While Ukrainians fight and die to defend freedom from tyranny, Rand Paul struts upon the stage. Rand Paul, single handedly, is delaying military aid to Ukraine so that he may grab some media attention. This prima donna reminds me of the “America First Committee” who resisted U.S. assistance to Britain as Britain was being attacked by Nazi Germany in 1940. He uses the same short-sighted arguments.
Rand Paul is, like a broken clock, occasionally right, but in this case he could not be more wrong-headed about America’s self interest. Unless you think that it is in America’s interest to allow Putin to reestablish the Soviet Union/Russian empire. Is it in our interest to have a despotic empire stretching from the Arctic Ocean to the Black Sea and from the Pacific Ocean to Germany and France? Is it in our interest to have Putin using the resources of that vast empire to control and dominate those states not within its direct control? If you doubt this scenario, look no further than the degree to which Russian gas exports have intimidated Germany and France in the current conflict. It takes very little imagination to foresee pro-Russian puppet states established in Germany and France through economic dominance and interference in their elections.
Make no mistake the Ukrainians are fighting our fight, just as Britain was fighting our fight in 1940. The very least we can do for Ukraine is to arm them for the fight.
And lest we forget, the U.S. and the U.K. were co-signatories in 1994, along with Russia, in the agreement for Ukraine to hand over its nuclear weapons in return for a guarantee of Ukraine’s territorial integrity. If we fail to support Ukraine the obvious message to other countries is that you are on your own. Do we really think it is in our interest to have every country with its own nuclear arsenal? Is it in our interest for every country to believe that America’s word is no more valuable than Neville Chamberlain’s piece of paper?
Rand Paul is claiming that the money is not well targeted- and this WAS the case for money we send in the past to for Iraq stuff. But here is my question: Is he SINCERLEY trying to be careful here OR is he JUST delaying for media attention. While I suspect the latter, I wonder if he may actually (perhaps accidentally) have a point here?
Would he have the same objections if Trump was president and pushing for the aid package?
Side note: A principled LIbertarian would have objected VERY strongly to Ron DeSantos teling cruise companies that they are NOT ALLOWED to have vax or mask mandates. Rand Paul has not objected at all.
Rand Paul often steps up to the plate to defend Libertarianism. The problem is that Libertarianism, for all of its good points, has only one answer to despotic, militarily aggressive foreign states: isolationism. While, in retrospect, he might have been right about Iraq, that was a failure of intelligence gathering not of policy. Sadam was doing everything in his power to trick the West and Iran into believing that he had WMD. He was too good at it for his own good and ours.
Rand Paul was also a knee jerk Liberarian on Covid. One gets the feeling that he would oppose mask and vaccine mandates in the face of a widespread Ebola/Small Pox outbreak in the U.S. I also find it difficult to see how someone, with any intellectual honesty, can oppose mask and vaccine mandates for the protection of other innocent life and defend criminalizing abortion in order to defend innocent life. My message to him: It is hard to be right, but at least you can be consistent. Does he favor compelling people (even corpses) to give blood or organs to save the lives of others? Apparently the only people who can be compelled to take any action to save the “lives” of others are pregnant women.
Also, he claims to want an inspector general established to track the funds. I don’t recall any objections from Rand Paul when Trump was attempting to fire a number of inspectors general because he did not like being inspected.