(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
 . . . . . . . . . .



Conservative George Will hammers House Republicans for trying to cut off Ukraine aid [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2023-11-03  

It must be particularly galling to be an “old-school” conservative at a time when most of your former colleagues and allies have willingly sold their souls just to curry the favor of such a malignant excuse for a human being as Donald Trump. Over the last seven years, nearly every moral principle, story or belief you’ve adopted to affirm your own identity has been tossed by your entire party into the trash heap. There’s no longer any moral high ground for you to cling to, just crass opportunism and the constant worry that Trump or his ignorant and deluded supporters will target you for harassment or worse should you step out of line.

Conservative writer and pundit George Will — who “officially” abandoned the Republican party in mid-2016 after it became evident that Donald Trump would be its nominee — is obviously still struggling to adapt to this new paradigm. And as Democrats whom he’s opposed and mocked for years with his stuffy, even snotty prose we certainly have no reason to sympathize with his travails. Because we see his “cause” as one constructed on hypocrisy in the first place we view these newfound regrets only as just desserts. But as he and other “traditional” conservatives vent their frustration at what their party has become, their criticisms often seem even more biting, delivered with an even starker sense of outrage and righteous fury than those leveled by our friends on the left. That’s because there is a very real sense of wounded betrayal that informs their outrage.

Defending our country’s national security used to be one of the few pillars conservatives could reliably balance themselves on to cast stones at the left. But sadly, those days are no more. And for a Reagan-worshipping conservative like Will, his party’s relatively abrupt turnabout on aiding Ukraine is all the more shameful and appalling, given that it owes itself almost entirely to the influence of Trump, who has demonstrated again and again a peculiar, fawning affinity for Vladimir Putin. Now that this Putin sycophancy has thoroughly infected the ranks of a GOP which mostly exists to fulfill Trump’s whims, the nausea of people like Will has to be hitting an inflection point. At least his latest column in the Washington Post suggests as much.

In his column Will tries his best to convince his former Republican friends what their nihilistic appeasement of Trump on Ukraine truly signifies. Because he has no stomach to try to comprehend the magnitude of their betrayal, he appeals to what he (probably quixotically) imagines is any latent shred of human decency. Even so, the fact that he feels compelled to make such an appeal is itself a tacit acknowledgment that the Republican party in this country no longer can claim any moral foundation for its actions.

Will first reminds House Republicans exactly what Russia under Putin’s ‘depraved psychology’ has become:

In March 2022, three weeks into the war, the Russians dropped two 500-kilogram bombs on a theater in Mariupol, Ukraine, where hundreds of civilians, their homes having been destroyed, were sheltering. On the pavement on each side of the theater was painted in giant Cyrillic letters the Russian word for “children.” Perhaps 600 people died. The implausible idea that this was an accident became even more so 23 days later when, after a missile attack on refugees at a railway station, the words “for children” — up to 9 children were among the up to 63 people killed — were found painted on fragments of the missile.

Will next explains why cutting off aid to Ukraine literally abets and rewards Putin’s “barbarism” --for Will perhaps the most vile epithet imaginable -- under the pathetic excuse of political expediency. He revisits Russia’s attacks on Red Cross facilities, its use of thermobaric weapons on civilians, and its deliberate looting and destruction of anything supporting an independent Ukrainian culture, such as Ukraine’s art galleries and museums. He reminds Republicans that Russia’s policy in the coming winter will be to cut off all power to try to freeze the Ukrainian population to death. In short, he tries to convey the reality of the horror they’re enabling by cutting off this aid.

As Will observes:

A Russian military consistency has been barbarism: Remember the explosive toys Russians scattered to maim Afghan children who would thereafter be burdens for adults too distracted to fight. This is the Russia that some congressional Republicans would, by ending aid for Ukraine, rescue from the criminal misadventure Vladimir Putin began on Feb. 24, 2022. [***] Russia’s war crimes — targeting civilians, kidnapping children, mass executions, torture, rape — are not incidental to, they are premeditated tactics in, the war that some congressional Republicans seem eager to help Putin win. He knows the help he needs. “If Western defense supplies are terminated tomorrow,” Putin said on Oct. 5, “Ukraine will have a week left to live as it runs out of ammunition.”

Will ultimately accuses the Republican House of “canine” obedience to Trump, who famously declared that if he were re-elected the war would be “over in 24 hours” (doubtlessly it would, by Trump’s complete and utter capitulation to Putin’s wishes). But he vents his disgust the most by comparing House Republicans’ abandonment of Ukraine to the “odious” behavior of campus progressives who he says try to “contextualize” the behavior of Hamas. While that last bitter salvo can be chalked off to the reflexive “both sides-ism” that typifies conservative attacks on their own, the reality is that it is simply the harshest thing he can imagine to accuse House Republicans of doing.

But while anyone may agree or disagree with Will’s views about them, the fact is that most of those so-called “campus progressives” are at least attempting to apply a rational construct to their opinions on Israel and Hamas. What Congressional Republicans are doing has no basis in rationality but is the sheer product of nihilistic, Trump cult-worship and their desire to deny President Biden any satisfaction, even if it means putting this country’s security at risk.

Sadly, Will’s warning will almost certainly fall on deaf ears. This noxious strain of Trump-centric Republicanism can no longer be swayed by moral arguments. Some of them may even be persuaded that a Russian victory in Ukraine is actually in their own interest. People like George Will and other traditional “conservatives” who continue to believe that this Republican Party can be treated as a legitimate governing voice, responsive to the needs of this nation and its people, are looking for something that no longer exists.

[END]
---
[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/11/3/2203407/-Conservative-George-Will-hammers-House-Republicans-for-trying-to-cut-off-Ukraine-aid?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=trending&pm_medium=web

Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.

via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/