New House Speaker Mike Johnson is disabusing Republicans of the notion that the United States is seeking an off-ramp for regional wars in Europe and the Middle East.
Johnson has made it clear that nothing will change in terms of the party’s support for the proxy war in Ukraine or in terms of putting boots on the ground in the Israel-Hamas war.
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
Johnson appeared on “Hannity” and made the party’s position on these wars absolutely clear:
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“Now we can’t allow Vladimir Putin to prevail in Ukraine because I don’t believe it would stop there and it would probably encourage and empower China to perhaps make a move on Taiwan,” Johnson claimed.
Speaker Johnson then qualified that it is important to audit the money flowing into Ukraine.
“We have these concerns. We’re not going to abandon them. We want to be cooperative. We need to work together on this, but we owe it to the people to know what the plan is, where the money’s going to be spent, and we need some auditing for the dollars that we’ve already sent over there. These are not tough questions, right?”
“One thing that House Republicans are resolved on is that we must stand with our most important ally in the Middle East and that’s Israel,” he continued. “We will, we certainly hope that it doesn’t come to boots on the ground if it comes to that. And we communicated this to the White House staff as well today that we have the Article one Power in the legislative branch of government, and they have Article Two.”
“They have very limited authority on what they can do to respond without coming to Congress to seek consent,” he added. “And even my Democrat colleagues… understand this and the Foreign Affairs Committee…”
The White House and House Democrat allies have resisted Congressional pressure for funding transparency.
“The measure, calling on the Pentagon and State Department to provide Congress with documents on U.S. aid to Ukraine since the Russian invasion in February, was defeated by a 26-22 House Foreign Affairs Committee vote,” the Washington Times reported in December.
There are also concerns that weapons meant for Ukrainian fighters will wind up in the hands of criminals and militia fighters around the world, as they have in past conflicts.
Speaker Johnson indicated that he believes Iran is tied into the Hamas-Israel conflict, and that Russia and China are involved.
“We know that Iran is directly tied to all this,” he said. “These are Hamas and Hezbollah are proxies of Iran and they’re tied in now with Russia and China. I mean, it is a new axis of evil. That’s how we see it. And so it has to be addressed.”
The last time an American political leader threw around the “axis of evil” epithet, the nation was off to fight a disastrous war in Iraq that created a power vacuum in the heart of the Middle East ultimately led to the rise of ISIS.
“The House is back in business and we’re going to stand with Israel,” he added.
The U.S. Congress is understandably standing with Israel, but its first duty is standing with the American people.
As the Pentagon announces another $150 million for the Ukraine proxy war, U.S. voters have to wonder when the war machine and the cash printers backing it are going to be shut off.
The U.S. economy is broke. The American people are suffering. It is not the responsibility of this nation to go abroad ‘searching for monsters to destroy.’
Due to our incessant foreign meddling, we are encouraging China and Russia and Iran to become more aggressive in asserting their regional hegemony, while engaging in the classic geopolitical blunder of ‘imperial overstretch.’
The U.S. is stretching its dollar to the breaking point — due to the funding of wars, the servicing of the debt (at nearly a trillion dollars a fiscal quarter,) and the endless expansion of the bureaucratic-welfare complex.
The nation is projected to amass over $140 trillion in debt by 2053. That is completely unsustainable, particularly in a nation whose manufacturing and energy sectors are being depleted by quixotic “green” policies.
The United States is importing millions of illegal aliens, approximately 8 million under the Biden administration alone. This is the Democrats’ preferred underclass, a foreign-language-speaking proletariat to back its ‘revolution from above.’
This “revolution” is actually reversing the American experiment of a limited government that constitutionally protects the life, liberty, and property of the citizenry. It is a revolution in the sense that it is restoring the absolutism of decadent pre-revolutionary Europe.
This is creating a Tower of Babel that is culturally divided within. Due to the subversive state-education system and the colleges, even the English speakers no longer speak the same language: Traditional Americans and the Woke literati might as well be living in Two Americas.
It is highly disturbing that the new House leadership is signaling it does not grasp the urgency of the moment. America needs a new direction — and fast. We cannot be fighting for other people’s freedom when it is at-risk in our own nation.
If this Congress does not get this House in order, America is going to find itself in terminal national decline in an unstable multipolar world dominated by ruthless nuclear-armed powers.