Ron DeSantis came out against our current blank check n’ hack cliches Ukraine policy, stating the indisputable truth that Ukraine was not a vital US interest worthy of risking World War III with Russia. The next day he was proven right when a Russian SU-27 knocked a US Reaper drone into the Black Sea. Hey, feeding Russians (and Ukrainians) into a meat grinder is all fun and games until we get dragged into the abattoir too. Of course, all the right people got really mad about it – when Bill Kristol, Adam Kinzinger, David French, Max Boot and Mitt Romney are all for something, you need to be against it. Hardest hit was the GOP establishment – it was very sad because the governor refuses to be dragged along into cheerleading yet another massive foreign policy failure.
And this Ukraine policy of feeding the fire in perpetuity will lead to yet another massive foreign policy failure. Massive failure is all our foreign policy elite knows. Name one of its successes since 1993. Don’t say the Abraham Accords – that was a huge success and had nothing to do with our foreign policy establishment. It was Trump outsiders who did it. The foreign policy establishment brought us Vietnam and Somalia, Iraq and Afghanistan. It brought us debt, blood, and humiliation. Yet, astonishingly, perpetual nimrods like Mitch McConnell John Cornyn and Lindsey Graham still defer to these utter losers.
But not Ron DeSantis. And he will be vindicated by the time he wins the nomination. Same with Trump should he win the nomination, but everyone expected him to say what he is currently saying – they were hoping that the Great Not Orange Hope would side with Team Sap and he rejected them. Ron DeSantis – who served in Iraq and saw the failure firsthand – has rejected the Beltway consensus. He’s a bit ahead of most of America now, but after another year and a half of this madness he and the American people will be in synch. If he wins the nomination, he will be an anti-war Republican against a pro-war establishment Democrat.
Americans are not pacifists, but they are sick of failure, and that’s what Ukraine is looking to become. Most Americans feel that Ukraine is corrupt, which it totally is – I saw it personally. They feel sympathy for the Ukrainians, as do I (I trained Ukrainian soldiers in Ukraine for the Army). And they agree with DeSantis that this territorial dispute – which it is – is not a vital American interest that overcomes other priorities and that is worth endless treasure and maybe even blood. We generally hope Ukraine wins, but this is not our fight. Nor is the war likely to spread to NATO countries where we have treaty obligations – the idea that we need to retake Crimea so the Russians don’t show up in Berlin, much less London, is ridiculous. Americans are not prepared to put up with this conflict forever, but forever wars that culminate in embassy helicopter evacuations and people falling off C-17s are what the Beltway buffoons do.