While trying to ridicule a military official during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) offered an astoundingly inaccurate analysis of recent history to justify providing lethal aid to the Ukrainian government in its fight against Russian-backed separatists.
“That defies logic,” Sen. McCain said at Thursday’s hearing, referring to Lt. Gen. Vincent Stewart’s assertion that the US would be unable to supply Kiev’s military with lethal arms quick enough to turn the tide of the battle in Eastern Ukraine.
“We can put them on aircraft and fly them over there – how do you justify a statement like that?” McCain piled on.
Stewart, who testified alongside the Director of National Intelligence in the hearing on global threats, offered a sobering analysis of the situation the US faces should it decide to flood the already bloodied Donbass battlefield with more weapons.
“Russia and the separatists have significant interior lines that they can resupply a lot faster with a lot heavier weapons than we can deliver,” Lt. Gen. Stewart told the senator.
“It would be a race to see who can arm and I think with their interior lines they would have a significant advantage on the ground,” he added.
Incensed by the lieutenant general’s analysis, McCain pointed to the 1980’s Soviet war in Afghanistan as a success story of what happens when the US commits weapons in a proxy war against the Russians.
“I’m sure that the Russians had a significant advantage when they invaded Afghanistan. I’m sure that throughout history when we’ve helped people who’ve been invaded and oppressed and when we haven’t, [we’ve seen] what the consequences have been.”
In the case of Afghanistan, the consequences, which have been widely and exhaustively reported, were the rise of the Taliban and decades of war, and over 13 years of a US military campaign against the very same people that the Pentagon covertly armed in the 1980’s—militants who included Osama Bin Laden himself.
While arming Afghan rebels may have helped bankrupt the Soviet Union on military misadventure, it also sowed the seeds for the United States, decades later, to follow in the foot steps of the Soviets and go to war in Afghanistan, which today is the longest war in the nation’s history.
Recent history in Iraq, Libya, and Syria further proves how flooding the world with arms has yielded unintended consequences and, tragically, more bloodshed down the road.
We have seen what the consequences have been, indeed, Senator.
