Trump’s latest pearl – that Zelenskyy could “end the war if he wanted to” – is the kind of drivel only a man allergic to facts could spout. It turns reality on its head. Ukraine didn’t start this war, Russia did. If Putin stopped tomorrow, the war would end tomorrow. If Zelenskyy stopped tomorrow, Ukraine would be carved up, its sovereignty shredded, and the tanks would only pause long enough to refuel before rolling further west.
This isn’t peace, it’s appeasement – and we’ve seen that film before. In 2014, Putin took Crimea. Did that slake his thirst? No, it emboldened him. In 1938, Hitler was handed the Sudetenland in the name of “peace in our time.” A year later the Panzers were in Poland. Feeding territory to an aggressor never ends a war, it just sets the clock for the next invasion.
Trump knows this, but he doesn’t care. His whole career has been one long exercise in calling surrender a deal. Kim Jong Un milked him for a handshake and a few fireworks at the DMZ. Putin knows exactly how to stroke his ego – he doesn’t need to win on the battlefield when Trump is busy blaming the victim and peddling capitulation as statesmanship.
The logic is straight out of a bully’s lawyer’s brief: if only the victim would stop resisting, the fight would be over. It’s perverse. The only reason Ukraine survives is because it is resisting. To give up now would not end the bloodshed but guarantee more of it – just postponed, and worse.
So when Trump pontificates about Zelenskyy having the power to end it, what he’s really saying is that Ukraine should roll over so he can parade his phoney deal-making genius. It’s the same shtick every time: the bully gets the lunch money, the victim gets told to smile, and Trump slaps his name on the mugging as if it were an act of diplomacy.
He calls it peace. History calls it cowardice.
1 comment:
On the plus side - a teeny tiny plus side obvs - I see the Nobel Peace Prize drifting farther and farther away.
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