Observation O’ The Day

Russia’s Ukraine invasion a wake-up call to AOC and ‘Squad.’

Hoover Institution fellow Victor Davis Hanson rebuked Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-NY, for promoting radical left policies and discussed the geopolitical implications of Russia’s invasion Thursday on “Jesse Watters Primetime.”

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: If the United States is [energy independent] … then we don’t beg people in the Middle East or Russia to help us. If the oil price [is] moderate, the economies in the West thrive, and Vladimir Putin doesn’t have financial reserves that can subsidize as an invasion.

Just think of the lead-up to [the invasion]. In January, we had these hackers from Russia [going] … after the Colonial Pipeline in the United States. They took out a million barrels a day, and that was after we had been cutting back. …  [Then] we had the Senate Democrats who [sic] wrote a veto to sanction the Nord Stream Pipeline. Energy is a subtext of all of the preliminaries up to this.

And I think in retrospect, we’re going to grow up. We’re going to look back at AOC’s insane efforts and people in the Squad in the hard left to shut down voluntarily almost 3 million barrels a day of oil production. … [T]hat results in … real deaths — people die when you do that, and they have to realize that — it’s crazy. 

We’re going to have to take a hard look at NATO, because the idea that for years, no one listened. As we told the Germans, we begged the Germans. We pleaded with the Germans, “Do not cut a deal with Putin, do not get reliant on Putin energy. Why don’t you import liquefied natural gas from the United States or [Israel’s] pipeline, anything other than Russia?” And we were completely ignored. I think that’s going to be reexamined. 

The West has been caught sleeping and … an opportunistic dictator … saw a chance and … took it just like he did in 2014.