Americans do not want to go to war over a conflict halfway around the world, and our politicians should stop clamoring for further American involvement in Ukraine. Our leaders should be encouraging peace without misleading Ukrainians into fighting on in the hope that we will cripple Russia with sanctions or send fighter jets to the war zone.
The bellicose rhetoric from American politicians is worsening the conflict, rather than bringing it to a peaceful resolution. A new $12 billion aid package to Ukraine, which would extend the armed conflict and increase its casualties, is being rushed through Congress.
Ukraine was ranked as merely the 92nd most democratic country, behind even Burma in a list of 176 nations compiled by the Democracy Matrix, and it has long been controlled by a few billionaire oligarchs who milk the country for their own benefit. It formerly had a democratically elected leader who got along with neighboring Russia, but he was ousted by a leftist-funded revolution in 2014.
Russia has repeatedly offered to settle the conflict rather than crush Ukraine, but as long as Ukrainian politicians expect a lifeline from the West they have little reason to compromise. Russia demands only that Ukraine end its military hostilities, promise not to join the anti-Russia EU or NATO, recognize Crimea as part of Russia, and acknowledge the independence of the small Donetsk and Lugansk whose residents speak Russian.
Those modest demands hardly fit the liberal narrative that Russia is supposedly targeting innocent civilians or refugees fleeing the fighting. Beating war drums prolongs the bloodshed until residents leave, as more than 2 million Ukrainians have already fled.
Without support by the American people, a handful of globalists have quietly expanded NATO all the way to the Russian border, including even nations that were part of the former Soviet Union. Joe Biden endorsed this reckless expansion, which provoked the war that we now watch tragically unfold.
The immediate harm to Americans is the soaring cost of gasoline, which our politicians should be addressing instead of rushing to send lethal weapons to Ukraine. Congress should reverse the ban on new domestic oil and gas drilling which Biden announced on his first day in office and reiterated last month in defiance of a federal court order.
On Tuesday Biden banned the importation of Russian oil, and other Russian imports are prohibited except of course for materials wanted by large corporations such as titanium for Boeing, plus nickel, palladium, and cobalt for the green new deal. The oil ban hurts only the American consumer, not Russia which can easily sell that same oil elsewhere.
China can buy all the oil and any other Russian products that are blocked from being imported here. India and Pakistan have also declined to participate in sanctions against Russia, so such political stunts do not affect Russia much.
Venezuela, a country that we are already unsuccessfully punishing with sanctions, stands to gain from a ban on Russian oil. Biden is considering importing oil from the communist Venezuelan regime to replace the oil we use from Russia.
We should be producing our own oil and gas, but Biden rejects tapping into unused oil fields here. Liberal environmentalists demand that Biden continue to block our own energy production, so we will remain dependent on foreign oil until Trump is reelected.
Last week Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) publicly mused to himself, “Joe, would you pay 10 cents more a gallon to support the people of Ukraine?” Answering his own stupid question, the multimillionaire Manchin, who famously lives on a 56-foot houseboat moored in the Potomac River, said “I would gladly pay 10 cents more a gallon.”
Most Americans would be glad to pay only 10 cents more, but gas prices have surged by $2.00 a gallon since Biden was elected, while the price of diesel fuel is up by $2.50 a gallon. Truckers, farmers, and other hard-working Americans cannot afford to fill up the big rigs they need to produce and deliver the food and supplies that we all depend on every day.
Not only dollars are at stake in Biden’s misguided approach. Lives are lost when Congress pours kerosene on the fire in Ukraine.
Most worrisome are the irresponsible calls to send fighter jets to Ukraine, or to Poland in a three-way deal to replace fighter jets that Poland would send to Ukraine. This would merely escalate the war and spread it to NATO member countries that we unwisely promised to defend.
Unnecessary wars are good only for the media, weapons manufacturers, and pompous politicians, most of whom never served in combat themselves. Merely six months after the end of our 20-year war in Afghanistan, Americans oppose entanglement by globalists in another war in a faraway land that we never promised to defend.
John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work.
