They’ve fought Putin to the very last Ukrainian.
A series of remarkable events with enormous consequences for Ukraine tumbled in rapid succession this week, lifting the veil on years of untrammeled and proud — yet ultimately purposeless and sociopathic — lying by the Biden administration and the Pentagon about the war there.
First, ahead of a crucial vote on military aid to both Ukraine and Israel Wednesday, Joe Biden went on TV to denounce Republicans for threatening to halt the $110 billion national security package. GOP leaders had told the White House they wouldn’t support the bill without border-sealing assurances of the type they knew Democrats wouldn’t accept, so Biden was cornered and clearly pissed. Eyes snapped wide open as the (surely fantastic) drugs aides must pump in by the gallon before public appearances kicked in, Biden went off:
“Republicans think they can get everything they want without any bipartisan compromise,” he snapped. “And now they’re willing to literally kneecap Ukraine on the battlefield and damage our national security in the process.” […]
A few hours later, National Security spokesperson John Kirby upped the ante, telling ABC reporter Selena Wang that not only should we be contemplating deployment of American troops, but a possible cost in American “blood” if Putin is allowed to take Ukraine and threaten other NATO countries. (That potential cost has been the same since NATO was founded in 1949, but whatever). Kirby’s offhand observation that Ukraine would “lose this war” absent U.S. support was the actual big news, but Kirby’s “based Biden” comments about “blood” were the ones that went viral. […]
After that bang-bang-bang succession of events, proclamations of imminent doom for Ukraine issued from the mouths of every Western national security official and war-supporting politician within reach of a microphone. Then Tucker Carlson tweeted a report that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told House members in a classified briefing that if they didn’t approve more money for Ukraine, “we’ll send your uncles, cousins and sons to fight Russia.”
The weirdly personal threat, which Tucker insists is a verbatim quote, showed how desperate a moment this is for the national security state. Potential consequences extend far beyond loss and suffering for Ukraine. The entire interventionist project is looking at a setback on the scale of the Iraq disaster, a political fiasco so enormous it prompted four years of cuts to the defense budget. Watching Putin waltz across Ukraine after the last two years of blood, profligate spending, and premature end zone celebrations by retired brass and Beltway think-tankers would make the withdrawal from Afghanistan look like one of Biden’s tarmac stumbles by comparison.
