The left's need to accept it's role in what's happened to Ukraine

Source: transportenvironment

I feel like there is a lot of delusional thinking at play by the left on Ukraine. The left was overwhelmingly pro Russia before 2014, and many of them laughed at Mitt Romney for saying Russia would be our biggest geopolitical foe, or at Trump when he said Europe needed to get it's spending about 2% in NATO or stop buying Russian oil or else it faced financing their war machine and being totally dependent on them. [1] [2] People don't want to look at the facts of the situation and are stuck in a mindset fostered in 2001. Part of this is the creation of the belief that America or the west is always bad in every military activity they do, due to lies about the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. We did actually find WMD's, we didn't steal oil, Bush didn't do 9/11 and so on, and terrorists and Saddam were obviously a real threat. 50 countries got involved precisely due to this. Saddam not only admitted to having WMD's but threatened to use them against his neighbors, and an entire city, Halajbah, was poison gassed, as well as the marshes where most the food of the middle east was grown was drained and poisoned by him. This is the reason for the destabilization of the middle east. Nonetheless, somehow the fault for all of this was magically transferred to the west or America, and this has ever since created a sense of distrust about western governments in everything that they do, especially in regards to military activity. How many cries of "western imperialism" have we had to endure from the left-wing press and due to left-wing politicians? How much of the youth from that time period still believe in their 30's and 40's America or the west was at fault for everything in the middle east, eastern Europe, Africa, south America and the rest of the world, largely built on lies or ridiculous hand-wringing? That the capitalist west was the reason why every socialist shithole collapsed and invaded it's neighbors and killed all of it's people in concentration camps. How much praising of Venezuela, Saddam, Cuba, Hamas and Iran, and even the Viet Cong have we endured from the left-wing press and the so-called liberals?

The hard reality is the left has no-one to blame but themselves for this, willingly promoting ridiculous propaganda at the time. But the left also was unwilling to provide lethal aid to Ukraine when they were first invaded under Obama and Biden, and Trump was the first to authorize javelines and lethal aid to Ukraine, which he got impeached for as the left called it a "quid pro quo". The left removed McCarthy, the Republican speaker of the house from power, right as he was going to authorize aid to Ukraine, delaying it by many months, and then blamed Republicans in congress for this crucial delay. However more startlingly, congress has already approved aid that might actually change the course of the war, but the Biden Administration has consistently blocked it. Biden has single handedly banned HIMARS, long range weapons, and numerous other forms of aid to Ukraine, and only recently approved a few dozen tanks and IFV's, as well as F-16's, when what Ukraine really needs are F-35's which are both stealthy and can come in any language as they have fly-by-wire systems. After 2 years of war Biden finally allowed a few dozen F-16's to go to Ukraine which won't make any difference and HIMAR missiles with their ranges SECRETLY shortened after congress approved them. The key advantage of long range missiles is so Ukraine can take out Russian artillery. Artillery is not only is responsible for 85% of casualties, virtually all of Russia's ground defense and all the gains they've made, but for shelling entire cities in to oblivion. You take that out, and ukraine could win the war in a months, with HIMARS specifically designed to beat artillery given its' long range, difficulty in detection, faster firing and cluster munitions which means a higher probability of hitting the target even in entrenched positions. Just four HIMAR systems managed to reduce Russian artillery fire to 1/4 it's original amount in about a week. Imagine what thousands could do. It's also important to remember Biden removed sanctions off of Russia, stopped all lethal aid to Ukraine a year before the war, and allowed the nordstream pipeline construction to continue, something Trump blocked, within about the first week in office. But we get endless waves of crap against Trump or Republicans, Trump who is not even in office and was not in office when Ukraine was invaded by Russia after Biden pulled out troops and after Biden cut lethal aid, and all of this happened while Biden was in power who still has blocked this aid, and whom he was pressured by, via progressives in congress. Although the media is trying to shift the blame to Republicans, it's transparently not the case. You can see even NOW how the left wing New York Times or other run articles about how Ukraine should surrender, both right after Russia invaded Kiev and 2 years later in the war. The reality is not as cut and dry as people like and it's been almost impossible to get past stalemates. Even despite all that, the U.S. has sent 5 times the aid of Europe who is the most likely to benefit from Russia being stopped in Ukraine and being unable to advance in to Poland or the rest of Europe. Europe which is far more left-leaning makes big promises it doesn't deliver on, from artillery shell delivery to raw funding, to 300 billion dollars of frozen Russian assets. Europe is still buying 50% of it's gas and oil from Russia, and hasn't shown any signs of slowing down, which finances Russia's war machine by hundreds of billions of dollars and makes Europe dependent on Russia for it's energy needs. And Europe refuses to spend more on it's own military's, which Republicans and Trump have demanded all the way back in 2017. The problem is that the obvious issue looking us in the face is ignored, that many in the west are outright sympathetic to Putin, and are blocking it for this reason. Many just want this to go away and to pretend it never happened and keeping buying their oil from Russia like it's 2010. This is before we get in to the fact Clinton pressured Ukraine in to giving up it's nukes, downsizing it's army and giving equipment to Russia, something even Clinton admits was wrong at the time, which likely lead to this mess. Or Biden pressuring prosecutor's looking in to Russian corruption to be fired. Or how many shirtless picks of putin riding on horseback the western media promoted in the early 2000's. Calling Putin the type of politician the west needed. Or the degrading of trust in our military by insisting they had lied about WMD's, something else they later acknowledged was fake. All of this has lead to our current situation today, and people want to act like it's somehow Trump's fault, as are somehow all other things.