Trump & Putin: Perfect Match!

If you don’t mind, I’d like to ask a stupid question. If Russia mounts a full-scale military invasion of Ukraine, who says that Russia will win?

Remember what happened the last time Russia sent a big army into a neighboring state? It was a place called Afghanistan and the Russians got their asses kicked in.

Right now, the Ukrainian government has a regular army of roughly 250,000 troops. There’s also a volunteer ‘border patrol’ force of another 800,000 or so. But let’s just stick with the uniformed force and equipment at the government’s command.

Trump’s crazy mishandling of the whole Ukrainian arms thing notwithstanding, we have sent over $2.5 billion in military aid to Ukraine since 2014, including Javelin anti-tank missiles, coastal patrol boats, Humvees, sniper rifles, reconnaissance drones, radar systems, radio equipment and night vision, along with a few other doodads as well.

I’m not saying that the Ukrainian army can match the size or the preparedness of the troops that Russia can put out in the field. But we’re not talking about some little, half-assed military force that will run away and hide the moment the first Russian tank comes rumbling over the hill.

And let’s remember that it’s one thing to invade another country, it’s another thing to be defending home ground. If you are defending your country, you don’t have to destroy the other guy’s armed forces. You just have to slow him down, make him move forward inch by precious inch, and all of a sudden, the motivation and desire of the invading force begins to peter out.

I keep hearing about how Russia has an immense advantage over Ukraine when it comes to things like cyber warfare, hi-tech weapons, methods for wrecking Ukrainian infrastructure, all those good military technologies developed in the digital age. But when all is said and done, you win a war by putting feet on the other guy’s ground and then making sure that your soldiers’ feet stay dry and warm. Know what cost the Nazi Wehrmacht a victory against Russia in 1943? The German troops at Stalingrad found themselves sitting in frozen foxholes with sneakers on their feet.

And by the way, the German military force which invaded Russia in 1941 numbered more than 3.5 million men, complete with Panzers, airplanes, heavy artillery, and all kinds of other mechanized stuff. Eventually, the Russians built their armed forces up to over 6 million men, but much of this growth in the size of the Russian army occurred after the Germans started to retreat.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that we should hope for a full-scale or even limited military conflict between Russia and Ukraine. And even though we now have an ex-President who appears to be siding with Putin as the conflict continues to heat up, what Trump has now managed to do with his ass-kissing plaudit of Putin as ‘very savvy’ and a ‘genius’ is to remove himself from any public or political relevance except on radio shows which cater to the most moronic segment of the alt-right.

I’m more than happy to pay an extra ten or twenty cents for a gallon of gasoline if it means that Donald Trump will continue to embarrass himself and anyone who still supports him by making the kind of comment he made yesterday on the AM radio show which has replaced Rush.

Is Trump really that stupid? Does he really believe that even the most rabid anti-Biden voter out there wants to see or hear the President of the United States maligned by a public comparison to the autocrat who is currently running the Russian government and potentially getting ready to invade another sovereign state?

I hope that if the Russians do invade Ukraine, that Putin will issue an invitation for Trump to visit Russian troops in the field. Frankly, if that were to happen, I’d pay another dime or even a quarter more for a gallon of gasoline.