One thing should probably be noted up front for this column: I've never been a fan of Volodymyr Zelenskyy and that has tainted my view of Russia's war with Ukraine. Yes, I know that Putin is bad, and he shouldn't be allowed to traipse willy-nilly about Europe saying, "This used to be ours so we're taking it back." That's an especially bad standard for the justification of conquest to be set on that particular continent.
I've often felt that Zelenskyy is far more interested in perpetuating the celebrity status he's gotten since becoming the "Flag in the Social Media Profile" darling of the keyboard warrior activist set. I don't truly believe that he doesn't want to win the war, but I swear I get a vibe that he wouldn't mind if it takes a while.
My cynicism is raging like pubescent boy hormones these days though.
Another thing that has bothered me for a while is that there haven't seemed to be any endgame conditions placed on the hemorrhage of cash from the United States to the Ukraine war effort. Democrats like to use support for Ukraine as an election-year political cudgel to distract from the fact that their president and his policies are an unmitigated disaster. They've created a false moral equivalence between Ukraine's fight with Russia and Israel's war on Hamas. Republicans who want to support Israel in any way possible but are reluctant to keep the American taxpayers' checkbook open for Ukraine are taken to task in the media.
That's right, the people who used to rend their garments over "foreign wars" have decided that they really, really like some of them.
Back to the aforementioned endgame conundrum. A new Op-Ed in the Wall Street Journal examines the current U.S. conversation about Ukraine's objectives and finds all sides wanting:
The dominant narrative today holds that Joe Biden and Donald Trump are opposites on Ukraine. The president supports the Senate bill that includes about $60 billion for Kyiv, mostly in military aid. The former president attacks it, and his influence among House Republicans is why Speaker Mike Johnson is reluctant to bring it to the floor for a vote.
But when it comes to the failure to spell out a strategic argument, the two are one. As a result, the military-aid package has largely been fought over issues unrelated to Ukraine, such as funding for border security. Meanwhile, Democrats sound like hawks, Republicans sound like doves, and U.S. policy slides into strategic incoherence.
The article does a great job of delving into the various reasons for the incoherence. It's a sobering read, but worth it. It also showcases the fact that Donald Trump is running as a kinda/sorta incumbent in this election. Biden's efforts as the actual incumbent are often compared with what Trump did in office, even if the comparisons are apples and oranges.
The author points out that there is some political upside for Biden's open-ended support for Ukraine, saying that, "Supporting Ukraine has allowed Mr. Biden to attack Mr. Trump as a Putin apologist at the same time."
That has been one of the primary distraction points for the Democrats' flying monkeys in the mainstream media recently. Frequent demands are made of Trump to publicly and loudly condemn Putin during every waking moment. Trump's refusal to bow to the insane demands of the MSM is then converted into the false narrative that Trump is a Putin fanboy.
Biden's inability to provide a clear picture of what the United States would see play out in Ukraine isn't helping to win any Republicans over to the effort, as the article notes. The author then provides this sobering observation:
At this point it may simply be that he’s not up to it physically. But it’s equally likely that the president is skittish about splits within the Democratic Party. These are kept at bay so long as Ukrainians are given enough aid to keep the war going but not enough to prevail.
As foreign policy goals go, endless funding for an unwinnable war seems rather risky for an election year.
The American public's support for playing Sugar Daddy Warbucks to Ukraine is waning and, as I wrote in last week's TDS column, the MSM wants to blame Trump for that.
Good luck selling that for the long run, Dems. Your base may buy it, but there are a lot of voters who aren't in denial about who's actually in charge of foreign policy right now.
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