While NJ families struggle, Trenton and D.C. keep backing endless war in Ukraine

My parents were born at the end of World War II where my grandfather served in the United States Marine Corps as a radar man at the Battle of Guadalcanal.

My mother was born on an army base in Germany after her parents escaped the Soviet communists in Ukraine and set a path to come to America. Growing up in a middle-class New Jersey neighborhood in Cherry Hill, hating the communists was ingrained in so many of our conversations.

My grandmother hated them for ruining her homeland and would tell stories of survival from the war. My grandfather on my mother's side, whom I'm named after, lost his life in a factory explosion while trying to build a life in America.

They were proud new Americans and proud of their Ukrainian heritage. We enjoyed many of the food traditions from Ukraine, including pyrohy (Polish pierogi), which my grandmother called pedaheh and my favorite, piratski, which we all know as 'potato pancake.'

It's with this Ukrainian cultural basis that I developed a perspective on world affairs and in particular, my strong feelings throughout my life and career toward the Soviet Union.

When Ronald Reagan was elected President in 1980, the Russians were the enemy, both in reality with the threat of nuclear war and expansion through invasion (especially after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979) and culturally as movies depicted the Russians as our sworn enemy.

Then, an interesting thing happened after years of incredible leadership, toughness and strength from President Reagan calling on Gorbachev to "tear down this wall," the Berlin Wall actually was torn down in 1989.

This symbolized for the world that the era of the Cold War and the fear of our Russian enemy was over.

The Rise of our New Enemies

Throughout the 1990s, Islamist terrorists were the new enemy appearing on America's radar.

Even though we had paid a major price for the rise of Islamist fascism with the takeover of our embassy in Tehran in 1979 and the murder of 220 Marines,18 sailors and three soldiers in the terror attack our barracks in Lebanon in 1983, it wasn't until we saw it first hand on our soil with the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the 2000 attack on the USS Cole, and the 9/11 attacks that we were fully engaged.

The challenge, of course, was how to respond to a foreign enemy that seemingly had no national boundaries or organized army.

We reacted in two ways. The first was to significantly restrict Americans through the fear of another attack. The Patriot Act and new travel restrictions served to change the way Americans traveled cross-country and dealt with banking.

The second way was to go to war. Despite the many links to the Saudi's, America chose Saddam Hussein as enemy No. 1.

The reaction began with the invasion of Afghanistan, which quickly turned into a nation-building exercise that carried the war on for the next 20 years. This was followed by the 2003 invasion of Iraq to topple Saddam's regime in Baghdad.

Many people, then and now, have looked back on these attacks as strategically shortsighted, costing unnecessary deaths of thousands of young American military personnel, hundreds of thousands of civilians, and trillions of tax dollars.

The new reality was that Russia was no longer the boogeyman or our sworn enemy. Unlike the cultural dominance of uniting Americans against the Russian enemy, the jihadist enemy was anything but a unifier, so much so that an entire generation of politicians and media shills created terms like "Islamophobia" to paint people who were smartly calling out these radical nations and terror-harboring regimes as racists and haters.

To this day, we have cities overrun with Islamic migrants who hate America and serve only as a drain on the resources of hard-working Americans.

In Europe, we have armed troops protecting Christmas events because of the fear of the Islamists. The so-called "civilized nations" began and continue to act in a suicidal manner that actually empowers the Islamist enemy.

As far as our economic enemy, China, where communist dictatorship rules with an iron fist and has created an economy based on slave labor, Americans are hooked on cheap goods to fulfill their Amazon orders.

Both enemies enjoy the protection of woke Democrats, weak Republicans and a complicit legacy media

Russia Back on the 'Hate List'

After decades of war and freedom-restricting policies at home, something changed.

Americans tired of the rising crime, open borders and the apology tour from the Obama Administration putting America last, elected Donald Trump president of the United States in 2016.

As a former aide to and strong supporter of 1996 presidential candidate Pat Buchanan, who championed many of the populist, pro-worker and closed border policies of Trump, I was thrilled for the victory. Given the outright hatred and contempt of left-wing radical Democrats and weak Republicans toward the new president, we knew it was gonna be a rough ride.

Immediately, the war-hawk Republicans and freedom-hating Democrats began to attack the election as "stolen," blaming Russian propaganda and outright espionage for the results. They simply could not fathom that Donald Trump truly won the hearts and minds of the American people who were sick and tired of weakness and wokeness and wanted a leader who truly spoke for America and Americans, so blame the Russians.

Despite the real-time threat of murderous gangs and cartel operatives spilling over our borders, despite the communist slave economy crushing American production and farming jobs overseas (as Ross Perot correctly predicted in 1992), it was easier to hate the Russians.

Old cold warriors drummed up the fear and loathing of the Soviet empire, conflating the Soviets with the new Russian leadership, in order to join with the Clinton/Obama Democrats to undermine the new administration from go.

Now we know that they fabricated the entire Russia collusion narrative, have been credibly accused of spying on him, created fraudulent votes, and faked intelligence documents to accomplish the goal of ending the People's Presidency.

In November 2020, the plan succeeded.

In the midst of COVID lockdowns, lawlessness and violence from groups like Antifa and Black Lives Matter, and massive mail-in voting with nearly zero checks and balances to validate votes and expose fraud, Joe Biden was elected president with the most votes of anyone in history.

America paid a hefty price for what many consider to be a coup against the now former president. Open borders with millions of criminal aliens coming through the borders causing mayhem on our city streets, war in Ukraine, spiking prices, limited energy production and a woke agenda poisoning children and disrupting families.

It was bad, so bad, that despite the efforts to weaponize racism, fabricate votes and jail the Republican candidates, President Trump returned to the White House.

Thankfully, order and America First policies are being restored.

It's no secret that although I have been a supporter of President Trump's since he came down the escalator in 2015, I have publicly and privately disagreed with him on some policy issues.

I vehemently opposed "Warp Speed" and thought that he should have brought out the National Guard in 2020 to shut down the anti-cop, anti-American BLM rioters.

More recently, I publicly advocated for the funding of the Gateway Tunnel Project and opposed the speed and process of implementing new tariffs that hurt many New Jersey businesses.

That said, when the president is right, he's right.

As we look at the world today, suffering from war-mongering Republicans and reckless Democrats, there is a plan for peace in Ukraine on the table that strikes at the heart of our long anti-Russia narrative.

A Little Recent History of The Ukraine Conflict

In 2010, the Ukrainians elected a populist president to fix the flailing economy and put the nation on the best path forward to better relations with Russia, their large, militarized Eastern neighbor.

President Viktor Yanukovych immediately recognized that in order to bring stability, the former regime's quest for NATO membership needed to be scrapped. He and his majority in Parliament acted immediately.

The challenge for the endless war political class in America and the European elites was that this growing alliance between Russia and Ukraine did not meet the expectations of the European Union and the International Monetary Fund.

Instead, President Yanukovich rejected the terms of austerity forced on EU members in exchange for financial support and turned to Russia for help.

This did not sit well with the globalist political class in Washington or Brussels. Despite being a duly elected president with the international community backing up the facts of the free and fair election, the White House and some endless-war Republicans like Sen. John McCain began to encourage protestors and actively oppose the Administration in Kiev, working directly with opposition leaders.

By 2014, the situation was untenable for the leader who restored economic growth in his first two years in office and independence from the dictates from the EU and Yanukovich fled to Moscow.

From Yanukovych to war

Immediately, Russian President Putin saw the danger of the aggressive actions from the European Union undermining a pro-Russian democracy and pulled their ambassador.

After a couple of decades of dormancy, the Russian enemy was resurrected by the unelected tyrants at the IMF with the full support of the U.S. president and some Republican leaders. The newly installed President Petro Poroshenko faced a crisis from go.

Pro-Russian rebels in the Donbas region on the Russian border and the Russian advanced on Crimea, resulting in its annexation. It's a complicated issue and one cannot overlook that in Sevastopol on the Crimean peninsula, more than 7 in 10 residents are ethnic Russians. Add to that a controversial referendum and 2 of the 5 UN Security Council members supporting the annexation (Russia) and the other abstaining (China), the deal was done.

What's interesting is that compared to the Donbas region, where Ukrainian military strikes began in 2014 by the new president against the Ukrainian people, Crimea has escaped the lion's share of the conflict that followed after Yanukovych came to power in 2010, ending the call to join NATO.

As so-called separatists in the Donbas region of Eastern Ukraine began to govern the two major cities and work toward a referendum of independence, the U.S.-backed regime led by Poroshenko broke a peace deal and began killing civilians, as reported by the New York Times and CNN.

Is Putin Really the Hitler of our Time?

So to sum up, a conflict got stirred up inside Ukraine when U.S. and European politicians got angry with the will of the people electing a populist but Pro-Russian president, resulting in a new pro-West president who breaks a peace deal and begins killing his own people.

Meanwhile, President Putin offered more than 1.5 million passports to residents in Donbas in order to fast-track their Russian citizenship and not only pays the pensions for 1.6 million workers and retirees in the region, but also provides social aid and benefits to 1.5 million residents.

Full stop.

The guy who is being compared to Hitler by some unknown and irrelevant members of the United States Congress, as well as many high-ranking officials, is handing out benefits and paying pensions?

Now that the same president is calling for peace and accepting most of the terms of President Trump's 28-point peace plan, it would seem the ball is in our court to force the Kyiv government to agree.

Putin has given several speeches on the matter of ending the war, yet they rarely show up in reports from the legacy media.

Why are they so determined to make Putin the devil and today's Hitler?

The challenge is that too many American politicians support the continued flow of billions of tax dollars to Ukraine as tens of thousands of young people are conscripted into the army and sent to a deadly front.

Too many politicians in America and Europe are beholden to the powers that control the IMF and the EU. Too many political leaders need an enemy like Russia so they can continue to ignore the problems they themselves created on the home front.

Overrun with migrants? Hate Russia. Drug crisis killing young people and families? Hate Russia. Too expensive to heat your home? Hate Russia, and the list goes on.

It was Ronald Reagan who famously coined the Soviet Union as the "Evil Empire," and it was the left-leaning legacy media that relentlessly attacked Reagan as a warmonger and a dangerous cowboy, but it was President Reagan's compassion for people and his measured strength that finally won the day when the Berlin Wall came crashing down and the Soviet Empire fell.

One of the hallmarks of Reagan's foreign policy is that he truly believed that the Russian people were being held hostage by the communist tyranny led by the Politburo and their puppet premiers.

This is the same belief we have about the Chinese people and the Venezuelan people whose economic, personal and religious freedoms are crushed under tyranny.

When we look at the flow of money to Kyiv and the globalist puppet Zelenskyy where the Kyiv government has been willing to not only send young men to their death, but has been willing to send shells raining down on their own cities in the name of stopping Putin.

President Putin, for his part, has been stealing a page out of Reagan's book, vilifying the corrupt European leaders whose children are not dying in the conflict, and openly recognizing that the people are suffering, going so far as to put our Russian treasure to support Ukrainians impacted by the war.

This makes him a man who can be dealt with through negotiation and strength.

Let's apply this to ourselves with our own American worldview. Why would we hate the Russian people? In the midst of the Cold War, Reagan presented America as a liberator of the Russians being held captive by communist tyranny.

It worked, but now it is the Ukrainian people being held captive by dark deals from the CIA and European politicians.

Who benefits from endless war? Clearly, with the billions in arms deals and foreign aid, it's not the American middle class. Let's not forget it was President Dwight D Eisenhower who warned us in his farewell address of the dangers of the "military Industrial complex."

War is profitable for the elites and your sons and daughters pay the price.

Hypocrisy in New Jersey

Many staunch advocates for continued billions in foreign aid to Israel will tell you that divestiture and even non-support for continued aid is tantamount to anti-Semitism. This same thought-group will tell you that any questioning of Zelenskyy or the war in Ukraine is flat-out support for the modern-day "Hitler," Putin.

Remember when the New Jersey legislature and the governor twisted in knots to spend our tax money to find any investment in Russian assets and eliminate it from our pensions

People took it so far as to harass and boycott locally owned Lukoil. It got out of control fast as the anti-Putin frenzy took hold.

Even left-of-center CNN called out this stupidity.

So spend our money and hurt local New Jersey businesses in the name of virtue signaling hate toward Russia? All the while supporting the sending of billions in tax dollars to a regime in Ukraine with zero accountability?

When evil people in America double and triple down on funding a war overseas and try to have you canceled for questioning that war, you know something is wrong.

These are the same political leaders OK with mutilating children, promoting criminals over cops, removing your religious freedom, restricting your Second Amendment rights and shutting down your businesses if you don't comply with onerous regulations.

When these same people want you to hate Russia so badly that they lie about "collusion" when it was the Democrats all along who interfered and stole elections, you should ask why.

Well, now I’m asking why

Why shouldn’t Russia be our main ally in the current war against Islamic fascism, which is being fought across Main Streets in the U.S. and Europe?

Putin seems to understand this more than any European leader outside of Viktor Orbán, who understands survival so well he’s guaranteed his deal with Russia to keep the lights on.

Look at Poland. They understand that Muslim migration is the major problem. While the Democrats distract you with a narrative to hate Russia, we have millions of illegals in the U.S. undermining our communities and taking our jobs.

You wanna hate someone? How about endless-war Republicans and Islamic apologist/open-border Democrats? Let’s start there.

If we are going to stand up for Americans and survive another 250 years, let’s speak truth about the lies surrounding Ukraine, let’s formalize the alliance with Russia and let’s put the Islamists and Chinese communists in check. It’s our only path to victory, prosperity and world peace.

Shame on the American politicians comparing Putin to Hitler.

What a slap in the face to Holocaust survivors and the Greatest Generation. Grow up and look at the reality of our situation.

We win by creating alliances with strong nations against the enemies who have infiltrated our nation and are in the process of tearing us down from within. The Cold War is over; the Soviets were our enemy.

We won, they collapsed.

Now the Russian people are being led by a strong man who will fight to protect his country. Why would we want war with him? He reacted to NATO saber-rattling and CIA subversion.

Trump is right: End the war now. Leave Donbas Russian speakers to Russia and focus on our true enemies — jihadists and violent migrant takers who are bleeding our communities and Chinese communists who are undermining our economic future.

A Path to Peace

It seems Putin and Trump actually want peace and have given Zelenskyy until Christmas to accept terms.

Let's hope for the sake of peace and future prosperity, he takes it and we can all move forward to focus our fight on our real enemies: Chinese communists, Islamists and the Globalist elites.

Our natural ally is Russia, not socialist EU dictators, and certainly not fascist puppets in Kyiv. Russia is a Christian nation and shares many values with the West.

Culturally, we have much more cultural closeness with Russia than China. Don't forget that the Russian economy is stable.

They want the same peace we want, which allows us to focus on building prosperity and a bright future for our citizens; we don't have to live in extremes with Russia.

Putin isn’t Hitler, and he's certainly no saint. What we do have to do is stop propping up petty dictators with billions of dollars and no benefit to the American working and middle class.

Let's get the peace and refocus American tax dollars for Americans.

The post above reflects the thoughts and observations of New Jersey 101.5 talk show host Bill Spadea. Any opinions expressed are Bill's own.

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