The Reuters Headline: US Public Support Declines for Arming Ukraine

Very interesting, the well-I-guess-that’s-the-end-of-that headline from our trusted friends at Reuters, complete with an Oval Office pic of Biden and Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskiy. Biden looks like he has an upset stomach to match his upset Congress, but Zelenskiy (sometimes spelled Zelenskii) looks his usual confident self.

Wouldn’t you think the press and White House could come to some agreement on how to spell the name of a president?

But let’s pause for a moment and survey that so-called ‘public support’ in America

The stats are as follows on public support in America:
for gun control, 63%
for abortion on demand, 61%
for labor unions, 71%
for an increased minimum wage, 72%
for anti corruption laws in congress (they won’t tell us the percent)
for climate change mitigation, 75%
for commuting, or reducing the sentences of people incarcerated for drugs, 61%
for reducing health care and pharmaceutical costs, 83%
in favor of maximum age limits for elected officials in Washington, 79%

…and the list goes on and on, but has any of this been accomplished in Washington? Nary a one. So much for public opinion carrying the day.

So now to the question at hand.

What is the public support (not Congressional) for continuing aid to Ukraine?

A recent poll found that 63 percent of U.S. adults support providing additional arms and military supplies to the Ukrainian government. That is comparable to 65 percent last November but down from 72 percent in July 2022. So we’re looking at a 9% drop over the last fifteen months. But why is the media declaring that ‘public support’ is over?

Seems to me that it’s because the money and power in America—the people who actually run things—are getting weary of what they look on as ‘a cute little war by brave people we don’t really care about.’ The real game, the game of mega-profits and wealth accumulation is elsewhere. In gated communities across America, it’s a tiresome little affair between the Great Russian Bear and a small country no one ever heard of, both of them well past their sell-by date.

If that sounds heartless, it’s because it is, for Ukrainian children huddled in basements over 1 year, 7 months, 1 week and 5 days. But they’re not your kids or my kids, not heirs to the Walmart or Google or Apple fortunes. They’re simply someone else’s children and, what the hell…

But Congressional support is another matter, because Congress holds the funding power

And the legislative branch, the House of Representatives, is closed at the moment.

Say what?

It seems their Speaker, Republican Kevin McCarthy, made the unheard of blunder of sitting down and actually collaborating with Democrats to keep the American Government from default. It may be the sole redeeming act of a man who traded away all his powers in order to be elected. And I honor him for that. It took courage over the personal commitments he made to become speaker. And that’s brave, but they threw him out of office for it.

Now there was a time, and I remember it, when that sort of bi-partisan cooperation was accepted as the proper way to represent those Americans who had the common sense to elect stronger men. But those were days before both parties got into food-fights and ran to their base for survival, mucking around in the swamp that Washington has become. The light is very dim down there.

So, for the moment, the House of Representatives represents no one, having shut itself down in a fit of pique

Who will stand for Speaker, having watched the humiliation of McCarthy? But then, who would have thought that there was a time to quit on a small nation that stands up to Putin’s Russia and says, “not in my country, you don’t.”

Unsurprisingly, if you live outside America, as I do, you are constantly reminded that the world has become quite used to the endlessly demonstrated fact that our leaders are great at starting, but unreliable as hell in finishing. Need I point to Korea, Cuba, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan? Perhaps not, but now it seems we cannot even be trusted to hang with an ally we chose and see them through, even when we’ve nothing in the game but money. We’ve embarrassed NATO (which was our great idea), soiled our underwear in Europe and given unspoken support to the increasingly hard-right political climate throughout the European Union.

It’s tiresome these little wars, where we are unable to throw the full weight of the planet’s largest military and get our ass handed to us. Beyond tiresome, it’s embarrassing to watch a small country of 35 million kick the Russian Bear simply because they would choose to die rather than quit.

So we gave them enough support to swing in the wind, but not to win

And now an American government--that can’t even keep itself open--is failing the bravest civilian population the world has yet seen. All because they are not our children in those basements and there’s no profit to be made in a proxy war.

The clear message to Vladimir Putin is “hang in there. America, including their politicians, oligarchs and the media, will tire of this war just as they have all others, then blame it on lack of public support.” Then a deal will be proposed and all the dead and wounded on both sides, including the children in basements, will be for naught.

We can add Ukraine to our Wall of Shame.

If you have a foreign friend, even a close Russian friend (as I have), try to explain that to them.