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Screenshot/Andrew Surabian X
Congress passed and President Joe Biden signed a bill on Wednesday that will send $95 billion of American taxpayer dollars overseas in the form of aid, with the bulk of it going to Ukraine.
The U.S. has already spent well north of $100 billion on Ukraine and it's ongoing war with Russia.
But how much more can we give? And to what ultimate end?
“We rose to the moment, we came together, and we got it done,” Biden said a White House event to announce the bill signing. “Now we need to move fast, and we are.”
But that's just false.
This senate speech this week by Republican Senator JD Vance tells a different story and is well worth your time.
There is another historical analogy that I think is worth pointing out, and that is the historical analogy of the early 2000s.
Now, in 2003, I was a high school senior, and I had a political position back then: I believed the propaganda of the George W. Bush administration that we needed to invade Iraq, that it was a war for freedom and democracy, that those who were appeasing Saddam Hussein were inviting a broader regional conflict. Does that sound familiar to anything that we’re hearing today? It’s the same exact talking points 20 years later with different names. But have we learned anything over the last 20 years? No, I don’t think that we have. We have learned that if we beat our chests instead of engaging in diplomacy, that it will somehow produce good outcomes? That is not true. We learned that if we talk incessantly about World War II, we can bully people and cause them to ignore their basic moral impulses and lead the country straight into catastrophic conflict.
Sen. Vance continued, "It’s one of the great ironies of my time in the United States Senate. For the last 18 months, I have been accused by multiple people of being a stooge of Vladimir Putin. Well, I take issue to that because in 2003, yes, I made the mistake of supporting the Iraq War. I also, a couple of months later, enlisted in the United States Marine Corps, one of two kids from my small block on McKinley Street in Middletown, Ohio, to enlist in the Marines just that year."
"I served my country honorably, and I saw when I went to Iraq that I had been lied to, that the promises of the foreign policy establishment of this country were a complete joke. Just a few days ago, we saw our friends in the House waving Ukrainian flags on the floor of the United States House. I’d love to see them waving the American flags with such gusto..."
"For three years, the Europeans have told us that Vladimir Putin is an existential threat to Europe. And for three years, they have failed to respond as if that were actually true. Donald Trump famously told European nations they have to spend more on their own defense. He was chastised by members of this chamber for having the audacity to suggest that Germany should step up and pay for its own defense."
There is more, but what an indictment of what Congress just did - an accurate one - by Sen. JD Vance.