30 Comments

"By directly funding Ukraine with US weapons systems, we now know that a billion-dollar Boeing-led US weapons project is essentially worthless."

This. On a few levels.

Expand full comment

I am really grown weary about this argument for continuing to fund Ukraine...doesn't matter how you spin it...we DON'T have to agree...This war is lost and their needs to be a settlement agreement. Enough!

Expand full comment

Eric - the US government for the last 30+ years has been the fire-fighter who sets arson fires so he can be deployed to fight them and his fire department makes money.

Expand full comment

Imagine if Biden had brought back all the equipment left in Afghanistan. Then we could send them equipment they could use instead of cash that no one can track or account for.

Expand full comment

Erik, you start off by commenting on our government's huge debt, which is the cumulative result of budget deficits. Then you say spending on Ukraine, Taiwan and Israel is ONLY 1.5% of the Gov’t budget. A BLOATED budget! Remember, only 28% of the budget is discretionary, therefore we are allocating 5.4% of discretionary spending to these efforts. Not saying that this is wrong but you need to put it in the “correct” perspective.

Expand full comment
May 1·edited May 1

As far as I'm concerned, we should have U.S. troops in Ukraine right now, making it clear that the acquiescence with which aggression was met in the run-up to World War II will not be repeated. Looking even past that war, history couldn't be clearer with the lesson that unchecked aggressors just keep on going until they are stopped.

Funding the fight against aggression is the least we should do.

Expand full comment

Erik - one thing you haven’t included is the fact that we have already made back most of the money we’ve spent in Ukraine. Most of our NATO allies in Eastern Europe have donated much of their old Soviet stockpiles and equipment to Ukraine. Where do you think they are looking to upgrade? Most of them are buying American. This isn’t the fiscal responsibility issue the MAGA crowd tries to make it. Why can’t they save this energy for entitlement reform?? Because MAGA is no longer serious about it - making them just as bad as the D’s on this issue.

Expand full comment

I don’t care about giving money to Ukraine but why are we giving that much without doing something about our own border. According to Nancy in 2019 the US was broke and couldn’t foot the bill for 5 billion to build a wal. Now we suddenly have half a trillion.

This may shock you Erick but politicians lie. Dems especially have attuned it to fine art form.

Expand full comment

What is the end game?

I didn’t care for the politics of Gen Colin Powell but his military views were good. Fight only if you have to. Throw in the kitchen sink and make it a short war. No generational wars. And lastly, how do you end it?

What is the endgame? When the last Ukrainian soldier is killed there will be fifty Russians still standing. Then what?

What happens if there is a Franz Ferdinand moment? A stray missile hits a population center in Russia or a NATO country and there are massive casualties? In 1914 everyone thought that the war would be over by Christmas.

As a side note, we have book censorship here. Tucker Carlson interviewed Alexandre (?) Dugin who is a political science professor at Moscow University and an advisor to Putin. Carlson said that his books were no longer available at Amazon. They are not, just books on Dugin. I haven’t checked elsewhere. They were available before and I almost bought them. They were translated by computer and that gave them a low review rating.

Expand full comment
May 1·edited May 1

When the last Ukrainian soldier is killed there will be fifty Russians still standing . . . instead of one hundred.

That works for me. Fewer for us to fight when the time comes.

Expand full comment

At this point in history, the ONLY justified wars the US has been involved in were the Revolutionary War, the Civil War and WWII. Two of those were of course our own internal wars. WWII was necessary because WE WERE ATTACKED BY JAPAN!

But the massive global death and destruction from WWII made the US believe it needed to be the world police. So the post Bretton Woods Global order happened. And for 75 years it resulted in relative peace... but at a tremendous cost to the US born on the shoulders of the American working class and poor. And more of that pain is hitting with the terrible policies of the Biden Administration.

Defense spending establishment types like to say that the US can walk and chew gum at the same time. But no, that has been proven a lie. The US can only focus on domestic issues or play king of the international world.

It isn't that the war in Ukraine isn't important... it is that the US no longer has the demonstrated ability to play any lead role in fighting it even by proxy.

I have a neighbor obsessed with giving money to charities. The lost their house missing payments. They divorced. Their kids got messed up. We need to pay attention to our own family and stop thinking we are ordained to save everyone else.

Expand full comment

I just object that we couldn’t cut somewhere else to fund this. If it’s worth it, it’s worth it. But what else is new.

Expand full comment

Your monologue on this plus your logical demolition of the caller today were both masterful. He said he’s a Desert Storm veteran, I believe, which is honored but gives one no special insight. I’m an OIF veteran with equally no special insight, but I have read a lot of 20th Century history and know what the anti-war idealism and isolationist policies of the 1920-30’s led to. To those who claim we’re somehow “using” the Ukrainians, I know I’d be fighting the invaders, even at my age, whether or not any foreign country was helping or not. The Ukrainian patriots aren’t going back to USSR 2.0.

Expand full comment

Can we also quit sending money to our adversaries like Iran and the PLO HAMAS so we can help our allies seems like we are funding both sides buying crap from China oil from Russia if we are fighting a proxy war war let’s stop giving aid to the enemy

Expand full comment

Bullseye!!!!!

Expand full comment

The majority of people I know opposed to Ukraine funding fall basically into two camps. 1 - more than half of the money we have sent to Ukraine is unaccounted for and 2 - sending money to avoid our boots on the ground in Ukraine and elsewhere is meaningless if we continue to let military aged men into our country via our southern border. Sadly, the boots on the ground will be here. So corruption and our sovereignty are why people are against it. Not to mention our dismal track record of trillions in spending in Iraq and Afghanistan to end up being lied to and humiliated. Ukraine has no chance. We should be brokering peace. The only reason we aren’t is because the defense beast and corrupt oligarchs need to be fed with our money. There will be a day of reckoning and I’m concerned it’s upon us.

Expand full comment

“more than half of the money we have sent to Ukraine is unaccounted for” - where do you get this??

Expand full comment

I sure am glad you weren't directing our geopolitical strategies in WW2. We'd be speaking German. "Ukraine has no chance" "The defense beast" - what rabbit-hole, top-secret nihilistic bastion of truth website are you getting your information from? I'm grateful we didn't say France had no chance. The United States is the last great hope of freedom in the world. If our light goes out there will truly be inescapable darkness.

Expand full comment
May 1·edited May 1

It ain’t 1941 pal. We weren’t being invaded at our southern border. We weren’t $34 trillion in debt. We didn’t have to deal with rabid anti-Semitism at home. We had a patriotic fervor that has been eroded. You need to stop watching Patten and get real. Oh yeah. Read your history. Russia NEVER loses. If it weren’t for Russia we likely would not have been successful in WWll.

Expand full comment

Russo-Japanese war of 1905. That led directly to a revolution to the czarist system.

WWI. That led to the communist revolution.

Afghanistan invasion of 1979 was the beginning of the end of the Soviet empire.

Expand full comment

Russia likely would not have been successful in WWII if it wasn’t for us and Lend Lease. Stalin and Kruschev both admitted as much.

Expand full comment

We were being blindsided by a Japanese invasion. We endured an enormous war debt.We had a huge anti-war- isolationist sentiment domestically. We still have a passion for patriotism and preservation of freedom. Uh, and Russia looses consistently. They are a proped up hell hole of a nation. I'll take my chances with the USA. God bless.

Expand full comment

Nobody here doesn’t believe in the USA. The pro-war, neo-con mentality will crush our country. We need to be strategic and more solvent when approaching foreign policy.

Expand full comment

No. We need to be involved in all of geopolitical interests world-wide. Our decision to isolate and abandon our friends and allies would be our last. The world is interconnected and should we absolve ourselves as leaders of the free world, Russia. China, ans Iran would fill it instantly. America is the last great hope of freedom in the world. That is not accomplished without persistent defense against totalitarianism.

Expand full comment
May 1·edited May 1

Respectfully, you are so wrong. We do not have the economic or military capacity to be everywhere. We failed in Vietnam. We failed in Iraq. We failed in Afghanistan. We’re gonna fail in Ukraine. I’m not rooting for Russia. Our track record since WWll has been abysmal. No our “friends and allies” need to be more self-sufficient and we need to be more judicious in terms of how we allocate resources. We’re broke!

Expand full comment

We as a nation are really screwed.

Expand full comment
Comment removed
Expand full comment

You're walking around a battlefield oblivious to your enemies. No defense, no offense, against those who's sole purpose is your destruction. Good luck with that.

Expand full comment
Comment removed
Expand full comment

Yes, the axis attacked Israel, Ukraine, South China Sea, Niger, and readying for Taiwan and Haiti and the rest of the Sahel region in Africa. Isolationism is irresponsible and deadly. We can't sit back and watch China, Russia and Iran buy up all the properties on the Monopoly board and expect to win.

Expand full comment