Gutfeld: Sanctions failed to bring Putin to his knees
Greg Gutfeld says the world is in a precarious place with Ukraine and reacts to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's interview with 60 Minutes.
So Ukrainian President Zelenskyy was on "60 Minutes" last night. I wonder: In speaking to NATO, did he call them weak?
"60 MINUTES" HOST: In speaking to NATO, you called them weak. In speaking to the U.N. Security Council, you said if you can't help, you shouldn't exist. Not very diplomatic of you. I wonder why you feel the need to speak so bluntly.
ZELENSKYY: When you're working at diplomacy, there are no results. All of this is very bureaucratic. That's why the way I am talking to them is absolutely justifiable. I don't have any more lives to give. I don't have any more emotions. I'm no longer interested in their diplomacy that leads to the destruction of my country.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. (Photo by Ukrainian Presidency / Handout/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
Well, there you go. Now, when COVID first broke out, Donald Trump used the war metaphor. We're fighting a disease, but it's no different than war.
This was to get America to see that we're in this thing together, as if it were possible to share a foxhole with Nancy Pelosi and Rashida Tlaib.
And just like in war, truth was the first casualty. The second was your relatives in blue state nursing homes.
ZELENSKYY CLAIMS ‘TENS OF THOUSANDS’ KILLED BY RUSSIAN MILITARY IN MARIUPOL
So now it seems we can use COVID as an analogy for war. Do we want the illness to spread? A question someone should have asked the people who created CNN+.
But also, do we want a war to turn into a World War? Do the wrong thing and word will spread faster than that rash I keep getting when I don't wipe down my old thigh master?
Well, that was graphic.
But as we saw in COVID, tactics change the incoming data, and data then changes future tactics. Are we interpreting the data correctly? Is the data reliable?
Coronavirus vaccine. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh) (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)
The masks work, or they don't. That's like the debate over what helps the Ukrainians: the lockdowns or the larger commitment. It's about sacrifice.
Do we send jets or do we send boots on the ground? Social distancing? That sounds like drones. They make contact so you don't have to.
But ultimately, what do we want to do versus what do we decide to do? Is it about speeding up the end of the war, or winning this war outright?
As an amateur historian, meaning I only read the funny parts of Kilmeade's books — and there aren't any — for the sake of lives loss, is it better to end war fast, given the fear that as wars go on, they go on and they go on?
The longer they last, the less likely they end. See Afghanistan: Even when you win, you lose. The fog of war doesn't help.
Now, looking at how the Ukrainians with our help have stymied Russia, the instinct is to keep going and go for the kill to go from ending to winning.
So what are we willing to risk? How do we define winning? Russia is losing in various ways. Putin is viewed globally as despicable, and this is with his shirt on.
Ukrainians are seen as heroic, and the losses incurred by the Russians are no longer small. You can see they're changing their course.
Maybe they're going to be there for good, occupying like a new strain of COVID. And then what? Here's the problem with us: It's not like we can wait to see how it's going, because pretty soon, we'll be on to something else.
The media can have the collective attention span of a gnat on bath salts, and I include myself in that.
But also, we can't really tell who's winning. Is it the patient or is it the disease?
Ukrainians are worthy of support, given their bravery. They are the victims. You can argue about the past and even our own culpability.
But Russia did invade, after all. But does more support extend the war, or does it help end it? That's been the question since the beginning.
The sanctions failed to bring Putin to his knees. The ruble is rebounding. Meanwhile, the cost of sanctions is going to put the poorest at risk.
This is sounding more like COVID all the time.
Still, it makes sense to punish Putin. But is it time to really engage the Russian people? Do we load up the Ukrainians with the latest tech? We probably are. Maybe it's time to give them more.
Russian President Vladimir Putin. (Yuri Kochetkov/Pool Photo via AP) (Yuri Kochetkov/Pool Photo via AP)
But that could always lead to more involvement, more commitment, and then that leads to who knows what.
So can you handle a war with inflation, crime and Democrats running wild? My thinking is you should be resistant to measures even as you suggest them.
One thing we don't want to do: make things worse. But tell that to a Ukrainian woman who has lost her husband and kids to one of Putin's missiles.
And although past experiences in war would suggest, yeah, we have worsened things, can this war get worse? So how's that for riding a fence? I've been writing it so long, I have an a-- full of splinters.
But it can be the best vantage point when making decisions that result in death. You know, I believed in the obsolescence of ground wars. A thing of the past, I'd say.
It's all about drones. We'll fight the wars with joysticks in basements. And so even with those Russian troops flooding the border, like people getting sick in Wuhan, we really still didn't buy it.
The media cried wolf so many times, we thought they were trying to wake up Mr. Blitzer. But maybe we weren't mistaken thinking conventional war is kind of over.
Perhaps we were overconfident, like when I thought that stripper was my girlfriend. Maybe Ukraine is one modern example to show how ground wars don't work.
You see crumple tanks, a desperate military, but without visual explanation for it. Modern tech is teaching Putin that he cannot occupy a country even if he's way bigger.
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How can he occupy when drones never sleep? We're now seeing a ground force getting crushed by the offspring of RadioShack.
It's not really that different from that remote-controlled race car you got for Christmas, and Putin didn't even see it coming.
This article is adapted from Greg Gutfeld's opening commentary on the April 11, 2022, edition of "Gutfeld!"
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