McCarthy Should Invite War Critics To Testify Before Approving Ukraine Aid

With the tide finally turning on Ukraine's war coverage as established media organizations begin to report the truth on the battlefield, there is even more evidence that the Ukrainian counteroffensive is stalling.

Last Tuesday, the New York Times broke a story explaining why Ukraine is not making headway: "Ukraine's Forces and Firepower Are Misallocated, U.S. Officials Say." Three days prior, senior American intelligence officials leaked their assessment to Stephen Bryen, a senior fellow at the Center for Security Policy and the Yorktown Institute, who concluded in an Asia Times article that U.S. intelligence says Ukraine's offensive is a failure.

And Col. Douglas McGregor, a decorated Army veteran and former adviser to the Pentagon during the Trump administration, spent an entire hour on Tucker Carlson's new show, "Tucker on Twitter," describing what a deep hole the West has dug itself into by steadfastly urging Ukraine to fight and why the war must end immediately. We encourage open-minded Americans who have been relentless in their support of Ukraine to watch this interview. 

The mood is turning in Congress, too. Politico reported a few days ago that Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.), one of Ukraine's staunchest defenders on The Hill and the co-chair of the Congressional Ukraine Caucus whose Ukrainian mother fled communist Eastern Europe after World War II, assessed the situation in a constituent town hall. "I'll be blunt, it's failed." And he was blunt, too, about the prospects for a victory ahead: "I'm not sure it's winnable anymore."

But Rep. Harris made headlines by saying that it is time to wind down direct U.S. aid to Ukraine because Kyiv's springtime offensive, which was supposed to turn the tide of the conflict, has failed to realize its goals.

Expectedly, administration officials, although defiant, began to waffle, muddying the picture, no pun intended. "Terrain conditions are always fundamental drivers" of military operations, General Milley said in an interview with reporters on Sunday. "Fall and spring are not optimal for combined arms operations."

"We do not assess that the conflict is a stalemate," Jake Sullivan, the White House's national security adviser, said last Tuesday. "We continue to support Ukraine in its effort to take territory as part of this counteroffensive, and we are seeing it continue to take territory on a methodical, systematic basis." What Sullivan did not mention is that the taking of territory, in some cases, was measured in meters with significant loss of life and limb. Nor did he concede that the Russians may be making gains in the Northeast, near Kharkiv.

Eighteen months into this prolonged war that has killed over 500,000 soldiers and displaced more than 11 million Ukrainians Americans deserve to know the truth. The White House has already committed $120 billion of U.S. taxpayers’ money to Kyiv. To make matters worse, President Biden has requested $21 billion in additional emergency funding for Ukraine to pursue the same failed policies - and shockingly, many established Republicans have joined the Democrats in supporting the proposal. Of the eight GOP candidates on stage in Milwaukee at the first Republican debate, only Vivek Ramaswamy and Gov. Ron DeSantis appeared to oppose such actions. 

It is astonishing that though Ukraine consumes so much of America's time, effort, and funds, President Biden has never received Congressional approval through a formal vote. There has not even been a floor debate in either chamber through the passage of all those bills.

So, Speaker Kevin McCarthy should immediately summon senior Pentagon and State Department officials to testify this time before a single additional dollar is earmarked. In a marked difference from prior hearings, crucial war critics, such as Prof. John Mearsheimer, Prof. Jeffrey Sachs, and Col. Doug McGregor, should also be asked to testify on the same panel. It is up to the GOP House to shine a light on this mess that is looking to become another Afghanistan.  

We call on the Speaker to step up because the Fourth Estate is not fulfilling its responsibility by covering both sides of the war and has resorted to being a propaganda mouthpiece for the administration and the West so far. We quote what Prof. Mearsheimer said in an interview recently. 

That people like me have sort of kept out of the mainstream media is quite remarkable. We have conventional wisdom in Washington, and the mainstream media is committed to policing the marketplace of ideas to ensure that people who disagree with that conventional wisdom are not heard, or if they are heard, their arguments are perverted or countered immediately.

It's a terrible situation. It's not the way life is supposed to work in a liberal democracy. You have to have some semblance of a marketplace of ideas if you want to have smart policies. Because the fact is that governments often sometimes do stupid things, or they pursue policies that look like they're correct at the time but prove to be disastrous. And you want to have lots of people who disagree with those policies have an opportunity to voice their opinions before the policy is launched and after the policy is launched. But in this day and age, that's very difficult to do, and that's very depressing and distressing. 

So, Mr. Speaker, please do the right thing. Let's have a vibrant debate in the House of Representatives before you rubber-stamp another aid package for Ukraine.

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