Mike Pence shows political courage by supporting Ukraine
Quin Hillyer
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Former Vice President Mike Pence deserves credit for forthrightly explaining the United States’s interest in Ukraine when some in his Republican Party are singing an isolationist (or even demagogic) tune.
“This is not America’s war,” Pence said at the University of Texas. “But if we falter in our commitment to providing the support to the people of Ukraine to defend their freedom, our sons and daughters may soon be called upon to defend ours. If we surrender to the siren song of those in this country who argue that America has no interest in freedom’s cause, history teaches we may soon send our own into harm’s way to defend our freedom and the freedom of nations in our alliance.”
PENCE SAYS THERE’S NO ROOM FOR ‘APOLOGISTS FOR PUTIN’
Calling Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine “unprovoked” and “unconscionable,” Pence made clear he is not for half measures.
“Beyond the courage of the Ukrainian people, we’ve also seen free nations of the world unite to stand with the Ukrainian people and stand up the Russian aggression,” he said. “We will not stop providing [vital military aid] until victory is achieved.”
This is bracing stuff. It comes as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Speaker Kevin McCarthy send smoke signals to the isolationist right by adopting the “no blank check for Ukraine” line. In one sense, the line is just common sense; but when it is uttered without any concomitant expression of support for Ukraine’s effort in general, it risks undermining U.S. public approval for assistance to a brave people battling a terroristic U.S. adversary.
Even worse than the McCarthy-DeSantis hedging of bets, though, is the rabble-rousing wickedness of those on the right who set up a meretricious dichotomy between helping Ukraine and helping the people near the train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio.
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) gave the starkest example of this when he told anti-Ukraine Fox News opinionator Tucker Carlson that he has a “message to congressional Republicans: You can either be the party of Ukraine and the globalists, or you can be the party of East Palestine and the working people of America.”
Maybe Hawley can’t chew gum while walking, but there’s no reason the U.S. can’t do both. Indeed, the train derailment and the Russian crimes against humanity have neither nothing to do with each other nor any natural, logical reason to be seen as an either-or choice. It’s like saying a police force can’t put down street riots at the same time paramedics three towns away give oxygen to a heart-attack victim.
Anyway, Hawley, former President Donald Trump, and others are jettisoning Ronald Reagan’s understanding that giving weapons to those defending against our enemies is the best way to keep our enemies at bay. Against that trend, it takes a certain political courage for a potential Republican candidate to insist, correctly, otherwise.
Two former ambassadors to the U.N. who both intend to seek the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, Nikki Haley and John Bolton, also have supported Ukraine, as has potential candidate Tim Scott, senator from South Carolina. Still, Pence’s words were particularly forthright and perhaps electorally riskier for him because of the political dance he must do as Trump’s former wingman. On the occasion of the first anniversary of Vladimir Putin’s invasion, any sign of wavering by the former vice president might have helped the ill-advised isolationism to metastasize.
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Pence also spoke wisely by criticizing President Joe Biden’s counterproductively piecemeal provision of weapons systems to Ukraine: “History teaches that he who hesitates is lost.”
Because Pence is not hesitating to speak up, peace and freedom benefit.