Does the U.S. still stand for freedom?

If there was one issue that unified Americans throughout the Cold War, it was opposition to Soviet and, later, Russian aggression. Now, one party is holding Ukraine — a democracy fighting for its survival on NATO’s doorstep — hostage to unrelated political aims. The United States spent $8 trillion on the global war on terror, according to a report from the Costs of War project at Brown University. Total U.S. military aid to Ukraine to date amounts to less than 1 percent of that sum. What has Ukraine done with our money? According to a recently released U.S. intelligence report, Russia has already lost 315,000 troops, 2,200 tanks and more than one-quarter of its pre-2022 stockpile of ground forces equipment. But without congressional support, U.S. aid will run out soon. Already, according to the Dec. 25 front-page article “Ukraine facing a shortage of shells,” Ukrainian forces are running low on artillery shells.