James “I Didn’t Lie to Congress” Clapper, the disgraced former Director of National Intelligence (2010-2016), along with four co-authors, described yesterday in Time magazine how Ukraine’s striking out into Russia’s Kursk Region is modeled on George Washington’s crossing of the Delaware. They explain: “In just a mere 24 hours, Ukraine’s forces defeated two major lines of fortifications in the Kursk region that took Russia over two-and-a-half years and over $170 million to construct.” (That is, about 0.3% of the last installment the U.S. shelled out for Kiev.) “Leading Kremlin critic, financier William Browder called this triumph is a profound humiliation for Putin’s aura of invincibility weakening his image before the Russian people.” They then cite George Washington’s battles of Trenton and Princeton and his crossing of the Delaware as the bold gambles that convinced the French to send financial and military support.
Most importantly, the adventure proves that previous Western support has not been wasted, so that it helps to “quiet those supporters-in-name but detractors-in-reality who have begun to call for appeasement with Russia.… Zelenskyy’s bold actions in the last week have given the people of Ukraine and the world a renewed hope, like that of Washington traversing the Delaware or the U.S. Marines raising the flag over Iwo Jima after a hard-fought victory.”
