DeSantis errs in calling Putin’s barbarity a ‘territorial dispute’
Quin Hillyer
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Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) embarrassed himself this week by describing Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine as a “territorial dispute.”
It’s one thing to debate exactly how much assistance the United States should provide to Ukraine or to argue about what specific sorts of assistance are appropriate. What DeSantis said, though, in writing, wasn’t a valid debating point. It was just a cynical appeal to a loud segment of Republican voters.
CAMPUS TOTALITARIANS SHOULD BE STRICTLY PUNISHED
Ukraine is a sovereign nation, recognized as such by the rest of the world. Ukraine’s borders are Ukraine’s borders. At the instigation of Russia’s murderous dictator Vladimir Putin, Russian forces invaded those borders. Russia has forced more than 8 million Ukrainians not just from their homes but from their country, has destroyed life-sustaining infrastructure, has killed thousands of Ukrainian civilians and tens of thousands of Ukrainian military personnel, and has sacrificed perhaps twice as many of its own conscripted soldiers, all on behalf of Putin’s power play.
A dispute is a mere difference of opinion. An invasion is the waging of war to gain territory or riches that are not one’s own. To call the invasion of Ukraine a mere dispute is to indicate there is a moral equivalency between the two sides. There isn’t. One is the aggressor. The other is the aggrieved.
When the Soviet Union and Germany invaded Poland in 1939, that wasn’t a “territorial dispute.” When North Korea invaded South Korea in 1950, it wasn’t a territorial dispute. When Napoleon Bonaparte invaded Russia in 1812, it wasn’t a territorial dispute. Neither is what Putin has done.
Ronald Reagan taught us that words matter. Winston Churchill taught us that words matter. The Soviet Union was an evil empire. Nazism pushed perverted science. And Putin is a murderous thug, while Ukrainians have a right to defend their homeland — a homeland that no reasonable, decent human being would dispute is theirs.