Joe Kent’s letter to the editor regarding the U.S. support of Ukraine’s war with Russia is so blatantly full of false statements and characteristics that he is proving himself to be unsuitable for election to the House of Representatives.
In my last assignment in the U.S. Air Force-Air National Guard, I served as the ANG special assistant to the commander United States Air Forces Europe (USAFE) from 1993 to 1996. USAFE is the air component of the European Command (EUCOM) supporting NATO. At that time, EUCOM’s area of responsibility encompassed all of Western, Central and Eastern Europe, plus all of Africa except for the Horn of Africa in the east of the continent. Prior to this assignment, I conducted a five-year study for my Air War College course and wrote my assignment paper on Soviet-Warsaw Pact strategic war strategy and NATO counterstrategy. Since that tour, I have kept current on the major military and political issues affecting the European region.
Mr. Kent appears to have no comprehension of Vladimir Putin’s background as a former KGB director in Berlin, Germany, and then as the first director of Russia’s notorious Foreign Secret Service. It also appears incredulous that Mr. Kent seems unaware of Putin’s often-stated aspirations to reestablish the boundaries of the defunct Soviet empire as the neo-Russian empire. Putin is determined by any means necessary including brutal and inhumane force against innocent Ukrainian civilians, weaponizing Russia’s oil and natural gas resources, and attacking Ukraine’s grain resources that are vital to Europe and especially to Africa to prosecute that objective.
The geopolitical and NATO security issues within Europe are complicated and require America’s leadership to guide them. We benefit by having a massive influence on a myriad of global issues, including but not limited to favorable trade agreements and mutual defense partnerships. Mr. Kent is delusional if he believes that Vladimir Putin will ever negotiate a cease-fire agreement with NATO, the US and Ukraine. His view of the world is so myopic that he lacks the most basic strategic intellect necessary for a congressman to ensure America’s national security interests. He doesn’t even realize that with NATO’s direct assistance, Ukraine is defeating many of Russia’s active and reserve forces, as well as most of its elite forces. They have also eliminated most of Russia’s premier military leaders, generals and colonels, and are turning more and more of the civilian population against Putin, himself. Less than 5% of our defense budget is being committed to the task of restricting Russia’s ability to commit hegemony (that’s Russian hegemony, not U.S. hegemony) throughout the globe. Even with China’s limited and qualified assistance, the investment is seriously destabilizing Western civilization’s most adversarial protagonist with its inept leadership and faltering military capabilities.
Mr. Kent’s assertion that Ukraine has historically three times invaded Russia is a total fabrication. Prior to gaining its independence from the Soviet Union and Russia, Ukraine was one of its most trusted satellites. Including Russia, it was one of the four countries where the Soviet Union felt secure enough to station nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missiles. Russia thought so much of Ukraine that in 1956 it gave the Crimean Peninsula to Ukraine as a gift and in recognition of the peninsula’s geographical attachment to the country’s land mass. The hundreds of thousands of casualties Mr. Kent mentioned are the direct result of a malevolent Vladimir Putin’s illegal invasion of the country. His letter of support for Putin couldn’t have been more supportive of this murderous thug if it had been penned from the Kremlin.
David Ward
Yacolt
Note: Prior to his assignment to USAFE, Major General (Ret.) David (DEB) Ward was the State Commander of the Oregon Air National Guard and before that the Commander of the 142nd Fighter Wing at the Portland Air Base.
