Dick Hubert's Worldview: Will we be silently watching as Russia rampages through a weakened Ukraine?

The headlines for news stories out of Ukraine as I write this column are downright terrifying—and I use that word advisedly.

“Dwindling Ammunition Stocks Pose Grave Threat to Ukraine,” says the New York Times.

The Washington Post elaborates in greater detail:

“As the war in Ukraine worsens and Russia advances on battlefield, Zelensky faces terrible options.

Short of soldiers, weapons and ammunition, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has no way out of a worsening war — unable to advance militarily and unwilling to surrender occupied territory to Russia.”

And whose fault is it that Ukraine doesn’t have the ammunition and weapons to push back the oncoming Russian onslaught?

For sure the members of NATO and the European Union can’t be counted on. Their factories and weapons reserves aren’t adequate to fully supply Ukraine, let alone fulfill their NATO obligations.

But those of you who have been paying the slightest attention to news developments in this country know the core answer: the Republicans in the House of Representatives, their Speaker Mike Johnson, and their soon-to-be-named Presidential nominee, Donald J. Trump.

The Democrats in the House have signaled to Johnson that if he brings the Ukraine military assistance funding bill (already approved by the Senate and with an anxious President Joe Biden waiting to sign it), they’ll vote to keep him as Speaker—which they can do with a tiny number of pro-Ukraine Republican stalwarts.

The Republicans, of course, at least those holding office with little stomach to risk their political careers, are terrified of crossing Trump—who never forgets perceived enemies, and vows retribution to all if elected.

It’s moments like these that make me feel personally helpless.

I don’t want to see Ukraine and its fledgling democracy defeated by a rampaging Putinist Russia.

I don’t want to see NATO nations in fear of Russian invasion (think Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Poland) undermined by the political weakness of what I long believed to be the world’s #1 superpower and keeper of world peace (as best it could), the United States.

I don’t want to see Iran and North Korea emboldened to make real trouble elsewhere in the world.

I don’t want to see China thinking it now has a clear path to destroying democracy in Taiwan.

But here we are.

I don’t expect the few Trumpists in our readership to lift a finger to plead with their leader.

Nor do I expect them to compare the content of their letters to the editor efforts with the latest broadsides from the Russian, Iranian, North Korean, and Chinese fake accounts in their social media, or even in Trump’s speeches.

I do expect them, if Trump is elected, to be sharing my name (and those who find him unfit to be anywhere near the Oval Office) with the Trump appointees in a second Trump administration whose job it will be to impose Trump’s “retribution.”

On that enemies list, I’m sure, will be Maureen Dowd of the New York Times, whose column this past Sunday might well get Trump’s attention.

She wrote in part:

“Apocalyptic vibes are stirred by Trump’s violent rhetoric and talk of blood baths.

If he’s not elected, he bellowed in Ohio, there will be a blood bath in the auto industry. At his Michigan rally on Tuesday, he said there would be a blood bath at the border, speaking from a podium with a banner reading, ‘Stop Biden’s border blood bath.’ He has warned that, without him in the Oval, there will be an ‘Oppenheimer’-like doomsday; we will lose World War III and America will be devastated by ‘weapons, the likes of which nobody has ever seen before.’

‘And the only thing standing between you and its obliteration is me,’ Trump has said.

An unspoken Trump threat is that there will be a blood bath again in Washington, like Jan. 6, if he doesn’t win.

That is why he calls the criminals who stormed the Capitol ‘hostages’ and ‘unbelievable patriots.’ He starts some rallies with a dystopian remix of the national anthem, sung by the ‘J6 Prison Choir,’ and his own reciting of the Pledge of Allegiance.”

Dowd does not mention in her column one of the Trump outrages that made me sick to my stomach.

Perhaps you saw it on social media, where he shared a doctored photo allegedly showing President Biden tied up in the back of a pickup truck.

I credit here the Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin who saw an interview on CNN which allowed her to pointedly ask why only former Republicans could speak up about Trump.

“This is one of those things where we can’t move past the headline: Donald Trump shared an image of the president of the United States tied in the back of a pickup truck, bound and gagged,’ retired Republican congressman Joe Walsh said on CNN. ‘I mean, stop there. ... This is way beyond politics. This is an incitement to violence.’ Now, that’s the framework for discussing Trump’s serial outrages.”

We can’t discuss those outrages enough. The election is but some eight months away, and we can’t count on the courts to stop Trump. It’s up to us. Every one of us. Each in our own way. But stop him we must. Stop him with the vote. In every precinct in America. With our ballots. Our dollars. Our phone calls to friends and relatives. Our social media posts. Our letters to the editor.

Silence is NOT an option.

Dick Hubert, a retired television news producer-writer-reporter living in Rye Brook, has been honored with the Peabody Award, the DuPont Columbia Award and the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Journalism Award.

Editor’s Note: This column, written by Dick Hubert, represents his opinion and not that of this newspaper.