How bad has it gotten for the pro-Ukraine crowd, which is watching with entitled fury as Congress negotiates over yet another aid package in its no-win war?
Well, check out this scolding op-ed by The Atlantic's Anne Applebaum, titled "Is Congress Really Going to Abandon Ukraine Now?"
She's one the loudest advocates for endless U.S. aid to Ukraine.
Here's an amazingly arrogant passage:
The looming end of American aid to Ukraine is not a policy decision. For two years, the Biden administration successfully led an international coalition to provide not soldiers but rather military aid to Ukraine. Officials convened regular meetings, consulted with allies, pulled in military support from around the world. Majorities in the U.S. continue to support Ukraine. Majorities in both houses of Congress do too. The Senate is said to have its legislation almost ready to go. But now, for reasons that outsiders find impossible to understand, a minority of Republican members of Congress, in a fit of political pique, are preparing to cut it all off. They might succeed.
Many different, bad choices led to this moment. Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s decision last summer to cut Ukraine out of a larger budget bill was the first. The strange idea to link Ukraine aid to controversial changes to U.S. immigration law and border policy was the second. The ballots cast by voters in Iowa and New Hampshire then put Donald Trump on a seemingly unstoppable path to the Republican presidential nomination; Trump’s telephone calls to Republican senators, telling them to kill the Ukraine/border legislation, suddenly mattered. His motives are blatantly selfish: He wants the U.S.-Mexico border to remain chaotic so that he can use the issue in his campaign. He doesn’t want Biden to benefit from any perceived solution or progress. And he doesn’t care if Ukraine runs out of ammunition as a result.
So as she puts it, all was going swimmingly in Ukraine's war of self-defense against invading Russia, Joe Biden was displaying able leadership, and all it took was "a minority" of Republican members in Congress, motivated by nothing more than "political pique" to throw a spanner in the works and cut the warbucks to Ukraine off.
She ignore the detail about Joe Bidens' weakness, which invited the aggression in the first place. Most voters remember that back when President Trump was in the White House, Russia's leader, Vladimir Putin, was too scared to try to pull an invasion of Ukraine off, viewing Trump as crazy and capable of anything. Not wanting to f--- around and find out, Putin stayed peaceable.
But never mind that.
She's furious that aid is now under question at all, first suggesting it was a tiny outlier minority causing problems in war-paradise, but as she carries on, it's clear she doesn't understand the political dynamic of Congress's bid to hold Ukraine aid up because the U.S. border needs attention.
Because she doesn't get it, and has no idea what's happening here, she lashes out, with the bulk of her contempt and venom reserved for the American people.
So here are a few thing she missed:
Did she bring up that the U.S. has already spent tens of billions on Ukraine, and has nothing to show for it? Maybe it's not a good idea to spend money on something that isn't working. The U.S. is coming off the endless permawars of Afghanistan and Iraq and after losing thousands of men and women in uniform, with precious little to show for it. And in Afghanistan, the pullout was a disgrace. Besides the loss of blood and treasure, the wars there were loaded with swamp profiteering and even corruption. The Washington swamp benefited mightily from its consultant contracts buried within those war budgets, which brought us zero victories. Might the U.S. public be just a little averse to shoveling money at the self-perpetuating swamp that thrives on warfare? We can see that dynamic emerging in Ukraine and we don't want another Afghanistan-style ending.
The other problem is the non-transparency of funding. When Sen. Rand Paul sought an auditor to prevent gargantuan wastes of public treasure on these endless wars, his request was summarily dismissed by Mitch McConnell and the rest of the swamp war machine in Congress. Might that have raised a few eyebrows among voters? Seems that if every dollar is being spent on bullets for Ukraine, maybe it would be a no-brainer to allow an auditor.
But we hear such bad stuff about this war -- U.S. arms that end up in Africa. Ukrainian young men refusing to sign up for the army, given that it's apparently a death sentence, what with the numbers of casualties among the frontline troops. The Ukrainian army is largely dead and too many Ukrainian young men are emigrating abroad instead. If they don't want to fight for their country, why should we finance this venture? Would it not be better to negotiate some kind of peace with Russia, maybe hold a referendum, given that a sizable portion of eastern Ukraine would rather be part of Russia anyway?
And what is this about the democracy deficits seen in Ukraine -- the arrests of reporters, including American ones, and the like? If they're throwing Americans in jail for reporting the news, maybe it's time to cut the aid. And explain those reported vast fortunes and corruption among Ukraine's elites.
Applebaum didn't address any of these factors which have sapped into public support for Ukraine's war against Russia. She presented a cartoon image of Ukraine's army, valid about three years ago, as bravely fighting for their homeland which doesn't seem to entirely be the case.
Most of us have residual sympathy for Ukraine and its ordeal with Russia.
Is it our problem? Not exactly, given that Ukraine is not a NATO member, which she also seems to miss.
The rationale for U.S. and European aid to Ukraine was Ukraine's decision to give up its nuclear weapons in exchange for security guarantees from Russia and the U.S.
That guarantee seems to have made Ukraine a little casual about the threat they faced as far as their own defenses went and when Russia invaded, and they weren't exactly militarily prepared. Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelensky, right up until the invasion itself, dismissed that it would happen even as the CIA warned it was happening. The other problem was significant corruption even before the war, corruption so bad Germany insisted they couldn't be a NATO member, so they weren't.
So now we are now involved in financing this Ukraine war and Congress is debating an aid package to Ukraine, which is already our number one recipient of foreign aid.
But it's Applebaum's contempt for the border issue that really makes her look arrogant and foolish. She seems to think it's a sideshow solely of political importance to President Trump.
The border issue, for her information, is not about President Trump, it's about millions of people crossing into the U.S. illegally as a result of Joe Biden's "invitation" to them to enter, which the presidents of Mexico and Guatemala have both argued. It's tanked Joe Biden's poll numbers to below 40% approval and has risen to the number one issue for the American public, and not just among the border town voters flooded with hordes of illegally present foreigners, but in the blue inner cities seeing cutbacks and their kids thrown out of their own parks and schools. It's the top issue across the country.
If Ukraine aid is that important to the Biden side of the negotiating table, and the border is a trivial sideshow, premised only on punishing Joe Biden and making him look bad, it would make sense for the Bidenites to throw to Republicans whatever scraps they demand regarding the open border and the crisis it has brought in order to get that aid to Ukraine immediately.
But of course, it's not that important to Biden. He's not willing to shut the open border down to get the Ukraine aid through. He likes millions of potential voters crossing in to vote Democrat and he gets angry when Fox News cameras pan the thousands of illegal crossers flowing in.
The open border and the ten million-plus illegal aliens who have flooded into the U.S. began on Joe Biden's watch, with one of his first decisions as president to abrogate the treaties signed by President Trump to keep illegal crossings to a minimum.
That's Joe Biden's real priority, keeping that border open and bringing in millions and millions of unvetted indigent foreigners into the U.S.
Ukraine aid is secondary, which is why Biden up until now has refused to budge on any Republican bargaining demands about the border.
To Republicans, the demands make sense because sending billions to guard Ukraine's borders while our own borders are left unguarded is illogical to both them and their voters, as well as many Democrats at this point.
If Joe really cared about Ukraine, he'd give Congress whatever it wanted on the border and dusted his hands off. He certainly employed this tactic on Iran and Venezuela, giving these hellholes whatever they wanted in exchange for the deals he sought. They were very bad deals indeed, but Joe had wanted those deals and didn't care what he had to give away -- bad criminals let out of prison, pallets of cash in the billions, dropped sanctions, and more.
The U.S. border, though, is different. Biden prizes his open border and is willing to hold up Ukraine aid to keep it the way it is. His only concern is Fox News cameras delivering bad publicity.
Applebaum shows even more obtuseness, or more likely, a penchant for lapping up Democrat talking points, in claiming that Biden wants to fix the border while Trump and his allies want him to fail.
That's ridiculous, because Trump isn't part of this -- this public anger about the open border spans party lines, race, and the city-country divide. That's not Trump, that's what lefties call "lived experience."
Biden doesn't have a solution to the border crisis, not one that will work, anyway. All he wants is to obtain more cash to speed up "processing" of illegal migrants into the country, as if that will stop the flow. Any sane observer of border matters knows very well that it will accomplish the opposite, drawing millions more migrants into the U.S., happy with the swift and speedy customer service.
But all of that goes unaddressed, and frankly, un-understood, by Applebaum, who can't see beyond the Ukraine aid trough. What's under that trough is gamy stuff indeed and it won't buy Ukraine victory. Come up with a victory plan or a negotiating plan and address Americans' concerns about its own border, and that public attitude will change. Insulting the U.S. public only reminds the public why it opposes Ukraine aid.