End Ukraine War

A half-million dead or wounded soldiers is enough

This weekend marks the second anniversary of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, a nation that Biden and many others in Washington have used to launder bribes for decades. The folks in DC used Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as a forever war to replace the one they had in Afghanistan, which they should have ended when we found Osama bin Laden — in Pakistan. We continued it for another decade because it kept the war machine going.

Guests and fish stink after 3 days, but it takes people a few years to really smell a bad war. This one’s stench hit my nostrils on Day One. Zelensky was the key to the first impeachment of President Trump. American politicians saw Putin’s attempt to annex half of Ukraine as an opportunity to make money, and they have.

Ukraine poses no threat to U.S. security. None. Its nukes were deactivated a couple of decades ago. Oh, it provides a lot of grain to Africa and elsewhere, but the last time I looked we still had amber waves of grain. I believe the Africans don’t care if Zelensky or Putin runs the joint as long as the price is right. They have enough worries of their own.

Nevertheless, the USA alone has borrowed and spent more than $100 billion on Ukraine. The result is death, destruction and a slowing down of an inevitable Russian victory. We never will learn how much money went in kickbacks from these unaudited giveaways.

This war is now a meat grinder. The death toll of soldiers is staggering.

The New York Times reported on August 18, “The total number of Ukrainian and Russian troops killed or wounded since the war in Ukraine began 18 months ago is nearing 500,000, U.S. officials said, a staggering toll as Russia assaults its next-door neighbor and tries to seize more territory.

“The officials cautioned that casualty figures remained difficult to estimate because Moscow is believed to routinely undercount its war dead and injured, and Kyiv does not disclose official figures. But they said the slaughter intensified this year in eastern Ukraine and has continued at a steady clip as a nearly three-month-old counteroffensive drags on.”

Zelensky will fight to the last drop of blood from his soldiers. No one is interested in being that last man now.

AP reported on Thursday, “Desperate for soldiers, Ukraine weighs unpopular plan to expand the draft.”

Paragraph 7 said, “The parliament is considering legislation that would increase the potential pool of recruits by about 400,000, in part by lowering the enlistment age from 27 to 25. But the proposal is highly unpopular, forcing elected officials to grapple with questions that cut to the heart of nationhood: Can they convince enough citizens to sacrifice their lives? And, if not, are they willing to accept the alternative?”

The alternative is to have a large swath of Ukraine become part of Russia again. Kyiv was once the capital of Russia. I have been called worse than Putin’s puppet. Telling the truth is a shield from the Lord’s wrath, not necessarily man’s. (“Stop trusting in man, who has but a breath in his nostrils. Of what account is he?” — Isaiah 2:22.)

So few Ukrainians are willing to die for Zelensky that he has to import cannon fodder.

The Kyiv Independent reported, “Foreigners and stateless persons will be allowed to serve in Ukraine's National Guard, according to a decree signed Feb. 21 by President Volodymyr Zelensky.

“The announcement, published on the presidential office website, comes as the government attempts to ramp up mobilization efforts in 2024. The new law goes into immediate effect.”

They fight for democracy not just money, right? It’s an odd democracy that shut down Russian Orthodox churches, banned opposition parties and canceled this spring’s election. Even in the Civil War, America held its 1864 presidential election. And in World War II, we had the 1944 presidential election.

The Western press is all-in on canceling the election. Foreign Policy magazine lectured us in November, “Ukraine Doesn’t Want Wartime Elections.

“Zelensky is following the law — and the public mood.”

The magazine made the odd argument that the election was not necessary, stating, “The scale of the commanding lead that Zelensky has over his political opponents is nearly unheard of in any democracies, let alone Western ones. Few leaders around the world have the same level of popular support and legitimacy that Zelensky’s government currently holds. This is not a government that is in doubt about its democratic legitimacy, and if there were elections in March, the results would be almost guaranteed to be a landslide victory.”

Well, yes, if you ban opposition parties, you should win by a large margin — unless you are Nikki Haley, who lost in Nevada to that Catholic woman, Nun of the Above.

Investigative reporter Jordan Schachtel, however, is rightly outraged by this.

He wrote, “Ukraine’s 2024 elections served as the last means of restoring accountability for a government hellbent on advancing a strategy of geopolitical seppuku, continuing to force its countrymen to wage war against a much more powerful neighbor.

“Under the cover of the fog of war, the Ukrainian government has transformed into a totalitarian dictatorship, losing the moral high ground it once maintained with the public at the beginning of hostilities. When the war finally ends, the Ukrainian people will have to find a way to restore some semblance of the constitutional order that has been shattered in just two years’ time.”

This war now is a bore in America. Support is so low that Republicans finally are saying no to giving Zelensky more money we don’t have.

How different things were a year ago when Biden celebrated the first anniversary of this mother lode for the military-industrial complex. He flew to Ukraine where he was treated to a walk in Kyiv amid air raid sirens blaring even though there were no planes in the sky and no anti-aircraft artillery firing.

Biden said, “Putin thought Ukraine was weak and the West was divided. He thought he could outlast us. I don’t think he’s thinking that right now. He’s just been plain wrong.”

But it looks like Putin pegged it correctly. The devil is pretty good in assessing human frailty, isn’t he?

We would all like Putin to go away. He is an evil man but his iniquity does not bestow goodness upon his rivals. Indeed, the actual Hitler and Stalin staged four years of war along the Eastern front. Zelensky is far from their evil but he is a bad man unworthy of our support.

Putin attacked because Biden is weak. Iran noticed. CNBC reported, “Iran declares Antarctica its property in direct challenge to Biden, global treaty.”

On the second anniversary of the invasion, no one seems to much care about it outside of Ukraine.

Unlikely as it seems, Biden could be the big winner from this war. Now that all the bribes have been doled out, he can call Putin and Zelensky in and broker a cease-fire greased with even more money we don’t have. ’Tis the American way — and it might be very useful in an election year.