President Lincoln said, “You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.”

Our current president should take note. A recent NBC poll revealed that 7 in 10 Americans have low confidence in President Joe Biden’s ability to deal with Russia’s unprovoked assault on democratic Ukraine. Apparently, most Americans are not fooled by grand announcements, but lack of action, from the White House.

The U.S. recently authorized $13.6 billion for Ukraine, basically what taxpayers paid for one ship, the USS Gerald R. Ford. The United States spent $2.3 trillion to defend Afghanistan. It’s pretty easy to argue that Ukraine is far more important to our vital national interests than Afghanistan ever was.

Biden recently announced that 100,000 refugees would be admitted to the U.S. Again, sounds like a lot until you do the math. One hundred thousand is just 2.5% of the 4 million and growing number of Ukrainian refugees. The announcement was made with no new rules to expedite applications and a 9.5 million backlog of applications at Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Given our signature on the Budapest Memorandum and the U.N. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide, the Biden administration is failing to live up to its basic international and humanitarian commitments to Ukraine. U.S. policy to date implies that the Russians have the right to bomb civilians from sovereign Ukrainian airspace, but it is a provocation or escalation for the U.S. to defend that airspace.

Why doesn’t the administration follow the advice of retired four-star Gen. Barry McCaffery and send in M1 tanks? No U.S. military folks needed and the tanks would be a huge game-changer.

Americans in a bipartisan manner are justifiably disappointed in the administration’s response. Americans who care about Ukraine should help pressure Congress by contacting their congressmen.

Gerald Kincaid
Phippsburg