Rubin: GOP playing into Putin’s hands, endangering U.S.

At first, McConnell tried to fight back against MAGA recklessness.

“Some say our support for Ukraine comes at the expense of more important priorities. But as I’ve said every time I get the chance, this is a false choice,” McConnell said late last month. “If Russia prevails, there’s no question that Putin’s appetite for empire will actually extend into NATO, raising the threat to the U.S. transatlantic alliance and the risk of war for America.”

Too true.

Yet McConnell now appears to have been trapped into tying further Ukraine military aid to fixing the southern border, a process that will take months or years — if it ever happens — leaving Ukraine without the military support it will need this winter.

The GOP might as well tell Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy: “Drop dead.”

What’s so bizarre about this GOP blindness is that Putin has positioned himself as the staunch ally of Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran — all groups that most Republicans rail against. By helping Putin, Republicans are strengthening all three.

“Russia is happy that America is getting embroiled in the Palestinian war,” Ali Baraka, a senior Hamas official, boasted on Russia Today’s Arabic news channel. “It eases the pressure on the Russians in Ukraine.”

The Israel-Hamas war has given Putin an opportunity to pose as the champion of the Global South against Western or Israeli policies. Or as Putin describes it, “The ugly neocolonial system of international relations.”

But anyone who buys that nonsense ignores the grim fact that Putin is the ultimate colonialist, trying to destroy the sovereign state of Ukraine and force it back under the control of a rebuilt Russian empire.

If this isn’t enough to wake the GOP isolationists to the danger of helping Putin, let us consider that Iran is providing Russia with endless drones to target Ukraine. In return, U.S. intelligence sources suspect (although this is not confirmed yet) that Syria may be providing Iran’s proxy, Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, with Russian-made surface-to-air air defense systems to be used against Israel.

So let’s sum up the plot of this theater of the absurd: The GOP wants to cut aid to Ukraine even as the current temporary funding bill expires at the end of November.

At that point, U.S. aid to Ukraine runs out, meaning that Kyiv may be fighting without enough ammunition at a critical junction in its effort to push back Russia. Contrary to many media reports, a stalemate in Ukraine’s efforts is not inevitable, because Ukraine has been making progress in cutting off Russian supply routes to Crimea.

If President Joe Biden would only, finally, send the kind of long-range ATACMS missiles Kyiv needs (he hasn’t, contrary to a lot of bad news reporting), Ukraine could finish that job.

Instead, to repeat, Republicans are playing into Putin’s hands, helping Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran. In so doing, they are increasing the danger to Israel — and to America.

Which side are you on, boys? Which side are you on?