As Americans, we wonder that if faced with a threat as is Ukraine, would we rally as one, or remain splintered.
Last week, Kevin McCarthy, the Republican House minority leader, said Putin was not to blame for the uptick in gas prices, but President Joe Biden.
“These are not Putin gas prices. They are President Biden gas prices,” he tweeted.
No matter where you are — Australia, Europe, South America, Asia, Canada, the United States — the price of gas has risen ever since Putin declared war on Ukraine. That’s what happens when one of the world’s largest producers of crude oil is facing punishing sanctions because it’s got a tyrant at the helm.
The late Sen. John McCain famously described Russia as “a gas can masquerading as a country.”
Other countries seem to recognize Putin for the tyrant he is. The United States? Not categorically.
Pentagon and Ministry of Defense officials fear that Putin is on the verge of ordering the release of chemical and biological weapons in Ukraine due to his failed efforts to take the country quickly.
U.S. suspicions are grounded in the recent cycle of Russian propaganda that accuses the United States of secretly developing biological weapons in Ukrainian laboratories.
Russia used the same “false flag” tactic in Syria when the Russian-backed regime of Bashar al-Assad employed nerve agents to kill his own people over the course of its civil war that began in 2011.
The truth is that the United States has no chemical or biological facilities inside Ukraine, but it does help safeguard Ukraine’s non-military biological laboratories dedicated to research pathogens — much like the National Bio and Agro-defense Facility being constructed at K-State.
Their work is not secret. And their goal is not to destroy life but to reduce the likelihood of deadly outbreaks, whether natural or manmade.
But U.S. detractors are not to be deterred.
China has jumped on board Russia’s propaganda bandwagon as well as U.S. conspiracy theory groups like QAnon, as well as Fox News host Tucker Carlson, Donald Trump’s former adviser Steve Bannon, and other far-right groups.
Who needs Putin to undermine democracy when Americans are willing to do his work?
UKRAINIANS are paying with their lives to have even just a fraction of what we have. Yes, Ukraine is poor. Yes, it is relatively undeveloped compared to other European cities. And yes, it fights corruption.
But when tested, Ukrainians have pulled together to preserve their country. Would we do as much? Or would we be conflicted as to what it means to be American?
