Absolutely nothing anywhere suggests US aid is being pilfered, or that current tracking systems are in any way insufficient. The isolationist populist republican wing is just talking out of its ass about inserting unneeded regulations that will add little to the control environment but lots of delays in getting materials to the battlefield. And our European allies have given more that we have, proportionate to their gdps.

Repubs need to listen to the people in their own party who know what they’re talking about over the populist demagogues. Mark Esper made one of the better cases I’ve heard:

- aid to Ukraine is a win for us in every way. Decades of non-state actor primary threats have eroded our domestic weapons manufacturing capacity. We are rebuilding that by supporting Ukraine, providing them with inventory which we then replenish with new manufacturing. That will improve readiness in this new era of heightened threats from large state actors. Not to mention actually stimulating manufacturing here.

- abandoning Ukraine, or making baseless noise about corruption since the war started, is a direct investment in a shooting war with China in the very near future. Xi and Putin want to know if their totalitarian regimes can outlast western democracies. Populists like Trump and DeSantis are trying very hard to confirm that answer as a resounding “yes”. That will massively increase the chances of Chinese aggression before their economic and demagraphic trends weaken them too much, meaning probably soon. It will increase the chances that we’ll be fighting against Russia too, at the same time. And we’ll have foregone the build up and updating of our own munitions stores which supplying Ukraine supports.

These noises about abandoning Ukraine are a direct, aggressive investment in getting the US in a direct two front war by the end of this decade.


[Post edited by hoolstoptheheels at 11/05/2023 11:11AM]