The Morning Briefing: Unease Over Biden's Proxy Quagmire in Ukraine Is Growing

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Happy Wednesday, dear Kruiser Morning Briefing friends. Carlyle’s friends were perplexed by his abrupt decision to get his back covered in a tattoo of Capt. Stubing from The Love Boat.

Joe Biden’s pathetic and expensive photo-op trip to Ukraine has really opened the floodgates for opinions on whatever it is we are doing there.

I mentioned a couple of times last year that I wasn’t writing about the Ukraine situation because foreign affairs and policy aren’t areas of expertise for me. I’m a domestic politics kind of guy. Still, I read about the situation and, from the beginning, felt weird about the seemingly bipartisan cheerleading that was going on for Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The pop idol treatment during wartime was off-putting. My misgivings about the situation weren’t helped by the fact that Zelenskyy was lapping it up.

The lack of clarity on exactly what America’s priorities are there has bothered me all along as well. Yeah, we want to help. But how much and for how long? After all, this country has had some rough history when it comes to getting involved in wars when our intentions are vague.

I’ve had more than one conservative friend tell me that we should be doing everything we can to support Ukraine. I remained uncomfortable.

It’s becoming increasingly apparent that I am not alone.

Athena wrote something about all of this yesterday, and her opening paragraph got a long-distance high five from me:

I know we’re not supposed to say this in polite company, but not all of us are on board with the blind, headlong race to empty U.S. coffers and armories into a Northern European country that is not particularly important to our interests abroad. Many Americans are more than a little tired of borrowing billion of dollars from China to send to Big Global’s latest infatuation, Ukraine, with no oversight and no end in sight. And while Leftists are swooning over Bumbling Biden’s appearance in Kyiv to casually announce he’s tossing in another half bil, plenty of people are actually more angry than impressed. How much more are we supposed to pay for this, we wonder, and why isn’t Biden visiting the actual Americans in East Palestine, Ohio, who are in a crisis of their own?

It’s always dangerous to ask, “How much?” when the Democrats are throwing around taxpayer dollars. They reject limitations when it comes to other people’s money.

Athena then chronicles a recent rant by Blaze Media’s Steve Deace, which featured this gem of a line: “…this is a Habsburg Dynasty pissing contest over a strip of land most people can’t find, don’t care about, has no strategic value to anybody within the sound of my voice unless they’re involved in investing money with Hunter Biden.”

And the United States of America is remaining close enough to the contest to get the mess blown all over us.

Many in politics and the media were fond of calling the United States military presences in Iraq and Afghanistan “quagmires,” because they were reminiscent of our flailing in Vietnam. We may not yet have troops in Ukraine, but Biden’s open-ended financial commitment to keeping his bromance with Zelenskyy going has a quagmire vibe to it.

Athena mentioned that Biden has yet to visit East Palestine, Ohio amid its disaster. Kira writes over at RedState that the town’s mayor felt that was a “slap in the face.” Hey, why visit suffering Americans in an area with a lot of Republicans when he can pretend to be Douglas MacArthur while meeting with a world leader who dresses like he gets nothing but Gap gift cards for Christmas every year?

This country is barely beginning to snap out of its pandemic malaise. It would be super nice to not have to deal with World War III anytime soon.

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