Dear Editor,

I wonder how many other very proud Americans are watching the events in Ukraine, under the courageous and wise leadership of Ukrainian President Zelensky, with shame and embarrassment that America, with a population of almost 350 million, is able only to generate top leadership of the likes of the pandering, feckless Biden, and the corrupt and incompetent Trump.
But even any honest Trump haters and Biden supporters have to admit that it is Biden, now the duly elected U.S. president, responsible as the purported commander-in-chief and leader of the free world. His “leadership” in the Ukraine crisis has been embarrassingly appalling.
Biden hides behind the fig leaf of alleged diplomacy and feigned caution, but the reality is that his failure to facilitate strong sanctions immediately as Putin assembled troops along the entire Ukrainian border, and his failure to facilitate the no-fly zone, fighter jets and sophisticated weapons Zelensky has requested from the beginning and even now as Ukraine is leveled, has contributed to nothing less than the sustained, prolonged destruction of Ukraine and its people – empowering Putin for future attacks on democracies.
Biden has no plan to repel Putin from Ukraine. To the contrary, Biden enabled Putin from the start, admitting that Biden’s fear of “escalation” by Putin caused Biden to cower and fail to act decisively to provide the support requested by Zelensky. Instead, we see a series of regular meetings, meager sanctions and expressions of “outrage” and “condolence” by Biden and the EU and NATO, but no real courageous and strategic plan to address Putin.
Putin has escalated and will continue. Ukraine is reduced to rubble, and its innocent citizens murdered. Of course, the limited sanctions to date have had some economic impact on Putin, but Russians are not Americans, and their wherewithal will not suffer in the absence of McDonald’s and Starbucks. Putin’s popularity at home is higher now than ever before.
Of course, American hotels and other businesses are still generating revenue in Russia for greedy American entrepreneurs, and Germans can still enjoy cheaper home heating natural gas from Russia.
Some sacrifices are too great if one’s comfort and profit must be sacrificed. Biden shrinks from the Putin references to nukes, but Putin’s threats are the uttering of a bully. He knows that his use of a nuke will be met with a Western retaliatory nuclear barrage over his Moscow estate.
It is too bad the leadership of men and women like Churchill, JFK and Golda Meir is missing and gone. We now have only the lip service of lesser men and women.
Is all this “local” news relevant to Clarkston?
Yes, it is, if you truly value freedom, strength and democracy as you claim as you champion the relative small but important causes we all see portrayed and argued in local media.

Sincerely,
Mike Fetzer
Clarkston