As former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told CNN’s Jim Acosta today, the fact that American- and NATO-supplied missiles are being used to shoot down Russian aircraft means we are ALREADY at war with Russia!

To know that the US has an entire wing of AC-130 Spectre gunships, including the legendary 16th Special Operations Squadron (the 16th SOS), sitting on the tarmac at Hurlburt Field in Fort Walton Beach, Florida, drives me to the height of frustration. I worked with the 601st Photo Flight documenting the success of the 16th SOS as they destroyed tens of thousands of trucks traveling in convoys down the Ho Chi Minh Trail in the later years of the Vietnam War. The 40-mile Russian convoy lurking outside Kiev would be no problem–16th SOS Spectre gunships would take out the lead and trailing trucks with pinpoint precision, then use their sensors to locate fuel and ammunition trucks and take them out. The convoy would be trapped in place.

Joe! Russia is the country that starved out Napoléon in Moscow, chasing his army back to France in disgrace in the 19th Century. In the Twentieth Century, the Russian people held off the mighty German army at Stalingrad, undeterred by freezing weather and scant supplies. Taking away a few oligarchs’ yachts will not stop a madman like Putin. He is killing Ukrainian woman and children with impunity.

Joe! We are already at war! Why to you let heroic but outnumbered Ukrainian soldiers fight off Russian invaders alone?

What is the point the US having the mightiest military in the history of world and deploying it since Vietnam in the wrong places, propping up corrupt governments or trying to install our puppets–Laos, Panama, Grenada, Cuba, Kuwait, Iraq, Afghanistan?

Why are you leaving Ukraine to fight alone against a Russian invasion? The war has begun–don’t be another well-intentioned but weak-kneed Neville Chamberlain!