Those who argue that helping our allies means it shortchanges Americans, are misguided.
In defending her vote against sending aid to Israel, firebrand Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Georgia, said she doesn’t believe using “Americans’ hard earned tax dollars to fund wars defending a foreign country’s borders while our own border is overrun and our own national security is at risk.”
Greene is referring to the U.S. border with Mexico. Last I looked, our neighbor to the south has no plans to invade.
Greene needs to take off her blinders and see that, indeed, the balance of world powers is at a precarious point. It’s been since World War II, that the threats to democracy have been so menacing.
Here’s why:
Last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin hosted a delegation of Hamas terrorists and is strengthening his ties with Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenie, who is equipping him with drones and missiles while he’s beefing up Iran’s cybertechnology and advanced aircraft.
What do Putin and Khamenie have in common?
Fear.
Putin loathes the fact that Ukraine, once under Russia’s thumb, is a thriving democracy with an increasingly Western bent.
Still in relative infancy as a democracy since 1991, Ukrainians have only recently emerged from the cloak of corruption and oligarchic rule enabled by Putin.
This newfound freedom has led to greater goals, such as joining NATO and the European Union; changes that would further threaten Putin’s realm of influence.
Ukraine’s resistance to Russia’s massive invasion in February of 2022 not only changed the world’s image of Ukraine — bravo for standing up against the imperialist! — but also alerted the world to Putin’s ultimate goal of violently revising European borders.
Which is why he’s pleased things have erupted in the Mideast. Putin wants nothing more than to have the attention of Ukraine’s allies diverted by the Israeli-Hamas war.
And that some now are pretending funding Israel must come at the expense of further support for Ukraine, Putin is no doubt turning cartwheels.
MEANWHILE, Iran’s Khamenei is now enabling the Hamas terrorists to attack Israel in an attempt to derail the progress Israel and Saudi Arabia have been making toward normalizing relations between the Jewish state and Muslims.
Like Putin, the Ayatollah’s strict rule would be threatened by a more pluralistic society that allowed Palestinians, Israelis and other Arabs to live and work together.
With today’s violence, that goal seems all the more beyond our grasp.
