Two years of war in Ukraine- And Republicans are playing a lively game of "Fuck your Buddy"

House Republicans really need to fornicate themselves

As a nation, we began by declaring that 'all men are created equal.' We now practically read it 'all men are created equal, except negroes.' When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read 'all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and Catholics.' When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty – to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.

• Abraham Lincoln, Lincoln Letters

Thats called hypocrisy, you shuck face piece of -!

• James Dashner, The Maze Runner

Two years ago today, Russia invaded Ukraine and began a war of aggression that continues with no cause or justification. Over the past two years, Ukrainians have fought and died bravely, defending their country with the conviction that they cannot afford to allow Vladimir Putin’s Russia to roll over their burgeoning democracy.

Before the war, Ukraine had its issues- corruption chief among them- but the small country, long known as Russia’s breadbasket and now the world’s, was trying to figure things out. Ukraine deserved to have the space to determine its path with assistance from the West, and it was doing that. It posed no discernible threat to Russia.

Vladimir Putin couldn’t stand the idea of another functional democracy on Russia’s border, especially one that used to be a former Soviet republic. Ukraine’s natural resources were at one time an economic engine for the former Soviet Union, and Putin wanted them for Russia to fuel his vision of restored Russian greatness.

Two years later, Russia is no closer to achieving Putin’s vision than it was on Day One. The war has exposed many aspects of Russian weaknesses. Much of its equipment is obsolete. Most of its field-grade leadership is corrupt and incompetent. The Russian Army goes through infantry soldiers as if their lives are meaningless…and to Putin, they hold no meaning at all. Their strategy and tactics are mired in the Cold War and haven’t been adapted to the modern battlefield. Russian ground forces are clumsy and unable to adapt on the fly.

The Ukrainian Army, by way of comparison, has proven to be surprisingly agile, adaptable, and willing to learn and change on the fly. Senior and field-grade leaders have shown an impressive willingness and ability to learn and adapt as circumstances require. They don’t engage in actions that waste troops because they don’t have large numbers of them to waste.

Having received a wide range of weaponry from numerous Western countries, Ukrainian troops have become adept at taking what weapons come into their possession and putting them to practical use.

Ukrainian troops also have the advantage when it comes to morale. They’re defending their homeland; there’s nowhere else for them to go. They know their backs are up against the wall and fight as if their lives depend on it…because they do. Most Russians are conscripts and would rather be anywhere else but on a battlefield in Ukraine.

Behind the lines, Ukrainian civilians are supporting the war effort in thousands of ways, from building tank traps and improvised drones to sewing uniforms and rucksacks. Companies are selling their wares overseas to raise money for the war effort- jewelry, clothing, and art, are being sold online to raise money. It’s an impressively all-in effort from foot soldiers to seamstresses to artists to do everything they can to defeat Russia.

American military and humanitarian support has played a critical role in Ukrainian success thus far, as it should. To put it mildly, the United States OWES it to Ukraine:

UKRAINE WAS ONCE home to thousands of nuclear weapons. The weapons were stationed there by the Soviet Union and inherited by Ukraine when, at the end of the Cold War, it became independent. It was the third-largest nuclear arsenal on Earth. During an optimistic moment in the early 1990s, Ukraine’s leadership made what today seems like a fateful decision: to disarm the country and abandon those terrifying weapons, in exchange for signed guarantees from the international community ensuring its future security.

The decision to disarm was portrayed at the time as a means of ensuring Ukraine’s security through agreements with the international community — which was exerting pressure over the issue — rather than through the more economically and politically costly path of maintaining its own nuclear program. Today, with Ukraine being swarmed by heavily armed invading Russian troops bristling with weaponry and little prospect of defense from its erstwhile friends abroad, that decision is looking like a bad one.

After the collapse of the USSR, Ukraine inherited around 1700 nuclear warheads and 176 intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). By default, Ukraine became the world’s third-largest nuclear power.

In 1994, Ukraine signed the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances with Russia, the UK, and the US. The memorandum was a promise to respect and defend Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial integrity. In return, Ukraine would accede to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) and become a non-nuclear-weapon state.

The removal of Ukraine’s nuclear weapons was completed in 1996 with the assistance of Russia and the US.

Part of the memorandum was the promise to protect Ukraine from outside aggression. It was a promise that relied partly on Russian goodwill, which, as history has shown, is never a good bet.

The tragedy now unfolding in Ukraine is underlining a broader principle clearly seen around the world: Nations that sacrifice their nuclear deterrents in exchange for promises of international goodwill are often signing their own death warrants. In a world bristling with weapons with the potential to end human civilization, nonproliferation itself is a morally worthwhile and even necessary goal. But the experience of countries that actually have disarmed is likely to lead more of them to conclude otherwise in the future.

The question that never seems to be discussed in the mainstream media is why the Budapest Memorandum has not come into play. Why has it proven to be so many words?

Of course, there’s the on-the-ground reality that Russia has the world’s second-largest nuclear force, and Vladimir Putin has never been afraid to incorporate it into his saber-rattling. That has been and remains the wild card when it comes to introducing American troops into Ukraine.

Would Putin employ nuclear weapons in retaliation against American troops on his border?

To avoid fucking around and potentially finding out, the Biden Administration has sent billions in American weaponry to Ukraine. That is, it did until House Republicans decided it would be more effective to hold American aid hostage so it could use our southern border as leverage in the 2024 Presidential election.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and other isolationist Republicans have decided that Ukraine “isn’t our problem.” They appear to have no problem with the Ukrainian Army and the Ukrainian people suffering and eventually being ground under the bootheel of the Russian bear.

The problem with this growing pro-Russian isolationism is that it risks eroding, if not completely destroying, American credibility within the international community. If America can’t be trusted to keep its commitments, it won’t be long before countries begin looking elsewhere for business opportunities and political alliances.

Once the rest of the world determines that America isn’t worth the treaties it signs, they’ll have no incentive to enter into agreements with us. No country will share intelligence or anything else of value that will help make the world safer, better, and more profitable for everyone. Why? Because no country will trust America with its secrets.

But House Republicans don’t care about any of that. All they care about is creating chaos and making a mess of things. They lack the gravitas and maturity to govern, especially in foreign affairs, which cannot be conducted on a transactional basis. So much of foreign relations is about relationships; if those sour, rebuilding trust can be difficult to impossible.

The tide of the war in Ukraine is beginning to turn against the Ukrainian Army. Pluckiness can only get a small country so far on the battlefield. At some point, there has to be superior firepower in the hands of the people defending their country’s freedom. Absent that, Russia (which is being resupplied by North Korea and Iran) will roll over the smaller Ukrainian Army.

By the terms of the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, we OWE Ukraine assistance to protect their sovereignty and territorial integrity. Suppose we’re unwilling to put American troops on the line, which is understandable. No one wants to see Americans troops dying in Ukraine. In that case, we should be willing to provide Ukraine with whatever degree of weaponry they need to defeat Russia.

Ukrainians have proven their mettle. They’re demonstrated their bravery. What they need, and deserve, is the assistance we promised them in the Budapest Memorandum. Or are our commitments merely casualties to realpolitik?

We owe it to the people of Ukraine, particularly the children, who’ve lost two years of their lives trying to survive from day to the next. If you look at Ukraine from a 30,000-ft. view, it’s tragic, but it’s difficult to wrap one’s head around what’s truly cataclysmic and harrowing about the past 24 months. It’s the individual stories- the children forced to grow up in the Kharkiv subway without parents. The wives who go months at a time without seeing or hearing from their husbands on the front lines. Families living in deplorable, inhuman conditions in places like Mariupol, where barely a building has survived intact.

Every day, a bit more of Ukraine dies.

Not a single family in Ukraine has been left untouched by this war. Brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers, sons and daughters have been injured and killed. Millions of people have lost their homes. Many of them simply have nowhere to return to.

The war against Ukraine is also destroying Russia and ruining its future. Millions in Russia have also been affected by this war. Thousands of people have sacrificed their freedom and their lives to oppose the authorities and stand up to Putin. Many have been forced into exile. Ukrainians have faith in their future victory and the support of the democratic world. And of course, history is on their side. For Russians, an enormous amount of work lies ahead — and if we’re going to get through it, we can’t lose hope for the future. And that’s not so easy right now.

Two years is long enough to get used to almost anything. And many people nearly have. Many have simply averted their eyes. But closing our eyes won’t make this nightmare go away — because this isn’t a bad dream, it’s reality.

Ukraine is a country scarred by tragedy and unimaginable horror inflicted upon them by an army that respect neither the laws of war or of simple human decency. Russian war-fighting is savage- combat at its rawest and most brutal, a meatgrinder that doesn’t care what’s fed into it. It doesn’t discern Russian from Ukrainian and respects no nationality.

The mass graves found in villages like Bucha are just another day at the office for Russian forces. While individual Russian soldiers may balk at the orders they’re given to leave nothing alive, they also know that if they flinch, they may be killed as an example to others.

And so they kill. And kill. And kill some more, until they’re numb to the task at hand and their moral compass ceases to function in any meaningful way. Reports of Russian infantry units raping and killing women are legion, and many of those reports have been verified. For many Russian commanders, sexual violence is a legitimate tactic of a ground war, intended to demoralize an enemy they’ve long since dehumanized.

Whether House Republicans are willing to admit it or not, Ukraine bleeding the Russian Army to whatever degree may be possible is in America’s best interests. Something about “fighting them over there so we don’t have to fight them over here,” eh?

America needs to stand by our commitment to Ukraine. Even absent the Budapest Memorandum, providing material support to the Ukrainian Army is the right and moral thing to do. Republicans need to get off their ample, disinterested backsides and make it happen before it’s too late and Vladimir Putin is riding a tank through downtown Kyiv.

Or perhaps that’s what they’re after?

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