President Trump is to be commended for pledging to support whatever actions Israel chooses to take against Hamas should Hamas fail to return more hostages. But his approach to ending the war in Ukraine as he currently describes it reflects both a betrayal of Ukraine itself, as well as a betrayal of American values. He must change his approach if he is to avoid widespread condemnation.
Much of what Trump has proposed to do in the Middle East—especially his proposal to relocate the Palestinians currently in Gaza to other Arab nations and convert Gaza into some sort of luxury resort—seems wildly impractical, unrealistic, and unlikely to garner any degree of support from anyone other than his closest loyalists. But in pledging to give Israel a free hand in defeating Hamas should it fail to return all its hostages, Trump is showing a commendably clear-eyed recognition of Hamas’s profound evil in launching its war, murdering 1200 innocent victims on 10/7/23, raping scores, if not hundreds, of women, and spiriting away 250 hostages, many of whom have died in captivity. Nothing better illustrates Hamas’s depravity than its staged “funeral procession,” in which armed men dressed and masked in black paraded the black caskets containing the bodies of four hostages, including two infants in tinier coffins, murdered along with their young mother. No wonder the Hamas terrorists chose to mask themselves! To call them animals is an insult to real animals. To call them monsters is an insult to every giant, cyclops or hydra in Greek mythology, not to mention Frankenstein’s creature.
Of course, it has been–and will continue to be—argued, that Israel, too, has on its hands the blood of innocents. But it must be remembered that Hamas started the war, and the Hamas terrorists chose to hide among the Palestinians of Gaza, using them as human shields. Had there been no war, there would have been no casualties on either side, and had the Palestinian people risen up against Hamas, denied Hamas the use of their buildings as hiding places and their own bodies as shields, then casualties would have been much fewer. All the blood that’s been shed is really on the hands of Hamas, not Israel. Trump understands that and is acting commendably and accordingly.
But the same cannot be said for Trump’s treatment of Ukraine and its heroic President Zelensky. President Biden could be faulted for sending Ukraine too few weapons, with too many conditions attached to their usage. But if Biden failed to give Zelensky enough aid to achieve a Ukrainian victory, he at least supplied enough aid to help stave off a Ukrainian defeat.
And Trump is now doing far worse. To accuse Zelensky of being a dictator who started the war is an incomprehensible destruction of the facts. It is Putin, not Zelensky, who’s the dictator. It is Putin, not Zelensky, waging a murderous war. Zelensky’s only “crime” is, when faced with an unprovoked invasion, to have fought back. How anyone could possibly think otherwise is beyond belief or understanding.
Moreover, the first round of talks, currently being conducted in Saudi Arabia, exclude not only Zelensky himself but all European leaders who gave him their countries’ support. The exclusion of Zelensky brings to mind the exclusion of Czechoslovakian representatives from the Munich Talks of 1938 wherein the leaders of the governments of Britain, France, and Italy, meeting with Hitler, agreed to the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia for the benefit of Nazi Germany. And the exclusion of Zelensky’s and our European allies undermines the trans-Atlantic alliance by which the United States and Western Europe had preserved the peace for most of the post-World War 2 era.
It would, of course, be unfair to pass final judgment on Trump’s (mis)handling of attempts to end Putin’s (not Zelensky’s) war. And a truly fair ending may be impossible to negotiate anyway. After all, a truly fair ending would restore to Ukraine all the land Moscow has seized since 2014, provide Russian-paid reparations for Ukraine’s rebuilding, and establish war crimes tribunals for the punishment of Putin and other Russian leaders for the atrocities they’ve committed. It is realistic to assume that the chances of Zelensky coming close to achieving those goals is zero.
But if Trump wants to establish a viable peace, he must do much better than is currently the case. He must, for example, reverse his position on Zelensky’s alleged culpability and make the possibility of NATO membership for Ukraine a bargaining point. He must assure both Putin and our NATO allies that the United States will participate fully in the defense of the Baltic states, the nations of Eastern Europe, and any other NATO country that Putin may attack in his drive to reconstitute a new Russian Empire. And he must simultaneously increase our arms shipments to Ukraine while freeing Ukraine of the Biden-imposed limits on their use. After all, should Mad Vlad Putin refuse to accede to peaceful efforts to end the war on fair and equitable terms, Zelensky must be empowered to pursue the same course of action which we Americans would demand from our president and for ourselves should we be invaded or otherwise attacked: The waging defensive war to whatever extent is necessary to defeat the enemy and win the peace.
Malcolm L. Cross has lived in Stephenville since 1987 and taught politics and government at Tarleton for 36 years, retiring in 2023. His political and civic activities include service on the Stephenville City Council (2000-2014) and on the Erath County Republican Executive Committee (1990-2024). He was Mayor pro-tem of Stephenville from 2008 to 2014. He has served on the Board of Directors of the Stephenville
Economic Development Authority since 2018 and as chair of the Erath County Appraisal District’s Appraisal Review Board since 2015. He is also a member of the Stephenville Rotary Club, the Board of Vestry of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, and the Executive Committee of the Boy Scouts’ Pecan Valley District. Views expressed in this column are his and do not reflect those of The Flash as a whole.
Malcolm, If only you were our Secretary of State. Trump makes PM Neville Chamberlain look like a war hawk when it comes to Europe. I sincerely that Trump knows something that we do not. FDR also messed up when he did not confront Stalin over the land grab at the end of WW2. We keep on kicking Russia down the road and it is going to bite the entire world sooner or later. Gary Key