This is what the U.S. is getting by aiding Ukraine

The good news is that Congress, at the last minute, averted a government shutdown, at least for now. The bad news is that billions of dollars of funding for Ukraine were stripped from the continuing resolution as a sop to House Republicans who want to cut off the embattled democracy altogether.

Aid to Ukraine still has the support of roughly two-thirds of both houses — something you can’t say about many other issues — but a dangerous milestone was reached last week when more House Republicans voted against Ukraine aid (117) than voted for it (101). That reflects a broader turn in Republican opinion, with only 39 percent of Republicans saying in a recent CBS News-YouGov poll that the United States should send weapons to Ukraine and 61 percent saying it shouldn’t.

To do the right thing for Ukraine, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) will now have to go against a growing portion of the Republican base. It is, nevertheless, imperative that he show a modicum of backbone and bring a Ukraine funding bill to the floor immediately. It is not only the right thing to do morally — we have an obligation to support a fellow democracy fending off an unprovoked invasion — but it also is the right thing to do strategically. In fact, it is hard to think of any U.S. foreign policy initiative since the end of the Cold War that has been more successful or more important than U.S. aid to Ukraine.