday evening:

Whembly asked:

I feel bad for Trump and Vance choosing to side with Putin. That is a terrible legacy to live with.

DRJ (a84ee2) — 3/3/2025 @ 9:53 am

…because they want the war to stop? That’s choosing side with Putin?

It seems that a majority of commenters here, and the more vocal voices of Democrats in Washington, see it exactly that way.

There is very much a two-choice concept going on: either you support freedom — and think of Mel Gibson screaming “Freedom!” in Braveheart here — or you are a disgusting and vile Russian sympathizer and Vladimir Putin toady who supports authoritarianism and dictatorial rule. There seems little room for those of us who recognize that President Putin is a very bad guy, but who are not willing to expend American blood and treasure to keep him from conquering all of Europe.

Of course, Vladimir Vladimirovich has proven, with his three-year stalemate in Ukraine, that Russia cannot conquer all of Europe!

I was just a hair too young for Vietnam, but I paid a lot of attention to the news even as a teenager, and all I saw was the squandering of 58,000 American lives, with hundreds of thousands more wounded, all to fight a war in which we eventually cut and ran, and all of Vietnam fell to the Communists. I saw Iraq 2.0, and thousands of lives and a couple trillion dollars in treasure were wasted in getting rid of Saddam Hussein, but Iraq was never the peaceful, Western civilization-adjacent nation that the younger President Bush hoped to create. I saw Afghanistan, in which we had to fight after we were attacked, turn into a fools’ mission of trying to civilize the barbarians, and the same Taliban we kicked out of power in 2001 are right back in power.

SSG Pico served briefly in Afghanistan, though she was never in a position of serious danger.

And now the fight is against a nation with a strategic nuclear arsenal, an unstable — at least by Western definitions — leadership, and people advocating a conventional war to actually defeat Russia, yet according to some, my thinking that this war is not a wise thing for us to join is tantamount to wanting to fellate Vladimir Putin.

That has been my position from Day One of this insane war. I like most people, expected Russia to roll over the Ukrainians in short order, and yes, I was surprised that that didn’t happen. Instead, Ukraine stiffened, and Russia made some strategic mistakes — attacking just before the spring ‘mud time’ being the most obvious — and the war devolved into a three-year-long stalemate, and a war of attrition. For that, Russia is poorly situated, but Ukraine is an even worse position, having just a third of Russia’s population.

I have been asking all along: as much as we’d like for Ukraine to win, no one seems to be presenting a plan as to how Ukraine could win. Thomas Meaney wrote, two years ago:

The trouble is that Ukraine has only one surefire way of accomplishing this feat in the near term: direct NATO involvement in the war. Only the full, Desert Storm style of deployment of NATO and U.S. troops and weaponry could bring about a comprehensive Ukrainian victory in a short period of time. (Never mind that such a deployment would most likely shorten the odds of one of the grimmer prospects of the war: The more Russia loses, the more it is likely to resort to nuclear weapons.)

Well, I am certainly unwilling to support direct NATO involvement in this war. Trudy Rubin, the Philadelphia Inquirer columnist and Ukraine supporter, said:

We do. Constantly. Give Ukraine the air cover, planes, missiles, ammo it needs, help Ukraine build up the domestic arms industry it does better, cheaper than US does, stand up to Putin and recognize that Kyiv is fighting for U.S. against dog-eat-dog world Putin and Trump want.

I’m pretty sure that giving Ukraine the air cover it needs means American pilots in American planes, directly fighting Russians.

As long as President Trump is in office, and J D Vance if the elderly Mr Trump cannot complete his four-year term, we will not be sending Americans to directly fight the Russians, not unless Russia invades Alaska! If the European NATO nations choose to send troops, that’s something which would be their decision, though I would see it as boneheadedly stupid, and I have serious doubts about just how much their populations would support such.

It would be nice if this war didn’t last for another four years! President Trump proposed a plan to end it, one which President Volodymyr Zelenskyy absolutely hated, and I can’t say that I blame him for hating it, because it concedes to Russia the land they’ve seized. But unless there’s a reasonable plan for and prospect of Ukraine gaining an advantage and winning the war, some sort of deal has to be reached.