As could be predicted the US warmongers will make the case that the answer to the Ukraine/Russia mash-up will be more taxpayer money thrown into the fray.

White House asked Congress for $6.4 billion for military and humanitarian aid for Ukraine and to help US allies in Europe to bolster their security in response to Russia’s attack on Ukraine.

According to Bloomberg, $2.9 billion will go towards security and humanitarian assistance for Ukraine, the Baltics, Poland, and other regional countries. The remaining $3.5 billion will go to the Pentagon “to respond to the crisis.”

…

The total amount could change as the White House and Congress work it out. Some members of Congress think more money needs to be spent. Sen. Chris Coon (D-DE) said the US might need to spend around $10 billion to respond to Russia’s attack on Ukraine.

(antiwar.com)

Over the past year, the US has given Ukraine over $650 million in military aid and $52 million in humanitarian assistance. The Pentagon said Friday it wants to send more weapons to Ukraine and is working out ways to do so.

The United States is providing Ukraine with US$350 million (S$473.71 million) in additional military equipment to fight off Russia’s “brutal and unprovoked assault”. Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced on Saturday (Feb 26).

“This package will include further lethal defensive assistance to help Ukraine address the armored, airborne and other threats it is now facing,” Mr Blinken said in a statement.

The justification for the aid has varied. Some have made the case that U.S. military assistance to Ukraine can change Russia’s calculus now, possibly deterring Moscow from launching an attack. Others claim that aid to the Ukrainian military can have a real impact on a possible fight with the Russians, making it meaningfully more challenging for the Kremlin to achieve victory and ruling out certain military options Russia might be considering. And there are also voices who call for additional capabilities merely to raise costs for Moscow—that is, to kill more Russian soldiers—so as to create political problems for President Vladimir Putin at home, although without much expectation that Ukraine would prevail.

None of these arguments is convincing. That does not mean security cooperation with Kyiv should cease. It does mean that military assistance is not an effective lever for resolving this crisis.

(rand.org)

More money?

What did Ukraine do with the 90 tons of stuff they received from the US in January of this year?

Will throwing more cash at the problem….solve the problem?

I say it will not.

Most wars aren’t “rational” and become more irrational the longer they go on (See Afghanistan). And most attempts to “rationalize” them are freighted with the very biases that will serve to perpetuate them. It’s one reason Barbara Tuchman’s The Guns of August will never go out of date. Almost all of the “lessons” learned from the insane bloodbath of World War I were wrong and helped to set the stage for the even more genocidal World War two decades later, was itself a war that produced not global peace but a world at perpetual war with itself, with antagonistic nuclear powers still fighting over the same scraps of land and oil reserves, insensate to the future of the planet itself.

(Jeffrey St. Clair)

Those emergence funds are needed here in this country to help solve our growing problems….but our corporate Congress had rather spend it anywhere but here.

If we want to help Ukraine then let the Pentagon and the CIA divert their funds….stop milking the taxpayer or let the corporations making profits off war foot the bill.

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