Trey Gowdy: When do we get involved in Russia-Ukraine war?
It's good to avoid war, but not when your opponent thinks you'll do anything to avoid it.
When do we get involved, and when do we not get involved? And what is legitimate to expect of the world's great superpower?
Expectations are appropriately high when you're the most powerful country on Earth, and expectations are appropriately high when you refer to yourself as "the shining city on a hill." And that's what we refer to ourselves as – the shining city on a hill. And expectations are high when you refer to yourself as exceptional, which we do – when you refer to yourself as the last best hope for humankind, which we do.
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Expectations are appropriately high when you refer to yourself as history's greatest experiment in self-governance, which we do. So, yeah, expectations of America are high.
And if we're self-governed, if we really are "We the People," which we purport to be, then we should set our own expectations. We should decide what we stand for, what we want to be known for, and in this case, how much we will take.
We've seen a country invade a neighboring country without just cause – without any cause, much less just cause. We've seen the killing of women and children. We've seen escape routes being bombed.
Think about that for a second. I mean, the words kind of roll off your tongue, but think about that for a second. You're bombing escape routes. These are people trying to leave. They're not fighting you. They're trying to leave. Then you bomb the escape routes. We sit there while dictators say you're free to leave Ukraine, but only if you come in this direction. You can go east towards Russia; you just can't go west.
It's been a week now, and I know we have short memories, but nuclear disaster was narrowly avoided. Then, fast-forward a week, journalists are killed. It looks like civilians are not just being killed, but they're being targeted.
And so we see all of this, and our response has been to impose sanctions to stop buying oil and gas from one brutal dictator while we're negotiating to buy oil and gas from other brutal dictators. And we talked about seizing the yachts of Russian billionaires who can go afford to buy new ones. We've talked about international norms and ostracizing Russia from the world community, like that bothers them. And we've imposed sanctions on Russia as it relates to banking and commerce and finance.
And yet we're told we need Russia at the bargaining table in another part of the world when it comes to Iran, and we really don't have any response. We have laryngitis when China comes up. China shared our intelligence with Russia. China is doing nothing to stop this conflict in Ukraine, and we have laryngitis when it comes to that country.
We have laryngitis when China comes up.
So that's the list of things we've done, which is surpassed by the list of things we say we will not do.
No troops. Won't impose a no-fly zone. Can't use our planes, can't use us to get our planes to Ukraine. Not sure about offensive weapons. And we're always told the same thing: We can't risk escalation. We don't want to engage in acts of war. We don't want to trigger a broader conflict.
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., introduces Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to speak to the U.S. Congress by video at the Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, March 16, 2022. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, Pool) (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, Pool)
And I'm with you. It's good to avoid war. It's great to avoid war. I have purposely had members of Congress on our TV show who served because they did serve. I want to hear from the people, many of whom wear the marks of war permanently. I had Brian Mast on the show – permanent marks of war. Dan Crenshaw – permanent marks of war. I've had Tommy Cotton and Tulsi Gabbard, who still serves. Mike Gallagher, Joni Ernst, Lindsey Graham, who retired from the Air Force a couple of years ago. Like them or don't like them, but they wore the uniform, and they've earned the right, in my opinion, to give us their opinion.
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And the consensus is: it's good to avoid war. It is not good when your opponent believes you will do anything in the world to avoid war.
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This article is adapted from Trey Gowdy's commentary on "The Trey Gowdy Podcast" on Fox News Audio from March 15, 2022.