The standard of American patriotism leads to clear position on war in Ukraine

That wild Republican wobble we all witnessed late last month — where, in the buildup to war, party leaders raced toward, then away from, the “very savvy” “genius” Vladimir Putin — says less about our understanding of geopolitics than it does our own moral disintegration.

Defense and foreign policy used to be a GOP strong suit. And one thing you could always say, through successes (the breakup of the Soviet Union) and failures (Iraq, Afghanistan), their convictions were their convictions. Their doctrine wasn’t always right, but it was consistent and coherent.

Contrast that with Ukraine, where the knee-jerk reaction of Donald Trump, Tucker Carlson and their supporting cast of ragamuffins was to defend the despot and war criminal Vladimir Putin.

Ironically, this group fantasizes daily that The People will one day take up their God-given right to arms and overthrow tyranny. So here was their one big chance to watch their dreams play out on a world stage — but instead of backing The People, they cheered on the tyrant. My goodness.

Of course, when they saw which way the political winds were blowing both at home and abroad, they couldn’t slather themselves in blue and yellow body paint fast enough.

Political flip-flops like this are part of the game when you’re talking about food stamps or cotton subsidies. But not on matters of right and wrong. Not where one side is trying to defend itself from an unprovoked attack on its sovereignty by a vicious and morally bereft enemy that fires shells into schools, hospitals and apartment buildings, sending a million innocent people fleeing with nothing more than they can carry in a couple of totes, knowing not when or if they will see their homes or loved ones again.

Yet for some on the right, this was a tough call.

Had things gone just a little bit differently — had Putin not botched the opening days of the war, it is very easy to envision a right-wing tipping point where Putin would have been hailed as a hero, amid calls of “Why can’t we have a decisive leader like that?”

It’s both appalling and embarrassing that a number of Americans, when considering Russia and Ukraine, weren’t able to figure out a simple moral problem on their own without being told the answer by the rest of the world.

The easy explanation of how we arrived here is that Trump needed Putin in 2016, and may need him again in 2024. Republicans are afraid of offending Trump and Trump is afraid of offending Putin.

But it’s more than that. Even without that background, a crisis overseas was seen not as a chance to unite in the name of good, it was seen as an opportunity for a domestic political attack.

In a statement ostensibly to condemn the Russians, Rep. Elise Stefanik couldn’t even be respectful to the interests of her own country for 30 seconds. It was Joe Biden who was “weak,” “feckless,” “unfit,” “abysmally failed on every metric” and “catastrophic.”

It wasn’t until the next to last paragraph of her statement that she even thought to mention Putin by name.

The dark place you have to come from — where you can condemn a barbaric world leader only by couching it in a way that makes your own leader look worse — had until this century been an unknown trick.

And these are the people who call themselves patriots.

TV political personality Tucker Carlson went so far as to ask the question out loud: Why should it be our “patriotic duty” to hate Vladimir Putin: “It might be worth asking yourself … why do I hate Putin so much?”

Here’s why: American patriotism protects the rights of the minority, especially when that minority is in danger of being trampled by a savage and more powerful majority. American patriotism supports the rights of all people to be free, to live, love, learn and choose. It hates those who violently interrupt those hopes and dreams.

American patriots believe in kindness and compassion. American patriotism hates inequality and selfishness that elevates the few on the backs of the many. American patriotism despises those who get ahead by cheating, whether in the Olympics or in the ballot boxes of foreign nations.

And most important, American patriots hate those who start a war for no legitimate reason, who murder innocents and drive them from their homes and families, depriving them of freedom from want and fear. It hates those that add to the world’s sum total of anguish, misery and despair. It hates those who would use a world stage to threaten nuclear war and the devastation of civilization as we know it in the name of puffing up their own egos. Time was, every American knew this answer by heart. But not now.

Tim Rowland is a Herald-Mail columnist.

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Mail: Some Americans shared surprising views of Ukraine and Russia