The Hypocrisy of Ceasing Aid to Ukraine
Northrop Grumman unveiled the B-21 Raider in December 2022
It is the latest long-range stealth bomber and truly a sixth-generation aircraft. So much of the Raider is classified that we don’t even know if it is piloted. Even the price is unknown but generally estimated to have a fly-away cost of ~1.5 billion dollars. At its unveiling was Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin; this may have been the first time a SECDEF attended and spoke at a public unveiling of a secretive aircraft. Curiously, he mentioned China and Russia specifically in his speech, an obvious signal to them and other potential adversaries.
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| 2019 estimation |
Like other military aircraft programs (F-35, B-2, and more) the price of the B-21 program will be in the trillions of dollars. Hardly anyone considers maintenance, training, arming, and fueling which are substantial long-term costs for any new airframe. The Department of Defense throws mountains of money towards these types of programs. While the mere fly-away cost of the aircraft is generally what people look at, these programs are so much more expensive. In many cases, these programs will never be used as designed and intended. Some trillion-dollar programs are by themselves resigned to be deterrence only. This has been the 70-year approach to Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD). The United States government has invested hundreds of trillions of taxpayers' money merely to posture against Russian and other foreign aggressions.
It has become clear to me that American citizens are deeply involved in an information/disinformation war without their knowledge, specifically with Russia. Misinformation or disinformation is crafted by intelligent entities specifically targeting a particular audience with grains of truth. Tailoring to an audience's predispositions camouflages the propaganda and makes it easily acceptable for the target audience. This easily leads many to incorrect conclusions ("fully semi-automatic" anyone?). On the surface, the topic might seem honorable, sensical, or even incredibly logical, but a deeper knowledge of the subject provides an entirely opposite result. A terrible recent example of many people accepting propaganda is the concerns that American conservatives have about government spending specifically in regard to Ukraine. The "concern" of US aid to Ukraine, with no comparison to US defense spending, and calls for its cessation are blatantly hypocritical and unequivocally Russian-inspired propaganda.
Today, Russia is estimated to have lost over 100,000 soldiers in Ukraine
Currently, Russia has lost over 3,000 main battle tanks, 6,000 armor personnel carriers, 2,000 artillery systems, 500 aircraft, and a lot more. Not a single F-35, B-2, or other American military aircraft contributed to these numbers. Russia has been clearly exposed as a conventional military disaster due to the courageous resolve of the Ukrainian people and a minuscule fraction of American support. While the support has made a huge difference and items such as HIMARS, Javelins, MANPADS, and more have helped repel the Russian invaders, US support of Ukraine in a “proxy war” is already better than any other wartime situation in the history of the United States.
Instead of merely posturing against a threat for 70 years, Ukraine is destroying the threat. Instead of spending trillions and trillions of dollars, we are watching a few billion go directly to neutralizing that threat. Strictly from a US-interest perspective, the return on investment for supporting Ukraine militarily is already better than all of the deterrence programs and foreign support save for the MAD side of the equation. One could even argue that neutralizing the Russian threat also makes the US spending for MAD much less of a priority.
People unfamiliar with this disparity are targeted fiercely by clever propagandists
The logical and honorable concern about grotesque government spending is skewed by propagandists to object to what the US government has given to Ukraine intentionally omitting comparisons or effects. For those who are entirely unaware of Ukraine and Ukrainians, the manipulation is shifted to suggest that the US government should spend money elsewhere. The root of this disinformation is Russian-inspired propaganda. In order for Russia to stop, slow, or otherwise impede Ukrainian Armed Forces they must stop western aid. If Russia has any chance of holding on to the Ukrainian lands that it currently occupies and murderously desires, they need a lot of anti-Ukrainian aid sentiments.
Russia currently wants to force “negotiations” and cease-fires which will enable their future military aspirations. In order to achieve this by means of propaganda, fiscal conservatives are highly targeted, but also targeted are liberal Americans for their anti-war aspirations of concessionary solutions to stop the fighting.
Citizens who want to make sure that their government is financially responsible quickly agree with the propaganda that giving US citizens’ tax dollars to Ukraine is irresponsible. It is only the lack of understanding of the exorbitant spending for defense and the inability (or refusal) to compare Ukraine to the interest and return on investment that makes this propaganda so effective. Notice that no politician from the US government that complains about a “blank check” to Ukraine has been vocal about the decades of blank checks to defense spending. Also, notice how none of these even attempt to understand or explain which portion of Ukrainian aid they agree or disagree with. At the end of the day, Russia needs you to be ignorant and willing to stay ignorant so you naturally agree with sentiments that aid them and hurt the country they have invaded.
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