U.S. sending 30-year-old, obsolete equipment to Ukraine military

You know he doesn't like to upset Vladimir. That's why he welched on the U.S. commitment to install missile defense systems in Poland and the Czech Republic. That's why he whispered to Dmitri Medvedev that he could be more flexible as soon as he got past that dumb election. Ukraine is a tricky question, though, for Barack Obama. The world expects him to do something about the Russian incursion, but you know Obama. He absolutely does not want to do anything, nor does he particularly care if Russia methodically reconstitutes the old Soviet Union. But sometimes it's the path of least political resistance to try to look like you're doing something.

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So the Ukranians want equipment to aid in their resistance? Hey. Have we got some useless old crap sitting around that we can ship over there and then claim we helped? Better than sending it to the Salvation Army, right? The Pentagon has provided Kiev with more than $260 million in non-lethal military equipment since the start of the conflict last year. However, the Post report says that some of the gear is "secondhand stuff", in the words of one Ukrainian special forces commander. Among the outdated supplies are Humvees dating from the late 1980s and early 1990s, according to the Post, which cited the vehicles' serial numbers in its report. In another case, an infantry unit of 120 soldiers received a single bulletproof vest, of a type that U.S. forces stopped using in the mid-2000s. The Post reported that the Pentagon had no official comment on the condition of the equipment. However, one anonymous U.S. defense official told the paper that because the U.S. was unprepared for Russia to get involved in the conflict, they had to respond to Ukraine's requests for aid "as fast as possible." "We had no money appropriated for this crisis," the official said, according to the Post. "Does that means everything was perfect? Of course not."

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Another Pentagon official described a second shipment of Humvees authorized to be sent to Ukraine as "the stuff that's sitting around somewhere that no service can use ...They're not good enough to drive, but you can tear them apart [for spare parts]." I bet the Ukranians get pretty excited at the prospect of one of those Humvees arriving so they can tear it apart instead of driving it. That'll put the fear of God into the Russkies. And hey, if those 120 soldiers share nice, I bet they can get a lot of good use out of that one, antiquated bulletproof vest. Besides, since it's obsolete you'd have to presume the use of it would start reducing the size of the unit, and soon it would be easier to share. If you don't think there's a connection between the growing aggressiveness of the world's malefactors and the reluctance of the U.S. president to stand up to them in any meaningful way, I don't know what else to tell you. This is a world in which bad people with the ability to attack others will always do so unless someone with the ability to stop them is willing to do so. The U.S. is less able than it used to be because Obama doesn't make it a priority to properly equip the military. But it hardly matters because he is completely unwilling. And all of you who don't think we should get involved in foreign entanglements should start taking stock of what happens in the world when we don't, because it's going on right before your eyes and it's not pretty.

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