“The Ukrainians must stop fighting in case they defeat Putin.”
Have you heard any of our leaders say that in the last two years?
As Ukraine enters its third year of war it is striking how committed political leaders of all parties are to that war.
And not just here but across the West.
At home — Democrat or Republican — almost everybody is committed to arming Ukraine until victory.
They don’t want Ukraine to fight to a stalemate.
They don’t want it to stop just before winning.
They want it to beat Putin back.
So how strange it is that another war, involving a far closer ally, gets such different treatment.
The historian Niall Ferguson noted the curious double-standard this week after a visit to Israel.
In Washington, London and every other Western capital, political leaders are not saying that they will stick with Israel until it defeats Hamas.
They are not saying “Victory at any price and at any cost.”
Instead they are insisting that Israel stop its war against Hamas as soon as possible.
This week President Biden suggested that there might be a peace deal by Monday.
And he seemed positively happy about the fact.
Despite the deal being an disastrously anti-Israel and Hamas having already rejected it.
But why do people like Biden want peace in Gaza?
Why should anybody want Hamas to crawl out of this war, dust itself off and be able to carry out the same terror against Palestinians and Israelis that it has carried out for years?
Why shouldn’t people want Israel to win just as much as they want Ukraine to win?
It can’t be a matter of death-toll.
Hamas claim that up to 30,000 Palestinians (which includes Hamas “fighters”) have been killed since the start of the war.
And the whole world seems to be appalled by this.
But earlier this month the US government estimated that as many as 315,000 casualties have been suffered by Russia in Ukraine.
While the Ukrainians claim that they have lost 31,000 troops since the invasion by Russia.
Is anyone talking about “proportionality” in that conflict?
If so I haven’t heard it.
Has anyone in DC expressed fear and sorrow over the Russian lives lost?
If they have it hasn’t come my way.
Instead, like the world’s media, they are obsessing over the city of Rafah (in the south of Gaza) where the remainder of Hamas’ leadership — and the remaining Israeli hostages — are thought to be.
If this was Ukraine, right before the point of victory, with the enemy almost defeated, the West would be urging our ally on.
But with Israel, America and the world is begging them to stop.
Why?
Why should Israel have done all it has to defeat Hamas only to take off the stranglehold and let it breathe again?
It makes no sense.
There is zero point in a war fought to such a compromise.
All it will ensure is another Israel-Hamas war in the near future.
Still, the double-standard is shocking.
Here in the US it has some very clear domestic explanations.
Kamala Harris and Joe Biden are apparently deeply concerned about the possibility of Muslim voters in Michigan turning against the Democrat party, and staying home in November.
As a result senior officials are imploring their Israeli counterparts to ease off with the war in order to give the Democrats an advantage in a tight election year.
To realize how bizarre this is, just imagine it the other way around. Imagine the Israeli Prime Minister calling up the White House.
“Sorry Joe, but we’re going to have to ask you to put the security of the American public on the backburner. Our domestic polling in Caesarea doesn’t look too good. So would you mind putting your own people second?”
It’s unthinkable.
But it is just as unthinkable the way it is working at the moment.
When a country has to tell its allies to put their own security second for local political reasons you become a deeply unstable ally.
I’d like to think that our political leaders can be driven by principle.
But sometimes you do have to wonder. I had imagined that the united front in support of Ukraine was a matter of conscience as well as statecraft.
But who knows.
I thought the same about America’s stance on Israel.
But now we know how easily they can be swayed.
Perhaps if America had imported a very large number of Russian nationalists in recent decades and they´d congregated in a couple of swing states we would betray Ukraine too.
Anyway, the double-standard is glaring.
If our politicians and media are demanding a ceasefire in Gaza but not in Ukraine, perhaps they could just ask themselves why?
Left’s love affair with Cuba
As the Post revealed yesterday, two far-left lawmakers made a secret trip to Cuba last week.
Reps Pramila Jayapal and Ilhan Omar took a delegation of about a dozen people — including a Congressional staffer — to spend time on the communist island.
I wonder why?
It’s amazing when you think about it.
If there was any country still attempting the nightmare of fascism I suspect people would look askance at Republican lawmakers making pilgrimages to it.
But with communism it’s always different.
Only this week a far-left rag called The New Republic offered its readers “A lovingly designed, all-inclusive tour of Cuba.”
The magazine quoted a previous fellow-traveler from the magazine who raved that her trip “was extremely impactful on so many different levels.”
The magazine continued “Cuba is quite simply one of the most amazing places in the world.”
In other news this week the Cuban authorities asked the UN food program for help with the island’s worsening food shortages.
The request from the communist authorities included a demand for powdered baby milk for children under seven. It seems the ration-book system introduced by Fidel Castro in 1962 is not working.
Who could have guessed?
Some people wonder why the far-left always idolize Cuba.
The answer is not just that its communist.
It’s that it’s against America.
And they always love that.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
