Destroying another country just to save it

It’s déjà vu all over again. After sending Ukraine $13 billion, Joe Biden now wants to provide an additional $33 billion more.

For those old enough to remember, this is how we became embroiled in Vietnam. First, money and weapons. Then military “advisors.” And finally, the commitment of our entire military. And for what? 55,000 young Americans were deprived of their futures because Lyndon Johnson was determined not to be “the first president to lose a war.”

The more deeply we become involved in this Ukraine war, the more difficult it will be to get out. What is our objective? In Vietnam it was supposedly to prevent the fall of southeast Asia into the hands of the communists. That was certainly no, “mission accomplished” event.

How is “winning” defined? In Vietnam it never was. When asked about Ukraine, Biden’s press secretary could not provide an answer. Are we building another democracy? Those democracies we built in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan sure worked out well.

Our national debt recently surpassed $30 trillion. How many trillion have we wasted on these fruitless wars? Perhaps if we stopped sending weapons and money, the combatants might be motivated to end the death and destruction. In explaining the annihilation of the South Vietnam town of Ben Tre in 1968, a US Army officer told a journalist, “It became necessary to destroy the town in order to save it.”

Apparently, that is the strategy we are employing in Ukraine as well.

— David White, Oroville