By Richard McDonough

“I don’t care what Putin says. I didn’t realize Putin was our national security adviser.” —Texas Republican Congressman Dan Crenshaw

It is always an amusing, although not uncommon, experience to watch some of our television “experts” produce an argument for some position that actually works against it. This happened on March 18, when Laura Ingraham and her guest, Lt. Col. Daniel Davis, discussed their shared view that it is too dangerous to send about 70 antiquated MIGs, requested by Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, from Poland to Ukraine. The problem began a few weeks earlier when Secretary of State Anthony Blinken “green lighted” sending the MIGs to Ukraine until Vladimir Putin stated that this would represent an escalation and threatened to use nuclear weapons. Naturally, everyone caved and suddenly decided that there was no need to send the MIGs after all (which makes one wonder why they wanted to send them in the first place). It is reported that it was Joe Biden himself who killed the deal. Of course, President Zelenskyy disagrees, but he is not being permitted much say in what happens to his country, this being primarily decided in Moscow and Washington. NATO appears to want to sit this one out.

Since the transfer of the MIGs to Ukraine has been nixed by non-Ukrainians, it is necessary for the professional appeasers to find arguments to justify that decision. Thus, Laura invited Lt. Col. Davis on her show to explain why it is neither necessary nor wise to send the MIGs to Ukraine.

Laura and Lt. Col. Davis correctly agreed that we need to ask a lot of questions about this dangerous situation that people do not want to ask. However, Laura strayed from that commonsensical theme and forayed into military tactics, which is not her strong point.

After raising several questions about the deployment of the MIGs, Lt. Col. Davis stated that Putin has expressly stated that if the MIGs are delivered to the Ukraine, he may consider the country that sent them to be at war with Russia and might even attack that airfield — leading to a direct conflict with NATO. My view is that this is probably bluster by Putin since he is not stupid enough not to recognize that since he is having enough trouble subduing relatively weak Ukraine, he could not prevail against NATO. However, this is not the basis for my objection to Laura’s and Lt. Col. Davis’ views.

My objection is to their shared view that there is nothing those MIGs could do for Ukraine that is worth the risk of sending them. Laura brought up the fact that an American billionaire named Jared Isaacman, who owns one of these MIGs, stated that the Russians could eliminate these MIG’s “in a single shot” because the Russian fighters could see them from “3 times farther away.” There is certainly no better expert on the use of Russian military apparatus than an American billionaire who collects military toys for a hobby.

The problem with Laura’s and Lt. Col. Davis’ views that the MIGs would not be useful to Ukraine is that the objection to sending them to Ukraine was supposed to be that sending them is “escalatory.” However, if it is possible for the Russians to eliminate them “in a single shot,” as Laura’s American billionaire believes, then there is no reason for Russia to consider them “escalatory”. Similarly, if they can be so easily destroyed by Russia, then there is no reason for President Zelenskyy to want them. One must, therefore, regard Putin and Zelenskyy both as quite mad. Putin must be mad to fear the MIGs, and Zelenskyy must be mad to want them.

In such situations, it is better to place one’s faith in the judgment of people who actually have skin in the game — Putin in Moscow and Zelenskyy in Ukraine — rather than the idle talk of armchair quarterbacks yakking on American television. Zelenskyy clearly knows why he wants those MIGs, and Putin knows very clearly why he does not want them in Ukraine. Similarly, the U.S. State Department knew why it originally wanted to send them — until it was threatened by Putin, at which point it became necessary for the supporting cast of obliging “experts” to fabricate arguments that the MIGs are not needed by Ukraine after all.

Although the presence of the MIGs in Ukraine would not be decisive, it is not just wrong, but silly (yes, silly) that the MIGs would not be useful to Ukraine. If nothing else, sending them to Ukraine would send Putin a message that he cannot get his way by issuing threats. Four-star general Jack Keane explains the obvious point.

It is hard to know what the motivations are here. The motivation by the U.S. State Department for its embarrassing flip-flop may be that Biden, like Obama and Neville Chamberlain, wants a nuclear deal with Iran so that he can wave around a piece of paper before the elections and does not want Russia to scuttle the deal. Ingraham appears to have been so disappointed by the outcomes in Iraq and Afghanistan that she has become reflexively anti-war and now chooses to err on the side of caution. Indeed, Laura references the Iraq war debacle in her discussion with Davis when she suggests that it is “the same people” who are pushing to send the MIGs to Ukraine that pushed the Iraq war. In fact, it is not all “the same people.” President Zelenskyy was not involved in the Iraq war. It is some of the same people. One cannot decide what to do in the current situation simply by looking at the mistakes of the past. Despite Laura’s genetic fallacy, each situation is unique and requires a fresh evaluation. It appears that Biden’s decision not to send these MIG’s to Ukraine is based on timidity, which, unfortunately, appears to be the dominant mood in Washington these days.

Biden thinks sending the MIGs to Ukraine is provocative. In fact, weakness is provocative. That should be abundantly obvious after 14 months of the Biden administration. This war could have been easily prevented by arming Ukraine earlier, but Biden and our Joint Chiefs of Staff were so preoccupied with such pressing issues as the transgender ban and gender pronouns in the military that they did not have much time for emerging wars.

Biden is a follower. He follows the leftist children that run his party. He follows the polls. He follows the threats by foreign dictators. By contrast, Zelenskyy is a leader. Biden should green light the transfer of MIGs to Ukraine, however they get there, with the vehement stipulation that they are to be used only for defensive purposes, not to attack targets inside Russia. Putin needs to understand that he does not run the United States’ foreign policy. Unfortunately, Biden’s instinct is weakness, and his vice president’s instinct is for inappropriate cackling. Neither seems much interested in solving problems. The United States and the world are paying dearly for this lack of American leadership.