Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author’s permission.
Joe Biden and the Democrats are fighting tooth-and-nail for more than $60 billion for Ukraine to further its war with Russia. If only they fought with the same tenacity to help the homeless and mentally ill in America.
According to Heather Cox Richardson:
Funding Ukraine is popular in the U.S., even among a majority of non-MAGA Republicans. Americans recognize that Ukraine’s forces are not simply defending their sovereign territory, they are defending the rules-based international order that protects the United States. Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, is trying to destroy that order, replacing it with the idea that bigger countries can conquer smaller countries at will.
Meanwhile, at the New York Times, Julian Barnes had this to say about Ukraine:
If the proposed $60 billion U.S. aid package ever comes through, it could enable more audacious Ukrainian strikes behind Russian lines – the kinds of operations that keep Moscow off balance.
The money from Congress, in short, could be the difference between a bad deal and a better one. Having it would strengthen Ukraine’s hand at the negotiating table. Without it, Putin may prove right in his theory that he can outlast the West.
So, America needs to send another $60 billion plus to Ukraine so that maybe Zelensky could have a stronger bargaining position vis-à-vis Putin and the Russians. Makes perfect sense to me.
I cite Richardson above because her posts seem to reflect the conventional wisdom of the Democratic Party. She claims without evidence that funding war in Ukraine is “popular” among Americans and that by sending billions in weaponry there, America is actually defending itself and the mythical “rules-based international order.”
She’s apparently never heard of the folly of throwing good money after bad.
She’s not alone here. Senator Chuck Schumer is on record as saying that without the “investment” of another $60 billion in Ukraine, U.S. troops will soon be fighting their Russian counterparts in Eastern Europe. Thus the only way to prevent this war is to fund more war and sacrifice tens of thousands of additional Ukrainian troops.
Well, thank goodness for Ukraine, else America would already be fighting Russia in World War III.
I remember a time when the Democratic Party was skeptical of war, even anti-war when Senator George McGovern ran for the presidency in 1972. Those days are long gone. Today’s Democratic leaders are even more devoted to war than their Republican counterparts.
Certainly this is true of Joe Biden’s tight embrace and full support of Israel’s war of annihilation against Gaza. Under the same bill proposed by the Senate, Israel is set to receive another $15 billion or so in military aid toward its genocide-in-slow-motion in Gaza.
Joe Biden is merely a figurehead on the warship that is the United States of America.
All that’s missing are his Ray-Ban sunglasses
William J. Astore is a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF). He taught history for fifteen years at military and civilian schools. He writes at Bracing Views.
“ In 1986, then-U.S. Sen. Joe Biden said, “[Supporting Israel] is the best $3 billion investment we make. Were there not an Israel, the United States of America would have to invent an Israel to protect her interests in the region…
Biden indeed said the above words, in the context of opposing an arms sale to Saudi Arabia. He argued that sending weapons to that country would compromise Israel’s security.”
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/joe-biden-1986-israel/
Does he actually have stocks in military industrial complex? That could explain all his actions.
Throughout the 20th and the 21st Centuries, it has been the US that most often took the US into war.
WWI -Wilson
WWII-Roosevelt
Korea- Truman
Vietnam- Kennedy and LBJ
And similar moves too;
Pivot to Asia (ie to crush China)- Obama
Syria – Obama
Ukraine coup which began the Ukraine proxy war- Obama
The Gaza Genocide – Genocide Joe
(Shrub is a big exception.)
Pushing NATO to the East and imposing a Great Depression on Russia in the 1990s -Clinton
In contrast:
Trump gave us no new wars and attempted to end the one in Syria.
Nixon gave us Detente with the USSR and the Opening to China
Reagan pulled troops from Lebanon rather than get hundreds more slaughtered and he was up to the task of working with Gorbachev and ending the Cold War.
That’s just off the top of my head.
But the Dems want to improve the world – that is, make it like us and obedient to us.
In contrast there is a solid and stubborn anti-interventionist (so-called “isolationist” sentiment in conservative America visible again in the MAGA movement.
Oh please. Pull the other one, it has bells on. You have an extremely selective memory. This is Antiwar.com, not AntiDemwars.com. Bush I invaded Iraq first and “arrested” Noriega in the process of which he killed hundreds in Panama. Reagan invaded Grenada and bombed Libya, killing Quaddaffi’s daughter. Oh, and then there was Iran-Contra. And selling chemical weapons etc. to the aggressor (Iraq) in their war with Iran. You handwaved Bush II’s War on Terror and invasion of two countries (one of which Obama was almost alone in voting against, i.e., Iraq), and spoiling for a third (Iran). Trump was so peaceful he droned Iran’s general (your ally against ISIS) along with 20 innocent Iraqi bystanders into smithereens, tore up the deal with Iran. In addition, he abandoned the Kurds after leading them down the garde path (just as Bush I did). Oh, and declared you were in Syria to protect the oil, and as I recall, hit them with the mother of all bombs based on flimsy evidence of a chemical attack. Literally everything in US foreign policy for the last hundred years has been the same thing only worse regardless of who’s president.
When Donald Trump was president, the U.S. military was involved in 40% of the world’s countries in its war on terror. Isolationist? (Smithsonian Magazine, 1/19)
He did not start the GWOT. To repeat again – No new wars under Trump.
And some he tried to end.
Hardly the most desirable outcome but a vast improvement.
No, but he participated in the GWOT fully. To repeat again, Trump was no different than his predecessors when it came to US belligerence across the globe. If that’s an improvement in your mind, then it isn’t me who has TDS. And imagine if he would have been as full-throated about ending wars as he is about bitching about the rigged election. Maybe he would have actually left Syria instead of doing two missile strikes based on bullshit, sitting on their oil and imposing the draconian Caesars sanctions that put millions of innocents in misery.
“Trump gave us no new wars and attempted to end the one in Syria.”
I always get a kick out of people defending Trump for what he tried to do in Syria and not what he did in Syria. And never mentioning how he rabidly participated, and escalated, in all those wars others started. He even lifted the rules of engagement to make our airstrikes and our drone program that much more lethal. And should I mention the sanctions? But sure, we can only hope that Trump, the man dedicated to peace and liberty, gets into office once again.
I always have to repeat this because TDS is very infectious and is found everywhere. “Trump gave us no new wars.”. That does not make him a saint – just a lot better than the progressive, neocon hawks like Biden, Obama, Hillary – admittedly a very low bar.
Trump escalated all those wars he didn’t start and made it easier to kill in every one of them. If you want to call that TDS, fine.
But, to me, making the world deathly afraid of us so there would be “no new wars” isn’t that much of a step up. And that was Trump’s whole shtick. He’s doing the same with all the present conflicts going on. He just says they wouldn’t be happening if he were president. We can only assume he’s talking about him just exuding strength (through his bombastic threats) since he never gives specifics as to why we wouldn’t be in those conflicts.
Linsey Graham:
“But here’s one thing I can tell you about him – don’t cross him. Don’t you miss that? Don’t you miss an America that people respected and were a little bit afraid of?”
Trump: “But maybe our country would be better off if I actually had the nuclear codes because our enemies would be afraid, unlike they are now.”
That’s “a lot better”?
How long will it take before a critical mass of the world realizes that Israel was mainly responsible for October 7? What has happened SINCE then was the INTENT all along of the October 7 “official narrative”, designed to “justify” the inhumane actions (again!) of Israel in the Gaza Strip! This world has not improved one iota since WW2 when the Nazi war criminals were put to trial in Nuremburg. Just the fact that Israel and the USA can openly slaughter thousands of innocent women, children and old people is a testament to that!
Would it be kosher to ask of God to deal with these monsters while they are still on the planet Earth? If it is, EVERYONE with a conscience and half a brain to use should implore of Him to end this nightmare!
Ukraine is used to launder money, to engage in trafficking military weapons, there is nothing honest or good, about the Ukraine Government. At the start of the war, their people left on mass, because they didn’t want a war, knowing it was a losing battle for them. The EU/NATO worked with Biden to push Ukraine to fight and NOT seek a peaceful solution with Russia. Americans do NOT want one penny going to Ukraine, not one penny going to Israel. America is 34 Trillion Dollars in debt and Americans know that means sooner, then later, we will have a recession or depression. Congress is enriching themselves, while ignoring what the American Voter wants. WAR is the rich mans game!
At the start of every war a lots of people leave, it has nothing to do with “knowing it was a losing battle for them”. You can be dissatisfied with your foreign policy, but you have no right to speak for ukrainian citizens
Well, at the start of the war it wouldn’t have been irrational for Ukrainians to believe it was “a losing battle for them.” At the beginning, most people everywhere assumed the Russian forces were up to the job and would quickly get that job done.
What makes you believe most Ukrainians assumed their loss? There were enormous lines of volunteers to fight day 1. I would argue that today Ukrainians are less optimistic about the war than they were day 1, because of Europe’s failure to provide them with resources they hoped for.
“What makes you believe most Ukrainians assumed their loss?”
I believe that most people everywhere assumed Ukraine’s loss because most people everywhere greatly over-estimated Russian military capabilities.
That assumption may have been more or less prevalent among Ukrainians specifically, but that assumption, and the surprise when it turned out to be incorrect, was not irrational.
I have every right to voice my opinion and every right to vote against those supporting one of the most CORRUPT Nations on this planet, Ukraine.
You are entitled to your foreign policy opinions, but your comment about what ukrainians think or want was very ignorant. And Ukraine, being incredibly corrupt by european measures, still isn’t event close to be one of the most corrupt countries in the world. You just continue to make things up