We're not quite sure why Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy bothered to rally his country to fight off its invading Russian neighbors. He could have saved the trouble if he'd checked with U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Georgia.
"[W]e cannot fund more of [the war] by sending money and weaponry to Ukraine to fight a war they cannot possibly win," she said on a video she posted on social media late last week. " It's not our responsibility to give President Zelenskyy and the Ukrainian people false hope about a war they cannot win."
Zelenskyy and the Ukrainian people have inspired people across the United States and around the world with their valiant efforts to beat back the large and more heavily armed Russian army.
U.S. President Joe Biden, for all the weakness he has shown around the world, to his credit has sent weapons and other materiel to Ukraine and has taken a number of steps to cripple the Russian economy and isolate the country for the actions it has taken.
We get that Greene doesn't like the president and doesn't want to be shown supporting him in any way. We're not enamored with his actions in office, either, but we believe he deserves backing in his support of a democratic country being invaded by a hostile neighbor that has plans to take it over.
The Northwest Georgia congresswoman made her remarks after casting a "no" vote - one of only eight House members to do so - to strip "most favored nation" trade status from Russia.
The House vote set the stage for higher tariffs on imports from Russia and Belarus, one of its neighbors which has been complicit in the invasion. The idea is that if the tariffs are higher on the imports, those receiving them would buy less of them and further damage the economy of the two countries.
All nine of Tennessee's House members, including two Democrats, voted to remove Russia's "most favored nation" trade status. Greene was the only one of Georgia's 14 House members, including six Democrats, to vote against the bill. The measure now goes to the Senate for consideration.
Greene used the vote to rail against Biden's weakness, which may be fair game at other times, but not in efforts to isolate a thuggish, power-hungry Russian President Vladimir Putin.
"He [Biden] has already failed us in Afghanistan," she said, "and he's failed us from the beginning, making America look weak on the world stage. This is the reason why Putin was so emboldened to do what he's doing in the Ukraine."
Greene dismissed the idea her vote was supportive of Russia, calling Putin "murderous" and the invasion "evil," but we can't imagine a member of Congress voicing the attitude she did.
"If we truly care about suffering and death on our television screens," she said on the social media video, "we cannot fund more of it by sending money and weaponry to Ukraine to fight a war they cannot possibly win. The only effect of more arms and more money from America will be to prolong the war and magnify human suffering. I don't know about you, but I don't want to be responsible for creating even more refugees and orphans in an already traumatized and dysfunctional world
"It's not our responsibility to give President Zelenskyy and the Ukrainian people false hope about a war they cannot win."
Greene was only 17 years old when the former Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, but any study of history should have given her an understanding of what true "human suffering" was like for inhabitants of what is now Ukraine when they were under the thumb of the USSR. Trust us, Congresswoman, they don't want to go back to that.
With her give-up-and-avoid-more-suffering rhetoric, we're thankful she wasn't around to advise British Prime Minister Winston Churchill on the highly potent German threat during World War II, U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt after the annihilation of Pearl Harbor and nearly his entire Pacific Fleet by Japan on Dec. 7, 1941, or U.S. President George H.W. Bush following Iraq's invasion and annexation of Kuwait in August 1990.
In each case, it would have saved much suffering - at least on the front end - if the British or Americans had just capitulated or not become involved.
We don't know what the future will bring in the Ukraine war, and neither does Greene. And the congresswoman's "yes" vote would not have changed the tide of the war.
But we are dismayed that her contempt for Biden has blinded her to the danger of Putin's invasion. For someone who talks a lot about stopping socialism and communism in this country, her defeatist language seems patently un-American in a conflict pitting a spirited, freedom-loving people against a sinister autocrat.