James Durso
The shame of American military assistance in Iraq and Afghanistan is that while our troops and their local allies were fighting bravely, the leaders of our so-called allies were getting rich. We have seen something even worse in Ukraine: While Ukrainian military personnel and civilians fight valiantly in a fierce contest for independence, Ukrainian leaders have gotten fabulously wealthy.
The American shame is that the U.S. heedlessly expanded NATO to the borders of Russia, and then, after Russia pushed back, enabled and funded the cynical maladministration by the Zelensky government, which will go down in history as one of the greatest examples of waste and theft of Western aid.
What’s more, Ukraine’s casualties have permanently altered the country’s demography and will limit its prospects for economic recovery, leaving the country “wrecked” and the scene of a future “frozen conflict,” per Professor John Mearsheimer.
The sheer scale of waste and fraud will only be revealed by independent investigations after the war’s end. The Zelensky government uses the war to quash media stories that dare to question Ukrainian spending of our taxpayer dollars. Still, many brave Ukrainian journalists and officers have exposed scandals of overpricing, shoddy equipment and embezzlement at the highest levels of Volodymyr Zelensky’s administration. They have risked being labeled as Russian saboteurs or sent to certain death at the front lines for reporting the truth.
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