Is Biden realistic or a coward?

I was disappointed that the US has not allowed the sale of jets to Ukraine, but I am willing to concede that some folks in the State and Defense Department might know more than me and might be right about the current decision. As for courage or cowardice, that applies to the front line soldiers and marines. Us armchair generals have no claim on courage.

During World War II (when the US was neutral), American firms made plans for the British, and then transported them to the Canadian border, and British (which back then included Canadian) workers walked them over the border. If they had been flown from the US to British controlled territory it would have been an act of war, and the US was trying to be neutral. This might be a problem now since even if the planes could be driven (using their wheels, not flying) over the border, the moment the entered Ukraine they could be attacked.

At this point, Putin is failing miserably at his objectives, and might feel the only way to salvage the situation is to use nuclear weapons. The question is whether Biden (and the American people) would be willing to fight a nuclear war, with fatalities perhaps in the billions, in response to Russia blowing up Warsaw or Bucharest or Vilna. As it is, most Democrats believe that America’s days of greatness lay in the past, and remembering Vietnam and more recently Afghanistan, don’t believe there is any will of the American people to go to war. Trump’s views are not all that different that Biden’s, but whereas Trump is challenged within his party by the “old fashioned” Republicans of the Reaganesque style, the “Progressive” Democrats are super-doves and Biden feels he can’t risk antagonizing them.

Huju speaks to the reality that we don’t know enough to question the judgement of the intelligence and defense experts who appear fairly certain that the marginal benefits of providing these planes to the Ukrainians (who actually have aircraft of their own they’ve kept grounded) is more than offset by the risk of expanding the conflict to Poland and other Eastern European states providing the MIG 29s. Candidly, I’m amazed that Putin has shown a degree of “restraint” thusfar in the face of incredible resistance from the Ukrainians and substantial losses of Russian life. What I don’t like, however, is the apparent lack of coordination on this issue across the Administration and with our allies.