The need to hold our noses - put politics aside and do the right thing.

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American conservatives are conflicted. For 70 years the United States has been preparing to fight the Russians. We enlisted a whole bunch of supporters in NATO in this quest. We have spent trillions of dollars on weaponry.

Now that the war has come, they are getting cold feet. They claim that the war was provoked by their political opposition – the neocons who have now found a home in the Democrat party. Some conservatives wanted to believe that Putin was the Great White Hope as the Democrats forgot their roots and destroyed white culture under the banner of diversity. Conservatives wanted to believe that Putin was the Christian stalwart as the Democrats abandoned and persecuted the religious.

Nope. Putin is a lying, posturing politician, wrapping himself in the flags of religion, traditional values and nationalism. Nothing unusual there. He is unusual only in that he was willing to start a war.

Ron Paul, a conservative that I generally admire, says that it is none of America's business what Russia does in Eastern Europe. America should not be involved. He is certainly right to claim that the military-industrial complex benefits from this war and may well have done a lot to instigate it. He is right to claim that we did not take every possible measure to avoid it.

He is wrong to claim that it does not affect our interests. This is as naked of an aggression as can be imagined, and there is no logical endpoint to it. If one allows Russia to engulf one country, Ukraine, which resolutely does not want to be Russian, the same logic could be applied to the Baltics, Moldova, Poland and everything west of there. It has to stop someplace, and the logical places here, where it started.

Paul Craig Roberts is even more in the bag, giving credence to the Russian claims that they represent the true interest of the Russian speaking people in eastern Ukraine. The vacuity of that claim was more than clear even in 2014. A majority of the people in the Donbass and Crimea did not want the Russians. Many of them left when the Russians came. Those who are left do not have the freedom to talk about their situation.

Ukraine did not represent a threat to Russia in 2022. It did not represent a threat eight years ago. It is clear that reconquering Ukraine has been on Putin's agenda since he took power two decades ago. Roberts is simply blind to that fact.

Edward Slavsquat has the best summary I have seen of the situation.  The United States and NATO have fought a number of stupid wars: Vietnam, Serbia, Libya, the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, Afghanistan, Iraq, ongoing hostilities with Iran… the list goes on. None of those wars affected vital American interests, and the American case for involvement was tenuous. Moreover, those wars were vastly expensive.

Getting involved in Ukraine is a much clearer cut decision. Russia attacked Ukraine. There is no denying it. Ukraine does not want Russia. This is obvious to all. Russia is destroying the major Russian-speaking cities in Ukraine. Any claim of protecting Russian speakers is absolute nonsense. He is killing them.

As far as money goes, this is the war which has justified trillions of dollars of research and development over seven decades. A vast standing army and warehouses full of munitions. Ukraine is willing to let its soldiers do the fighting. All that the West has to do is provide arms. It is a trivial cost compared to what is at stake, and trivial compared to the money that was wasted on far less justifiable wars.

We have to hold our noses and accept that the despicable neocons wanted this war, or at least did not do much to prevent it. As Matt Taibbi writes, the corrupt military-industrial complex is shilling for the war. It will make the money. A senile old president, steeped in corruption (see Hunter Biden), perhaps fraudulently elected (see 2000 Mules documentary), will take credit if it turns out successfully.  So be it. 

The conservatives are absolutely right that the larger danger is the New World Order. We still have to confront the medical tyranny of the public health zealots. We still have to reclaim public education and keep our children from being coached into changing genders. We have to reclaim the electoral process, ensuring the integrity of our democracy. We have to protect our freedoms from social credit systems that are being introduced via digital currency, implanted microchips, and universal surveillance systems.

These issues are bigger than, and separate from, the war in Ukraine. What we are facing here is naked, 19th century empire building aggression. It's the kind of primordial, anachronistic threat that NATO was built to deter. It involves 19th century atrocities like rape, murder, torture and kidnapping.  Still in front of us is the battle against 21st century atrocities like government-approved pederasty, forced gender realignment, forced medical procedures, lockdowns and deplatforming.  We have to deal with this one first, but not be blind to the fact that there are bigger battles yet to come.

Graham