This means that this aid will do absolutely nothing to protect my native city of Kharkiv. Yesterday Russians bombed the largest psychiatric clinic in the city. There’s a deep crater where the bomb dropped. And we aren’t allowed to strike the air carriers that deliver the bombs from the territory of Russia 20 miles away.
Every single time, the Biden administration conditions the aid in such terms that make it impossible for Ukraine to win. This is in direct contradiction to the terms of the aid package passed by Congress which state that Ukrainian victory is the goal.
Biden goes against what the Congress passed completely openly and nobody has the capacity either to notice or say anything.
Here’s the crater:
This could be prevented with great ease but the Biden administration specifically and purposefully makes preventing this horror impossible.
The Trump administration would probably be as bad. This isn’t a partisan thing. It’s the general state of impotence in both foreign and domestic policy of the US. An easy, clear solution exists for both the war in Ukraine and a host of domestic problems but nobody has the capacity actually to go for the win.
Clarissa's Blog 
“This is in direct contradiction to the terms of the aid package passed by Congress which state that Ukrainian victory is the goal.
Biden goes against what the Congress passed completely openly and nobody has the capacity either to notice or say anything.”
Because people are aware that one sentence in the aid package that is not backed up by any actions means nothing. It’s just empty words.
You claim to not care about those, but you clearly do, since statements by Johnson and Trump seem to have made a difference for you.
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I honestly have no idea what you are trying to say here.
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You keep talking about that sentence in the bill that the goal is Ukraine’s victory as though it is legally binding. It means nothing.
I was referencing your “Weasels Weaseling” post (https://clarissasblog.com/2024/04/25/weasels-weaseling/)
When Trump says something liberals don’t like, they’re just overreacting to him saying stuff (according to you). They should look at his actions instead. When Trump makes a single positive statement about Ukraine, you treat it as though it matters.
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Absolutely, it’s likely that Trump will change his mind a million times about Ukraine and everything else. That’s exactly why I’m wary of voting for him.
I’m trying to figure out how to vote, and it’s very unclear to me at this point.
The sentence in the aid bill is absolutely crucial because this was never set down in writing before. Yes, stupid old Biden with his loser Sullivan are messing it up. But that doesn’t devalue the achievement itself.
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Clarissa, on the Unz Review, there is a commenter named AP who is a Ukrainian-American and who cares deeply about Ukraine. He has the same struggles with choosing between Biden and Trump as you yourself have, though he does appear to believe that voting for Biden would be a less risky option in spite of Biden’s support for Ukraine being half-assed. He argues that Trump could be much better for Ukraine than Biden, or alternatively, much worse than Biden on Ukraine. In other words, a total wildcard.
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That’s exactly what I think. Trump is unpredictable. I have no idea who’ll be doing his foreign policy. It can go in absolutely any direction.
And I detest gambling.
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Agreed.
As a side note, had Hillary won back in 2016, do you think that she would have been better on Ukraine (had she won reelection in 2020 and Ukraine would have still been invaded in 2022) relative to Biden? I’m inclined to say probably not because even if she would have had more desire to help, she would have also likely kept the US stuck in that God-forsaken mess known as Afghanistan and thus would not have been as capable of diverting US and Western/NATO resources to help the Ukrainians as Biden would have (even if Biden has been somewhat timid in regards to this).
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Hillary would have been as disastrous to Ukraine as Obama. The 2022 invasion would have still happened because it was Biden’s botched withdrawal from Afghanistan that gave Putin the confidence to invade back then.
Trump was great for Ukraine. Authorized the first lethal weapons, banned Nordstream 2, forced NATO countries to shape up. But … he’s like a sofa. Takes the shape of whichever butt sat on him last. I don’t know which butt will sit on him if he gets reelected.
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I disagree completely about the “botched withdrawal”. There was no aspect of it that could’ve been done differently that would have prevented Taliban from taking over.
Everything else that was botched, while awful for the individual people involved/killed, wasn’t game-changing geopolitically. I don’t see what about it could have influenced Putin. And it was a withdrawal. That’s the most important thing. The US wasn’t doing anything comparatively similar in Ukraine.
I think what encouraged Putin the most was the world’s inaction when he annexed Crimea and then invaded in the east.
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It looked like an absolute disaster to everybody on the planet. It was pathetic and shameful. Putin reportedly watched the footage on a loop for days. It was mocked widely on Russian TV and media. And not only Russian, of course.
To many people it became a symbol of US’s impotence. You saw the footage, right? Did that look effective to you? I only managed 10 minutes. It was too embarrassing to continue watching.
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I can’t reply to the comment I want to because it’s nestled too many layers deep.
“It looked like an absolute disaster to everybody on the planet. It was pathetic and shameful. Putin reportedly watched the footage on a loop for days. It was mocked widely on Russian TV and media. And not only Russian, of course.
To many people it became a symbol of US’s impotence. You saw the footage, right? Did that look effective to you? I only managed 10 minutes. It was too embarrassing to continue watching.”
This was purely a matter of appearance. There was no way to prevent that short of not withdrawing from Afghanistan at all. The speed with which the Afghan government folded was faster than expected, but the end result was inevitable.
This was embarrassing to watch like Trump running his mouth is embarrassing to watch.
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Well, appearances matter. People see bumbling incompetence and they assume they can treat you accordingly. Which the subsequent events proved to be right.
I completely agree that Trump and Biden are equally embarrassing. We deserve better than either of them.
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“An easy, clear solution exists for both the war in Ukraine and a host of domestic problems but nobody has the capacity actually to go for the win.”
Clarissa, did you know that some Russian strategic thinkers are hotheads and are (or were?) advocating using nuclear weapons, including against NATO countries such as Poland, in an attempt to get NATO to stop aiding Ukraine? One really could wonder at the rationality of these people, though I do think that Putin himself is more rational.
And Yeah, a lot of issues could be solved fairly easily with enough willpower. For instance, the “financial abortion” debate could be rendered mostly moot with Vasalgel combined with cheap, affordable, and accessible child support insurance. But unfortunately no one is actually offering such insurance, neither private insurance companies (not even specialty ones) nor the government. Vasalgel at least appears to be on the right track, though.
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“Clarissa, did you know that some Russian strategic thinkers are hotheads….”
I’m sure she knows nothing about russia and will welcome your astute analysis! Please tell us more!
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