OPINION:
This week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy addressed the United States Congress, asking us to defend his country against Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Turn on the television. No matter which network or news program you tune into, you will hear the same ominous sound in the background: the drumbeat of war. We’re told that we have an urgent moral responsibility to send money and munitions to a country 5,000 miles away.
When we invaded Iraq on the pretext of looking for weapons of mass destruction, over 4,500 civilians were killed in just the first few days. We became embroiled in nearly 20 years of pointless war.
It is time for a more level-headed approach to foreign engagements from America’s elites, and time we loosened the military-industrial complex’s stranglehold on our politicians and our policymaking.
There is no doubt that Mr. Putin’s actions in Ukraine are despicable and evil. We weep when we see images of men, women and children wounded or killed. But we cannot and we must not allow our compassion to blind us to reason and common sense.
A potential war with Russia is not comparable to Iraq or Afghanistan. This is an 8-year-long, smoldering conflict in which peace agreements have been routinely violated by both sides. It concerns a country in which President Biden, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Mitt Romney have direct financial interests — a country whose government only exists because the Obama State Department helped to overthrow the previous regime.
The ugly truth is that America is in no shape to throw herself into another foreign conflict. Under Mr. Biden, America’s economy is weak and dependent on foreign nations for goods and even for energy. And the more we involve ourselves in this foreign mess, the more we force our enemies and frenemies together, playing right into China’s hands.
Every move the Biden administration has made has hurt Americans and helped Mr. Putin. Our former allies are looking at us and wondering if we’ve gone mad. Saudi Arabia, whose leaders won’t even take a call from Mr. Biden.
When my constituents from Georgia call into my office here in Washington, there is only one thing on their minds. Hardworking Americans living paycheck to paycheck don’t care about foreign wars or foreign borders. They care about the gas prices they are paying. They care about runaway inflation and the fact that a used car or truck costs 40% more today than it did last year.
I will not vote to spend hard-earned American tax dollars in foreign nations when people are hurting back home — when my constituents are telling me that they want reassurance on gas prices, inflation and our own southern border.
We win when America is strong — and so does the rest of the world. We win when we put America First and globalism last. Mr. Biden may be barking and waving a stick, but no one is afraid. Our enemies know that he lacks both the will and the ability to see through on his saber-rattling.
Mr. Biden’s sanctions aren’t working. They’re just pushing Russia even closer to China. Russia has made a $117.5 billion oil and gas deal with President Xi Jinping. Intelligent observers know that sanctions almost never work in the real world. They didn’t work in Cuba, North Korea or Iran. They’re not working now. Instead, sanctions act merely as a precursor to war: a sign of battle lines being drawn.
If we truly care about the suffering and death on our television screens, we cannot fund more of it by sending money and weaponry to Ukraine to fight a war it cannot possibly win.
Mr. Biden created the conditions for Mr. Putin’s invasion into Ukraine when he lifted the sanctions on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline a year ago. So, we began this process from a position of weakness. We can end it in strength, but not by providing guns or cash. We can end in strength by providing a negotiating table.
We have to show our allies that we have the ability and the wherewithal to be able to negotiate something like this. Our nation can start to repair its tattered international reputation and protect its own citizens by bringing Mr. Zelenskyy and Mr. Putin to the negotiating table and fulfilling America’s promise as an arbiter of peace.
It’s not our responsibility to give Mr. Zelenskyy and the Ukrainian people false hope about a war they cannot win. But given the Obama State Department and the Biden administration’s interference in Ukraine over the years, we do now have a duty to help peacefully resolve the conflict by brokering peace talks and a successful, peaceful resolution.
We can do all this without sending a dime and without shipping bombs to further inflame a war whose outcome already seems certain. We can do it without risking the dollar and therefore risking our economy, our jobs and our homes. And we must do it, I believe, as Christians, to prevent any more human suffering and death.
• Marjorie Taylor Greene, is an American politician and businesswoman, who has served as the U.S. representative for Georgia’s 14th Congressional District since 2021.
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