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Rep. Chellie Pingree is a Maine heroine. But the letter she joined (which was later rescinded), exhorting President Joe Biden urging him to “negotiate” with the man destroying Ukraine’s infrastructure, kidnapping Ukraine’s children and committing crimes against humanity is to recommend cowering before a bully. As Fiona Hill keeps reminding us, there is ample evidence that Vladimir Putin is not a statesman acting rationally on the world stage; he is a menace to the world.
Perhaps Pingree had a lapse of judgment. More mysterious is why Rep. Jamie Raskin, who has wrestled with Putin’s fellow bully Donald Trump for so long, would have any illusions that a reasonable session at the table will do anything other than inform Putin that his tactics work.
I don’t know what any of the signers of that letter were thinking or what their purpose was. But it was an exercise in breathtakingly bad judgment.
Joline Godfrey
St. George
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