By Jim
Geraghty
Monday,
February 20, 2023
President
Biden is in Kyiv, Ukraine, today. Good for him for accepting the small but undeniable risk of traveling
to a country currently being invaded by Russia to demonstrate U.S. support for
those beleaguered people. Our Mark
Wright observes that,
“Neither the U.S. nor Ukraine has total control of the airspace. Neither the
U.S. nor Ukraine could guarantee Biden’s security on the ground. The president
of the United States was inside the Russian WEZ — the weapons engagement zone —
the entire trip. For that Joe Biden should receive credit.”
The
president said his visit with President Volodymyr Zelensky will feature an
“extended discussion on our support for Ukraine. I will announce another
delivery of critical equipment, including artillery ammunition, anti-armor
systems, and air-surveillance radars to help protect the Ukrainian people from
aerial bombardments.”
The
headline above about needing ammunition is not just a reference to Zelensky’s
comment from the first days of the war. Ukraine is
trying to win the war without using too many artillery shells:
Ukrainian commanders are being forced to make “very tough decisions” on
the use of ammunition said DW correspondent Nick Connolly. “I’ve met commanders
of howitzers, of artillery pieces, who’ve told me that they don’t know how long
they can keep doing their job, if they will be forced to withdraw and move away
from positions and wait for more artillery,” Connolly said in Kyiv. “This is a
very real problem.”
But even if more ammunition were ordered today, it would take time for
it to arrive as the wait for large-caliber ammunition is currently 28 months.
“Orders placed today will only be delivered two and a half years later,” NATO
chief Stoltenberg has said, given that stockpiles are being depleted.
Two
and a half years! Recall,
as this
newsletter previously reported, that U.S. Special Operations troops could resume surveillance training
for Ukrainian forces as soon as 2024, and those U.S. M1A1 Abrams tanks are
scheduled to arrive by 2025. Good thing those artillery shells will arrive
before 2026.
I notice
that over the past month, mainstream-news opinion has recognized and
embraced my argument
that Biden keeps sending military aid in a piecemeal, ad hoc manner, frequently reversing earlier
decisions in an erratic, unpredictable approach.
I made
that argument back on January 12, after Biden had changed his mind on sending
Bradley fighting vehicles, but before he changed his mind on sending M1A1
Abrams tanks. (Note that Biden’s past decisions
on F-16 fighters and longer-range missile systems are now looking likely to be
reversed in the not-too-distant future.) I wrote: “Apparently sending these [Bradley
fighting vehicles] would have been escalatory . . . right up until the minute
it wasn’t escalatory. If you want to help these guys, then help these guys.
Stop doing it piecemeal. Stop sending arms over in dribs and drabs.”
A few
days after I wrote my assessment, Michael O’Hanlon of the Brookings
Institution declared in
the pages of the Washington Post that, “The time for incrementalism in
Ukraine is over. Send in the tanks.”
On
February 1, the Wall Street Journal editorial
board lamented that,
“The Biden Team hems and haws on every new weapon request for Ukraine before it
later comes around, and let’s hope the president changes again and offers more
military support that helps Ukraine immediately on the battlefield and after
the war ends.”
Foreign-policy
wonks Jamil Jaffer and John Poulson wrote in Newsweek that:
When our adversaries look at our approach to Ukraine, they don’t see
bold moves, they see hesitance, delay, and weakness at every turn. The sad
reality is that while there is no doubt that the weaponry we’ve supplied has
been critical to Ukraine’s battlefield success, had the White House and our
friends in Europe provided these weapons much earlier, we might well have
deterred the Russian invasion or, at a minimum, enabled Ukrainian forces to
actually win this war.
Over in
the New York Times this weekend, Nicholas
Kristof interviewed several retired generals who contend that, “It’s time for
President Biden to reassess and give Ukraine what it needs to end this war and
save Ukrainian and Russian lives alike.” The Washington
Post editorial board warns that, “As Russia mobilizes hundreds of thousands of
recruits in support of a massive new offensive and shifts its economy to an
all-out wartime footing, the West’s piecemeal, reactive, only-what’s-essential-to-avoid-disaster
approach has become a prescription for stalemate.”
Most of
the above voices are really quick to emphasize that they think Biden is doing a
terrific job . . . and then they point out that our past and current
decision-making is a formula for a long, slow Ukrainian defeat. That seems at
least a little contradictory.
In
the middle of last
year, CNN characterized Joe Biden as “famously indecisive,” a trait that was mysteriously
missing from most coverage of Biden during the 2020 presidential campaign.
Some of us
noticed. Back in
2020, our Kyle Smith noted that:
The presidency is a job that has proven tricky for the most decisive men
to handle. Should he become president, Biden may prove the least decisive man
ever to hold that office. Which means America may face a leadership vacuum as
it waits for President Zelig to guess what people think he should do.
President
Biden wants to be perceived as Winston Churchill, but it is very hard to
cultivate a Churchillian image when you’re habitually indecisive.
How
Fetterman’s Absence Will Affect His Senate Committees
A senior
aide to Pennsylvania senator John Fetterman told NBC News correspondent Dasha
Burns on Friday that
the senator will likely be in inpatient care — meaning, in the hospital — for
clinical depression for “a few weeks.” Another aide told
Siobhan Hughes of the Wall Street Journal that, “The hospital stay could
range from weeks to more than a month, but likely less than two months.”
While
Fetterman is out, the U.S. Senate will still be controlled by the Democratic
Party, with a majority of 50 senators to 49 Republican senators.
(Pennsylvania’s other Democratic senator, Bob Casey, should be “back to a
normal schedule after a period of rest and recovery” after surgery
for prostate cancer last week.)
However,
Fetterman’s absence will have real consequences for the committees he serves
on, as the
Bipartisan Policy Center lays out:
Most Senate committees, including Sen. Fetterman’s, are currently
divided with a one-seat majority for Democrats. Consequently, those committees
will be divided evenly between the parties in his absence. Proxy voting remains available in
committees, but may not be as useful as Democrats might hope. . . .
If these committees consider a measure or nomination while Sen.
Fetterman is absent and the vote ties along party lines, his proxy vote cannot
be the deciding one to report the matter to the full Senate. Without bipartisan
agreement, legislation and nominations could be stalled in these three
committees, potentially including President Biden’s replacement for Lael
Brainard on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, which is under the
jurisdiction of the Banking Committee.
It is
likely that on less controversial matters, Fetterman’s absence will be moot, or
Republican senators will agree to “pair” with Fetterman and have one GOP
senator vote “present” to ensure the measure or nomination is approved. But on
the higher-stakes bills and nominations, a unified Republican opposition will
have a de facto veto until Fetterman returns.
This
week, the Senate is in its “state work period,” which means the chamber is not
in session. The Senate is tentatively scheduled to be back in session February
27, with the next extended break scheduled for March 10 to 13. The Senate is
off the first two weeks of April for Easter and Passover.
Recent
days have brought a curious rewriting of the history of the
past year. Over
in The Atlantic, Jennifer Senior writes, “Fetterman has
basically been forced to contend with the effects of a severe brain trauma
while working an absurdly demanding job in one of the most polarized and toxic
political climates the country has ever known.”
“Forced”
by whom?
Fetterman
and his campaign did not disclose his stroke for two days, and his initial
statement declared that, “I’m well on my way to a full recovery.” Five hours
before the polls closed on primary day, Fetterman’s campaign issued a statement
that he was undergoing surgery. On primary night, his wife Gisele characterized
her husband’s heath problem as “a little hiccup.” But about three weeks after
the stroke, Fetterman characterized the stroke as life-threatening, declaring, “I
almost died.” It
was only when the primary was completed that Fetterman’s campaign released a
statement from his doctor declaring “while afib (atrial fibrillation) was the cause of his
stroke, he also has a condition called cardiomyopathy,” which is a disease of the
heart muscle that
makes it harder for the heart to pump blood to the rest of the body and can
lead to heart failure.
From the
beginning, the campaign was not honest with the public about the severity of
the stroke or the health issues that led to it, and it increasingly appears
that no one around Fetterman was being honest with themselves about the
difficulty of his recovery and amount of time it would take him to recover. The
entire time, Democrats could have considered other options to run for Senate.
If either of Fetterman’s primary rivals — Representative Conor Lamb or state
representative Malcolm Kenyatta — were the nominee, they would probably have polled
about the same — perhaps better without a serious health issue hanging over
their campaigns — and they would vote the same way as Fetterman on roughly 99
percent of votes in the Senate. Fetterman beat Mehmet Oz by 263,752 votes in
the Senate race. The contention that only Fetterman could have won that Senate
race for Democrats was not persuasive at the time and looks even less
persuasive in retrospect.
Fetterman’s
primary-care physician saying in a
medical update in October that Fetterman “has no work restrictions and can work full duty in
public office” will undermine public faith in doctors’ notes. About a week
later, the voters saw Fetterman struggling to speak at times during the
senatorial debate.
Earlier
this month, the New York Times offered a report about
Fetterman that demonstrated the senator was not, as he said a half-year
earlier, “well on his way to a full recovery” and that was unnervingly
prophetic about the mental-health issues connected to the stroke:
The stroke — after which he had a pacemaker and defibrillator implanted
— also took a less apparent but very real psychological toll on Mr. Fetterman.
It has been less than a year since the stroke transformed him from someone with
a large stature that suggested machismo — a central part of his political
identity — into a physically altered version of himself, and he is frustrated
at times that he is not yet back to the man he once was. He has had to come to
terms with the fact that he may have set himself back permanently by
not taking the recommended amount of rest during the campaign. And he
continues to push himself in ways that people close to him worry are
detrimental. [Emphasis added.]
“He may
have set himself back permanently by not taking the recommended amount of rest
during the campaign.” Did he fully understand that when he decided to continue
his campaign? Did his family fully understand that? How much is a U.S. Senate
seat worth? Is it worth “permanent setbacks” to your health for the rest of
your days?
The
evidence before us suggests that continuing to run for Senate was not in
Fetterman’s best long-term interests.
If
Fetterman had announced after his stroke in May 2022 that, “This stroke was
life-threatening and my recovery will take a considerable amount of time, and I
cannot put my desire to serve in the Senate ahead of my health and ability to
be around for my family,” would anyone have blamed him? Would anyone who matters
have called him a quitter or questioned his toughness? He didn’t owe
anyone anything.
And yet,
stating the obvious, common-sense conclusion that a man who just suffered a
severe, life-threatening stroke might not be best served by continuing to run for
Senate was denounced as
“ableist” during last year’s campaign. Democrats pride themselves on their
compassion and empathy, but it is more than fair to ask why their allegedly
compassionate and empathetic choice was to expect Fetterman to continue his
campaign.
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