I was unfair and harsh with you and I apologize for that, it was undeserved.
I am also not advocating for an endless cash flow into Ukraine. If we pump weapons, money etc... into Ukraine right now and in large quantity, it will have a huge effect on the outcome of the war, it will end favorably for the free world and it will end a lot quicker, meaning less death on all sides, and making it cheaper in the long run. We need to show some balls, sanction Russia totally, and really give Ukraine what it needs, this war could've been over this year had we done so, the trade and goodwill generated would offset the costs too.
Great post. There is a lot more at stake here than Ukraine, while the doing the right thing justification would be enough, we have to think wider and see how this affects the world, and in particular our enemies/potential enemies. The debacle of leaving Afghanistan was a huge sign to the rest of the world that we are weak and incompetent, Putin was undoubtedly emboldened by that, and who could blame him? If we had stood back, wrung our hands and doing nothing in Ukraine, Taiwan would probably be in a much worse position right now.
To be clear I mean the the hard core of the conservatives, not conservatives in general, it's always the extremes of any party/movement that are the assholes and the noise makers. With the media overwhelmingly backing the left and the extreme left I understand why the conservatives are defensive.
I don't want to speculate about elections or Zelenski because I simply don't know. Yeah it was the perfect storm with the points you made about Putin, Ukraine, NATO etc...
Germany fucked up bigtime, I think largely because of that bitch Merkel, I hope they see that now and will act accordingly in future, the EU wasn't much better, and Hungary can suck my balls.
There hasn't been a lot of money sent to Ukraine as far as I know, it's mostly equipment which is being remade here and keeping our arms industry moving.
What do you mean accounted for with the aid, we hand it to the govt, do you think we should be asking for unit hand-receipts? It just doesn't work that way, never has never will. The US military writes off most of the equipment that we deploy with ourselves. That said I do know there are plans being formulated for independent escorts of weapons to military depots.
