I'm no international relations hawk though, so I'm keen to hear opposing viewpoints.
Our (the west's) response to warmongering has been to trickle just enough resources and monies to keep Ukraine from losing but not so much that they win. The "donated" resources of course need to be replenished, the military industrial complex is quite literally making a killing.
At this point the question of declaring a firm stand against warmongering is lost. It's three years and going, warmongering as it turns out is fine. I hate that. My tax dollars are going towards endlessly and needlessly extending human suffering for the benefit of the military industrial complex. I hate that.
So I say, enough of this bullshit. Unless we suddenly send in so much support that Ukraine decisively wins very quickly, I don't want to see a single cent more of my tax dollars going towards this. My taxes are not blood money and the military industrial complex can go fuck themselves.
And I think the attitude "its pointless to try and keep helping against the Russians, people have suffered from them for so long anyway" is completeley beside the point (and dangerous!)-- the main gain from helping the Ukraine in my view is discouraging the kind of neo-imperialistm that led to this attack, and stopping the support just sends a signal to ambitious tyrants all over the world that you don't really care about them plundering their weaker neighbors (and with having the biggest military comes some kind of obligation in this regard in my view).
I also think that you are patronizing the Ukrainians themselves in the worst way-- if anyone should get to decide how long it is worth it to fight for their country, it should be them.
That is precisely the benefitting of the military industrial complex that I am fed up with.
>"its pointless to try and keep helping against the Russians, people have suffered from them for so long anyway"
That is not what I'm angry about. I am angry that this war is dragging on far longer than there is any reasonable reason to be. If we hadn't trickled in support Ukraine would have lost already, if we had placed our full weight behind Ukraine they would have won already; either way the war would have ended long ago.
With the question of warmongering settled at this point (it's okay to warmonger, whether any of us like it or not), the only thing I care about is people not dying. I sincerely don't care how the war ends anymore, all I care about at this point is that it stops ASAP, that people stop dying.
>if anyone should get to decide how long it is worth it to fight for their country, it should be them.
If they want to continue fighting that's totally within their right, but I as an American taxpayer am not obliged to foot their bill much less in the manner we've been doing it.
If you think Ukrainians are just going to roll over and submit if everyone abandons them and Ukraine must capitulate, you are an idiot.
These are people who's ancestors had their ethnicity half erased. Even this war is part of that erasure. Russia literally kidnaps children to ship them off who knows where.
The Ukrainian people will resist. It will be Afghanistan all over again.
Plenty will continue to die.
A lack of ATACMS will not change that. The ONLY outcome that stops people dying is Russia going the fuck home. Ukrainians have been dying to push out Russian invaders for 10 years now, not 2.
The west can definitely force Ukraine to sign a humiliating treaty, ceding land and freezing the conflict, there's plenty of leverage for that. If that happens, the days of Ukraine as an independent state are numbered - a new invasion will happen as soon as russians rebuild their forces, and this time it will be done right. People will continue to die even if the country gets erased from the map, just maybe not in the trenches, but in the torture chambers and prisons instead.