Since the conflict in Ukraine and Russia began, high-profile elites have demanded that the United States back Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky with finances, food, weaponry, and even the threat of war against Vladimir Putin, but this is out of step with the will of the people.
What started as a call to fund and defend a nation against an invasion from a dangerous dictator, however, quickly morphed into a quest to undermine the Russian regime by whatever means necessary including ordering NATO warplanes to shoot down Russian aircraft and issuing full-blown declarations of war.
A majority of Americans do not want the U.S. to go to war with Russia over Ukraine. Recent polling from The Washington Post and ABC News suggests that 72 percent of U.S. adults “oppose the United States taking direct military action against Russian forces.” Even in the early days of the overseas conflict, only 17 percent of Americans were willing to “risk a direct war between the U.S. and Russia” to “do whatever it can to help Ukraine.”
Congress has yet to vote to officially authorize acts of war against Russia, but that hasn’t stopped some of the most high-ranking officials in the U.S., from President Joe Biden and sitting members of Congress to intelligence agencies and even institutions such as the corporate media, from promoting a clash in Eastern Europe.
Just this week, sitting Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., admitted that the United States is in a proxy war with Russia.
“At the end of the day, we’ve got to realize we’re at war. And we’re not just at war to support the Ukrainians. We’re fundamentally at war, although, it’s somewhat through proxy with Russia and it’s important that we win,” Moulton said.
Similarly, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., claimed this week that “we can win this war on behalf of Ukraine.”
“There is no off-ramp in this war. Somebody is going to win and somebody is going to lose, and I hope and pray and do everything in my power to make sure Ukraine wins,” Graham said.
Graham’s march toward war has significantly increased in the last few months. In March, he called for the assassination of Putin by Russians to end the conflict.
“The only way this ends is for somebody in Russia to take this guy out,” Graham tweeted.
Now he says it’s up to the U.S. to fight for Ukraine and other nations such as Taiwan, which faces a threat of invasion from China.
Even though some legislators haven’t engaged in the same kind of reckless rhetoric to promote war with Putin, they have fed into the escalation narrative by voting to forward the nation’s role in the conflict. On Tuesday, just weeks after authorizing $13.6 billion of aid money to Ukraine, the House of Representatives voted to send nearly $40 billion more to the Eastern European country.
Only 57 House Republicans and no Democrats voted against the spending package, which lacked regulation and specification.
So far, neither Biden nor the Republicans or Democrats in Congress have laid out a peace plan or spending limits for Ukraine. Instead, they’ve used reckless rhetoric to escalate U.S. involvement and explicitly signaled their intent to take down a nuclear power against voters’ desires.