Onward ?Christian? Soldiers

Putin has pals in strange places | The Seattle Times

Russian autocrat Vladimir Putin is getting some valuable help in his desperate, grinding push to beat Ukraine into submission.

With Russia’s stockpiles of weapons running low, North Korea has pitched in with deliveries of missiles while Iran is providing a steady supply of lethal drones. Just as important for Putin’s cause, crucial military assistance to the other side of the conflict has been stalled by congressional Republicans who are holding aid to Ukraine hostage as they pressure President Joe Biden to take a harder line on illegal border crossings.

Republicans have had plenty of chances through the years to pass legislation that would change immigration policies, especially on the occasions when they held majorities in Congress, as well as the presidency, but they failed to get the job done. Yet now, without a Senate majority and only a slim, fractured majority in the House, they think they can get what they want by toying with the lives and liberties of the Ukrainian people.

Such a callous tactic would never have been attempted by the Republican Party of Ronald Reagan. Back then, Republicans believed in a robust foreign policy that championed democracy and stood behind free nations threatened by Russian aggression. Not these days. The GOP caucuses – particularly in the House – are riddled with members, so-called America First Republicans, who would be untroubled if the United States were to forsake commitments to democratic nations and let bullies like Putin thrive. Many of them, in fact, admire Putin as a hero of white Christianity.

The anti-Ukrainian Republicans take their cues from Putin’s chief American ally, of course, the GOP’s once-and-future standard bearer, former President Donald Trump. Should Trump return to the White House, Ukraine’s doom will almost certainly be sealed, and Putin will be empowered.

This new GOP foreign policy stance is not actually all that new. Back in another era when dangerous autocrats were on the rise, there were many isolationist Republicans who waved the banner of America First. Many of them had warm feelings for a certain European dictator and were unwilling to give aid to the democracies that were being attacked by that dictator’s tanks and bombers.

That dictator was named Adolph Hitler, and the America First Republicans were just as terribly wrong then as they are now.