Holman Jenkins wrote Tuesday about Rethinking Trump and the Ukraine War. His central thesis is the “confusion” in Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden’s intelligence community and throughout his administration generally about what to do about the Russian invasion of Ukraine and how to respond—if at all—to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s surprisingly amateurish attempt to sow further confusion in our domestic politics (and the even more amateurish emphasis on those efforts by Biden’s…advisors…throughout his administration).

But my concern arises prior to any of that; it centers on the underlying misconception of the nature of that war.

That rethinking that Jenkins wants to see needs to begin with a correction to that misconception, and I’m almost as concerned that Jenkins and nearly everyone else who should know better…don’t.

Russia invaded with the purpose of erasing Ukraine the sovereign nation and reducing it to a petty satrap in Vladimir Putin’s empire, and Ukraine is fighting for its existence.

It isn’t the Ukraine war; it’s the Russian war, inflicted on Ukraine. Only with an accurate understanding of that situation can any ideas of what to do about it be developed.