Ukraine is Another Afghanistan

Ukraine is Another Afghanistan

By Cliff Kincaid

I have always supported Ukraine’s fight for freedom but the Biden Administration doesn’t have a strategy to win the war. This is another Afghanistan withdrawal disaster in the making. As President Trump says, it’s time to stop the dying.

In my view, as a veteran observer of the Reagan Administration’s successful campaign to roll back communism worldwide, we should now save what we can of Ukraine and its people. Since Biden is not Reagan and has already given us one major foreign disaster in Afghanistan, we should try to avoid another comparable disaster in Europe. That means negotiations to avoid more death and dying. Such an approach will buy us time to save lives.  

It does not make sense to continue to sacrifice the soldiers of Ukraine in vain. Instead, we should hope and pray for a change in administrations and a return to a Reagan-style policy of replacing communist regimes, including the one in Russia, headed by a former KGB operative who has now stated openly that he wants Biden to win in November.

It was Biden who encouraged Russia to invade Ukraine in the first place. Vladimir Putin first invaded under Barack Hussein Obama and then again under Biden. But he never launched an invasion under Trump.   

On Wednesday’s Larry Kudlow show on Fox Business, he was pushing negotiations with Putin over Ukraine, a policy that makes sense considering that Biden is bleeding Ukraine dry and prolonging the war when he doesn’t have a strategy for Ukraine to win. Kudlow worked for Reagan and is a strong anti-communist. But he, too, understands that Biden has no strategy to win.  This has become clear as Biden has refused to sophisticated weapons to Ukraine.   

In fact, Biden doesn’t have a strategy for anything, except his re-election, and that is being handled by Obama and his operatives.  

We must quit fooling ourselves about what is happening in Washington, D.C. The fool in charge doesn’t believe in Ukraine’s freedom or anything else, and he doesn’t appear to know or remember anything about his own life and family members, even as House Republicans document his financial corruption and various schemes to enrich his drug-addicted son.

Meanwhile, the Democrats attempt to bankrupt Trump and put the former president in jail, as the wars in Europe and now in the Middle East continue.   

But as I finished watching Kudlow, I also caught a Jennifer Griffin report on Fox and I realized the proponents of more foreign aid to Ukraine have a last-ditch argument -- aid to Ukraine is a jobs program for American workers. She cited a report from the American Enterprise Institute.

It should all make sense to even the casual observer of world events: this has nothing to do with saving Ukraine from the Russians. It’s about propping up a bad economy he has tried to destroy with crazy “green” initiatives that have damaged America’s industrial strength.

But war is also big business.  Griffin noted that 90 percent of the foreign aid goes to American jobs and U.S. weapons factories.

Providing this unique rationale for enabling Ukrainians to die trying to save their country is the “conservative-leaning” American Enterprise Institute (AEI), Griffin noted. Her report was featured on the Fox News “Special Report” show.

This was exciting news to the Washington Post columnist and Fox News contributor Marc Thiessen, calling the jobs program “the best kept secret” of foreign aid to Ukraine.

Shame on these people. They justify a war economy that keeps the people of Ukraine fighting with no reasonable prosect of a military victory.

Thiessen, who is also a “scholar” at the AEI, promoted this justification of foreign aid to Ukraine back in December, and now it has exploded in public view, as the House of Representatives has balked at sending more money to a losing cause.

As we know, Biden dismissed the threat of a minor Russian “incursion” in the first place. That green light led to the full-scale invasion.

No wonder Putin has endorsed Biden for re-election. He looks like a strong Russian leader, even giving interviews to Tucker Carlson and then complaining about the easy questions. By contrast, Biden wanders around on stage, confusing the names of world leaders.

In the case of Afghanistan, Biden claimed the generals had never objected to a hasty withdrawal. That was a lie. Biden apparently forgot what they told him.   

Still, Putin defends Biden. It’s not surprising. Biden is the best thing going for the Russians and America’s other enemies.

We see that AEI is governed by a Board of Trustees, “composed of leading business and financial executives” and that its foreign and defense policy scholars “are dedicated to the principle that American global leadership is vital to a peaceful, prosperous, and free world.”

But when it comes to Ukraine, their last and best argument is that foreign aid under Biden, who encouraged Putin’s invasion in the first place, creates jobs.

I am a Reagan conservative but have never been part of the conservative establishment represented by AEI. This latest twist and turn by those trying to keep the war going under the circumstances of making money for the arms industry makes me sick. This kind of corruption runs so deep that those of us genuinely committed to “a peaceful, prosperous, and free world” have to say enough is enough and object to business as usual, especially when young lives in Ukraine are being wasted and our own economy suffers and the USA is going broke.  

Every day Putin bombards Ukraine and kills people. His regime in Moscow should be replaced. But that is not the objective of the United States Government. And NATO has turned out to be practically worthless, as only 18 of the 31 members are “on track” to meet the 2 percent of GDP figure on defense spending. Only 11 members are currently spending that much.

So this is a classic no-win war that certainly doesn’t benefit Ukraine.

Pulling back from a hollow NATO, as Trump suggests, would benefit Europe in the long run, as they will be forced to pursue what European Council President Charles Michel calls “strategic autonomy” and to “invest in its defense.”

If Europe truly fears Russia, let them act like it. But don’t bleed America dry and don’t bleed Ukraine to death in the process.

• Cliff Kincaid is president of America’s Survival, Inc. www.usasurvival.org