This is what sticks in my craw: billions of our taxpayer dollars being sent to fuel a war in which the U.S. has no national security interest.  Even Obama said as much in 2016.  All that money to buy weapons and pay the salaries and pensions of corrupt Ukrainian government officials.  And to fight disinformation?  While our own cities are decaying and millions of Americans are out of work?  Are you kidding me?  All for another proxy war to weaken Russia.  And to fill the coffers of the Deep State war machine.  And all the while, the Washington bureaucrats and their lapdogs in the media spout their lies and talking points as if they were Gospel.  This war should be called "The Great American Propaganda War." 

We have a Pentagon spokesperson (John Kirby, who allegedly served as an admiral in the U.S. Navy) crying at a press conference because of the suffering of the Ukrainian people due to this war — which the U.S. started and might not allow to end until the last Ukrainian (and even every last European?) soldier is dead.

Where were Kirby's tears the past eight years, when Ukrainian nationalists were bombing civilian towns and villages in Donbas and killing thousands of civilians, including children?  Where were his tears on May 2, 2014, when a mob of Ukrainians chased a small group of peaceful anti-Kyiv protesters in Odesa into a building and then set fire to it and burned them alive?  For that matter, where were his tears for the thousands of innocent civilians in Raqqa and Mosul who died when the U.S. carpet-bombed their cities in the so-called Global War on Terror?  Where are his tears for the thousands of Yemeni children who are starving to death because of U.S. support for a regime change war by the Saudis?

How many Americans are even aware of any of this?  How many Americans are aware that the U.S. engineered the 2014 overthrow of a duly elected president of Ukraine and installed a puppet government?  How many Americans are aware that the U.S. has been arming and training neo-Nazis, for years, in blatant violation of the Leahy Law?

All the American people know is that Russia is Bad, and Zelensky is a Hero.  That's an oligarch-backed comedian who won an election on a platform of Peace and then turned into a dictator.

In the present state of this war, calls to give peace a chance are falling on deaf ears.

I love my country — as it was founded.  And I am distressed to see how much those founding principles have been corrupted by career politicians in Washington and their insatiable thirst for money and power, and their donors in a military-industrial complex that feeds off war and the suffering of others.  These are the things that stick in my craw.

Photo credit: YouTube screen grab (cropped).