We’re Just Asking A Question Here
We’ll take our cues from the television commentator who – at some point – hated a recent president “passionately,” called the Florida retiree “a demonic force, a destroyer” and specializes in the CYAs (look it up if you don’t recognize the acronym) “I’m just asking a question here… What actually happened? …Why can’t I ask questions? …Can I ask? I don’t really understand.”
We’re just asking some questions. Can we ask?
In early March, a potential candidate for the presidency responded to a questionnaire from that same television commentator by arguing that protecting Ukraine against the Russian invasion – “de-nazification” was the original justification; it seems to have disappeared from the invaders’ lexicon – was not a “vital national interest” of the United States:
“While the U.S. has many vital national interests — securing our borders, addressing the crisis of readiness within our military, achieving energy security and independence, and checking the economic, cultural, and military power of the Chinese Communist Party — becoming further entangled in a territorial dispute between Ukraine and Russia is not one of them.”
As we scratched our graying heads, we were left wondering:
Despite an undergraduate degree in History from Yale and a Harvard law degree, has the governor of a peninsular state shaped like a frying plan proven himself unfit to hold the public trust with that statement? We’re just asking a question here.
Does the wannabe president believe the kidnapping of more than 16,000 Ukrainian children and taking them to “re-education” camps in Russia is to prevent them from being “indoctrinated” into “Ukrainian wokeism”? We’re just asking a question here.
The Rome Statute, which established the International Criminal Court in 2002, allows belligerents to attack military objectives even when it is known there will be civilian casualties. If the civilian toll is “clearly excessive” to the direct military benefits, these attacks – according to the ICC – are war crimes. Does Mr. I-Went-To-Harvard know that in February the UN Office of the High Commission on Human Rights reported that at least 8,000 non-combatants have been confirmed killed and nearly 13,300 injured since the February 24, 2022 invasion of Ukraine? [And we all know the true numbers are likely to be substantially higher.] Does the governor who taught a year of high school history really believe the Russian invasion of Ukraine is just a “territorial dispute”? We’re just asking a question here.
The UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine has reported that more than nine in 10 civilian casualties were caused by weapons with “wide area effects,” including artillery shells, cruise and ballistic missiles, and air strikes. Does this former member of Congress from Florida really believe this attack on civilians is just a geographic neighborhood dispute - like zoning a Russian theme park? We’re just asking a question here.
According to Ukrainian files reviewed by Reuters news agency, on March 13, 2022 in the Ukrainian town of Brovary, Russian snipers, members of the 15th Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade, “in a state of alcoholic intoxication, broke into the yard of the house where a young family lived,” beat the husband/father, gang raped the wife/mother and then one of the soldiers told the four-year-old daughter he “will make her a woman” before abusing her. They then assaulted the elderly couple in the home next door, also raping a 41-year-old pregnant woman and a 17-year-old girl. At another location, the same solders gang raped a 15-year-old girl and her mother. Does the governor really believe that, if pregnancies result from these “territorial dispute” rapes, women must be required to carry the babies of their Russian rapists to term and then rear them? We’re just asking a question here.
In the first days of 2023, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs noted more than 7.4 million refugees from Ukraine had been reported across Europe since the Russians initiated this “territorial dispute.” Does the man who appears to be desperate to become president believe they are headed to Disneyland Paris or are they actually fleeing for their lives and the lives of their children? We’re just asking a question here.
On February 13, 2023, The Washington Post reported, “Initial data shows that at least 500,000, and perhaps nearly 1 million, have left [Russia] in the year since the invasion began — a tidal wave on scale with emigration following the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution and the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991.” Is the would-be candidate already cozying-up to the Russian dictator or can he explain why so many Russians would flee their own country - if Russia’s assault on Ukraine is only a “territorial dispute”? We’re just asking a question here.
Twelve years ago, the Russian opposition group Solidarity reported that Vladimir Putin’s famous (or infamous) watch collection included a $60,000 Patek Philippe Perpetual Calendar, an $18,000 Patek Philippe Calatrava, a Breguet Marine worth $15,000, a $10,000 Blancpain Leman Flyback, and a Blancpain Leman Aqua Lung Grande Date worth around $10,500. A May 12, 2012 Solidarity video shows him sporting what appears to be the Tourbograph, a $500,000 masterpiece by German watchmaker A Lange & Sohne. It boasts platinum casing, gold plated arms, sapphire-crystal glass, and a hand-stitched crocodile leather strap. According to a 2016 “Panama Papers” report by the International Consortium of investigative Journalists, he enjoys control over a $100 million mega-yacht. In January 2021, allies of imprisoned Russian activist Alexi Navalny published hundreds of photos of what they say is the inside of Vladimir Putin’s secret Black Sea palace - reportedly 190,521 square-feet, under construction since 2014 and costing about $1.3 billion. [It seems the “palace” has been so overrun by black mold that it is constantly being torn apart and rebuilt, reviving the old adage “It’s not nice to fool Mother.”] According to Time magazine at the start of the Ukraine invasion, “Official disclosures from the Kremlin list Putin’s annual income around $140,000, and show that he owns an 800-square-foot apartment in St. Petersburg along with two Soviet-era cars, an off-road truck and car trailer.” Given his watch collection, palace and yacht(s?), can the man who wants to be president tell us if Mr. Putin is just thrifty or the King of Kleptocrats? We’re just asking a question here.
In the closing days of 2022, Insider.com reporters Jeremy Wilson and Taylor Ardrey published a list of fourteen men and women – “individuals linked to Putin’s government [who] have died in violent or mysterious circumstances” between April 2003 (Sergei Yushenkov, then the ninth member of the Russian parliament to be shot in as many years) and December 2022 (Pavel Antov, a politician, tycoon and critic of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, who reportedly fell from a hotel window in India).
Writing in Atlantic Council (July 15, 2022) John Sweeney briefly traces Putin’s rise to power, beginning with the September 1999 apartment bombings that killed 300 in Moscow and cities in southern Russia,
“a black flag operation by the Russian security services to make Vladimir Putin, an insipid spy, look strong…Putin blamed Chechen terrorists and launched the Second Chechen War in which around 80,000 died… Putin is also closely linked to at least two more suspected black flag operations, the Moscow Theatre Siege of 2002 where around 170 people were killed, and the Beslan siege of 2004, which claimed 333 lives, many of them children. Common to all three mass killings inside Russia was a total lack of transparency about the investigations into what took place. Numerous journalists and politicians who asked difficult questions were poisoned or shot.”
Sweeney continues,
Putin subsequently invaded Georgia and hundreds more lives were lost. He helped Assad in Syria kill around half a million. In 2014, he invaded Crimea and eastern Ukraine leading to 15,000 deaths.”
The evidence is in. And Sweeney puts it plainly:
“If you study Putin’s career, you realize that we are dealing with a hyper-aggressive psychopath whose word cannot be relied upon. He is a man who identifies compromise as weakness; who sows dissent and mistrust in the West; who likes killing. The idea that we can negotiate with Putin is foolish. Nobody in the West will be safe until he and his killing machine are stopped. Period.”
[The non-partisan and multinational Atlantic Council is self-described on its website as “a group of foreign policy change-makers committed to achieving real-world impact through world-class research paired with innovative methods and engagement with a wide range of stakeholders.”]
Does the former U.S. Navy lawyer believe that the invasion of Ukraine was really about “de-nazification” or has it all been just a “territorial dispute”? We’re just asking a question here.
In Mariupol, Lyman, Bucha, Izium and small towns and villages across the country, Ukrainians have unearthed the mass graves of thousands of civilians – including children and grandparents - and soldiers executed – often tortured and then killed with arms tied behind their backs – by Russian forces and their bodies dumped at the killing sites. Does the wanna-be president consider such war crimes merely zoning violations in a “territorial dispute” or does the former Navy lawyer believe Putin and his cronies are culpable of war crimes? We’re just asking a question here.
American and international news agencies have reported hundreds of examples of the Russian use of rape as a weapon against the civilian population. Would the Harvard Law School graduate consider this a justifiable (and legal) tool in settling a “territorial dispute” in his state or the nation? We’re just asking a question here.
On February 22, the above-referenced network commentator opened his program with a series of questions:
“Has Putin ever called me a racist? Has he threatened to get me fired for disagreeing with him? Has he shipped every middle-class job in my town to Russia? Did he manufacture a worldwide pandemic that wrecked my business and kept me indoors for two years? the answer to all of them is no. Vladimir Putin didn't do any of that. So, why does permanent Washington hate him so much?”
Yes! Putin’s a racist! Russian “de-nazification” of an independent nation with a freely and legitimately elected Jewish president is racism. Pure and simple! Yes! His invasion of Ukraine – “the world’s breadbasket” – has created significant – and growing – food shortages in some of the most poverty-stricken places on Earth. Yes! He and his Russian Orthodox Patriarch-buddy Kirill would destroy the autocephalic (self-governing) Orthodox Church of Ukraine and he will kill anyone who challenges him. Those other questions were purely a television commentator’s rhetorical obfuscations.
On Friday, March 17, the International Criminal Court issued an indictment for Russian President Vladimir Putin for war crimes. The Court said in a statement that Putin is allegedly “responsible for the war crime of unlawful deportation of (children) and that of unlawful transfer of (children) from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation.”
Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin called the ICC arrest warrant “a historic step” but the beginning “of a long road to justice.” Kostin said his office estimates that more than 16,000 children have been deported from the Russian-occupied Ukrainian territories of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kharkiv and Kherson regions, but warned the real number is much higher.
If, as a people, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” do we have and obligation to support the struggling people of Ukraine? Is their struggle really a “territorial dispute,” as the Yale and Harvard graduate wanna-be-president would have us believe? Is doing what is right and moral “a vital national interest” of the United States?
We’re just asking a question here.