As Israel’s effort to defeat Hamas dominates the news, it’s crucial that America and its leaders don’t forget about Ukraine’s fight against Vladimir Putin’s barbaric aggressions.
The weekend’s word of a Ukrainian breakthrough near Kherson only clarifies that fact.
President Biden was right to link these two battles in his speech last week: They represent two fronts in the same struggle, the global battle between democracy and autocracy.
But the president hesitates on every front.
On Ukraine, he has long played a waiting game with Ukraine: delivering generous aid money but withholding crucial weapons and warfighting systems.
Yes, we finally got Kyiv the advanced missile system, ATACMS, it has long needed to contend with Putin’s air assaults and to strike at key Russian logistical and supply targets.
Yet those came only after years of delay, as Biden and his advisers quailed before Team Putin’s bluster about going nuclear.
And Biden’s equally serious delay on jets — only this summer changing its tune on Ukraine getting F-16s from allies — left Kyiv at an even more serious disadvantage.
As we’ve noted, Biden’s “drip drip drip” approach guarantees that Ukraine fights on but can only grind out small gains, rather than ending the war with major gains that force Putin to quit.
And he’s showing the same hesitance on Israel: Multiple reports (plainly based on word the White House wanted to get out) say the administration is pushing hard on Jerusalem to delay a ground invasion of Gaza.
That course might seem “reasonable,” in a superficial way.
But Israel, like Ukraine, is facing an existential fight against a bloodthirsty aggressor that has left it no other choice.
We can’t help recalling that then-Veep Joe Biden advised then-President Barack Obama to call off the mission that took out Osama bin Laden.
For all his bluster, he’s risk-averse to a disastrous fault, and far too eager to assume evil can be bargained with, rather than confronted.
Facing down the forces of darkness demands boldness and vision; Biden’s foolish caution is a gift to the enemy.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
