The stock market took a plunge. Gas pump prices are edging upward by the hour. Whether Americans like it or not, the war in Ukraine is going to affect them in profound and unpleasant ways. No amount of complaining and political finger-pointing about who’s to blame will change the simple fact that a superpower invasion of a Texas-sized European country is going to continue reverberating around the world.

Citizens and politicians in this country can help shorten the duration by suspending the political sniping and uniting behind President Joe Biden’s efforts to keep the United States out of a shooting war with Russia while making President Vladimir Putin suffer maximum consequences for his aggression.

The preceding sentence will strike many conservative readers as laughable coming from a newspaper that has devoted years to criticizing the policies of former President Donald Trump. But never in his presidency did Trump face a situation like this. He and his supporters would argue that his tough policies were what deterred Putin from ever attempting such a move on Trump’s watch. There are very strong facts about Trump’s record that would tear that argument down quickly — facts that suggest Trump actually encouraged the chain of events that are now unfolding in Ukraine. But those are political arguments for another time.

Right now, the world is at a level of crisis not seen since the Cuban missile crisis of 1961, if not the Sept. 1, 1939, German invasion of Poland, when World War II started. Putin stated Tuesday that he was acting to defend two Russian-speaking eastern regions of Ukraine that, he asserted, were proclaiming their independence. It appeared that Russia’s incursion would be limited to that eastern region, much like Putin’s illegal seizure and annexation of Crimea in 2014. But if that were true, why did Putin launch attacks across all of Ukraine on Thursday and deploy ground troops to Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, 200 miles to the northwest?

Every justification Putin claimed was based on lies. If he goes unchallenged, why should he stop at Ukraine? True to his megalomaniacal form, Putin has made clear his intention to restore Russia’s former glory through territorial expansion. Nothing in his portfolio of international military adventurism suggests it will end here.

So skeptical Americans must ask themselves: If not now, when will it be time to stand up to Putin?

In an Associated Press/NORC poll, only 26% of respondents supported a greater U.S. role in Ukraine. As if this rapidly escalating crisis would magically resolve itself if the United States just stood back and watched.

The poll was conducted Feb. 18 to 21, before fighting had begun and Putin’s words amounted to little more than bluster. Does it change their minds seeing for themselves the missile explosions, tanks and troops deploying across Ukraine, and frightened civilians taking shelter in subways — exactly as Britons did to escape Hitler’s air raids and rocket attacks in World War II?

The poll also showed that only 23% of Americans trusted U.S. intelligence reports about the Russian military buildup and forecasts of Putin’s intentions to invade. On Thursday, every single one of the warnings the Biden administration issued, based on declassified intelligence, turned out to be true. A big reason Biden declassified the intelligence was to let Putin know he could not rely on the element of surprise, perhaps to make Putin rethink the wisdom of invading.

At best, the tactic only stalled Putin’s plans. So now comes the hard part: imposing and sustaining international sanctions so severe they would put a stranglehold on Russia’s economy, crashing the ruble and denying Moscow’s ability to sell oil, access foreign bank accounts or conduct foreign financial transactions. Russian billionaires, some of whom are helping launder money that Putin has stolen from his own people, will be cut off from their international accounts. One billionaire oligarch reportedly saw his net worth drop by 30% on Wednesday alone.

That’s why gasoline prices are going up and the stock market is plunging.

Republicans on Capitol Hill are doing everything to blame Biden for these domestic repercussions. Trump is touting the low gas prices Americans enjoyed during his presidency. He’s even exploiting this crisis to solicit campaign donations.

Republicans might well argue that Biden and the Democrats don’t deserve a magnanimous gesture of national unity, given the way Democrats savaged President George W. Bush during the Iraq War. That’s the wrong reference. Even Trump criticized the Iraq War. There was no crisis. The 2003 invasion was based on the same kind of false-flag, fictitious justifications that Putin used to claim his right to invade Ukraine.

A more apt reference would be the national unity displayed after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, when Democrats and Republicans joined together in backing the invasion of Afghanistan. No, Putin’s action is not the same as the direct attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, but it is a direct challenge to global stability unwitnessed since World War II.

What matters most right now is for Putin to encounter an unshakable wall of unified American resolve, with Republicans joining Democrats in declaring, just as George H.W. Bush declared in 1990 when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, that “this aggression will not stand.”

Just put the political posturing on hold for awhile. There will be plenty of opportunities to score points later. If ever there was a need for national unity, and for America to speak with one voice in opposition to Putin’s aggression, this is that moment.

Editorial by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch

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