This is a bit of an odd question, but do you remember the war between Russian and Ukraine? It’s a rhetorical question, of course, but it illustrates the point that what the power establishment in the western world saw as the most important story of the year has faded into near oblivion in just a few months without much having changed.
In the interest of full disclosure, and for context, I’ve never been all that interested in the war. Not because I don’t care, but because I don’t think we need to be pouring billions of dollars we don’t have into a war that really doesn’t impact our national security. I know it’s a popular bipartisan thing, or at least was, but I never bought into it.
Sure, if you want to punish Russia for its actions I am down for that, but all that seemed to happen was the United States and Europe ended up further damaging their energy supply, upsetting prices worldwide, and making supply chain issues much worse.
Sanctions failed, miserably. Remember how they were going to cripple the Russian economy? They crippled Germany’s prospects for being able to heat their resident’s homes this winter, not much else.
When not meeting with an endless string of western politicians and Hollywood celebrities, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky keeps calling for more sanctions against Russia and more money for his government, with little accountability for either.
There’s little reason for you to remember this, but there was a lot of public pressure at the time against Koch Industries (yes, of the “evil” Koch brothers fame) because they hadn’t cut off all ties with Russia at the start of the virtue signal. Eventually, they did end their relationship with Russia, but that barely got any mention. Ben Stiller’s trip to meet with Zelensky got more in-depth coverage.
Meanwhile, what has been accomplished? Ukraine has more military aid than it realistically knows what to do with and inflation is worse. And in between visits from award winning actors and actresses, Zelensky still demands more.
Let me say that I don’t have a problem with sanctions, as long as they are targeted and have teeth. Sanctions that don’t work are a waste of time and money. But Zelensky’s continued calls for sanctions on everything have become so ubiquitous that they have lost all meaning.
They haven’t just lost all meaning for the public, they’ve lost teeth with governments. After publicly imposing sanctions on people with ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin and the government itself, not everyone is playing along.
Airbus, for example, the French airplane manufacturer, continued to do business with Russia. Bloomberg reported the company “defended its decision to keep importing Russian titanium, contending sanctions would hurt aerospace manufacturers who depend on the lightweight metal and wouldn’t deter Vladimir Putin after his invasion of Ukraine.” Meanwhile, Airbus continues to get US government contracts with our military.
At some point you either have to have sanctions with teeth and consequences for violating them, or get rid of them altogether, don’t you?
At some point there has to be a return on money we’ve sent over there, doesn’t there? Or at least some accountability for it, right? CBS reported, then retracted, that only about 30 percent of the billions sent to Ukraine to help fight the war make it to the actual war effort.
What’s the truth? We don’t know. But to suggest there’s no fraud is insane. We have fraud internally in our own country without war, it’s insane to think a country mostly known for political corruption wouldn’t continue that tradition, to one degree or another, when more money than they’ve ever imagined comes rolling through their doors.
The fact is we don’t know. Worse, no one really seems to care. Everyone seems too busy fawning over Zelensky meeting with some political delegation or Jessica Chastain to bother to look into it.
The Ukraine war is a tragedy, but it doesn’t also have to be a rip-off, does it? It is a horrible humanitarian crisis that does not have to also be a con-job. But for any of that not to happen, the media has to hold everyone involved accountable. They don’t. Maybe we could get some of those 87,000 new IRS agents the feds will be hiring to go over there and audit Ukraine’s books before they’re unleashed on the American people.
Derek Hunter is the host of a free daily podcast (subscribe!), host of a daily nationally syndicated radio show, and author of the book, Outrage, INC., which exposes how liberals use fear and hatred to manipulate the masses, and host of the weekly “Week in F*cking Review” podcast where the news is spoken about the way it deserves to be. Follow him on Twitter at @DerekAHunter.
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