For those new visitors and those that are not sure of my stand on the Ukraine war I want to let all know that I am a staunch antiwar advocate……I feel that it is a waste of resources and especially people….war is a desperate war by desperate people.

So I attempt to inform my readers at every turn….mostly it is a fart in the wind but I keep trying…..

As we think about the nightmarish war in Ukraine, let me just offer you a few figures: almost a million dead, nearly 400,000 of them civilians; at least 38 million people turned into war refugees or internally displaced; and perhaps $8 trillion in money squandered on that hell on Earth. Oh wait, sorry, that’s what happens when you get old and things start to blur in your mind. Yes, the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine is indeed a horror of slaughtered civilians, mind-boggling numbers of refugees and internally displaced Ukrainians, and untold amounts of money already squandered on death and destruction. The figures I just gave you, however, come from the invaluable Costs of War Project’s calculations about what used to be called this country’s “Global War on Terror,” which includes the invasions, occupations of, and disastrous conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq.

As we face a Congress that can’t agree to spend any reasonable sums on needy Americans but is racing to raise staggering billions of dollars to arm the Ukrainians (no questions asked), it’s worth remembering that, in this century, when it came to invasions and horrifying wars, our leaders were functionally Vladimir Putins. Now, thanks to him, we’ve suddenly become the “good guys” again, a phenomenon in which Washington is, of course, reveling. If only, as the other major invader nation of this century, we had learned that making peace is so much better than making war and were putting at least some of our efforts into brokering negotiations between the warring parties in Ukraine rather than further revving up the conflict and glorying in doing so.

Ukraine: An Antiwar Dilemma

My biggest problem is the waste of funds that are needed here in this country.

More money for Ukraine….and then more  money…..

The fact is, Zelensky would rather shame the west into precipitating WWIII than own up to the fact that the aggressive anti-Russian actions of his own government fostered the calamity that now besets his country. Those foolish actions include his pledges to forcibly take back Crimea, join NATO, and re-acquire nukes – along with the launch, before Russia’s February 24th invasion, of an all-out offensive against the Russian-speakers of the Donbas.

So let us repair to the fundamentals. To wit, the intramural conflict between Russians and Ukrainians in the historic borderlands of Russia has no bearing whatsoever on the liberty and security of the American homeland. Yet here was the GOP leadership pledging America’s unstinting support in treasure, if not blood, for a regime in Kiev that is only slightly less corrupt and authoritarian than Putin’s strongman kleptocracy in Moscow.

And when we say Russia is zero threat to the American homeland we mean that as in none, nada, nichts and nugatory. There exists a MAD (mutual assured destruction) standoff on the nuclear front; and there’s not a snowball’s chance in the hot place that Russia’s pip-squeak economy ($1.6 trillion of GDP versus $24 trillion US GDP and $43 trillion GDP for all of NATO) could ever fund the air, land and sea armada that would be required to vault over the Atlantic and Pacific moats and wage conventional war on the American homeland.

The Washington GOP: War-Besotted Sucklers on the Public Teat

And who do you think will ‘rebuild’ Ukraine?

Then ask…at what price to the country we love?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”