Where does it say my mind? It says make up your mind. They have been fighting over there for hundreds of years.
Of course. The various European nations have a violent and bloodthirsty history, they have been at each others throats forever. They started 2 world wars, in both cases, the adults had to step in and put a stop to it, and after the second, we had to take away most of their toys so they would play nice. That;s the only reason there hasn't been WW III, WW IV, or more.
We defended them because we couldn't trust them to act responsibly, that is about half of what NATO is for. The other half is the fact that the other "adults" that stepped in were more violent socialist totalitarians, Communists, who were allies of convenience, and hardly any better than our enemies, also violent socialist totalitarians, their bitter rivals, the Facists. Two sides of the same coin, the Nazis were a bigger threat so we did a temporary deal with the devil. Then, predicably, at the end, they were still the devil.
And the Ukrainian government are hardly choirboys or sterliing examples of rectitude, they were/are (as with most European governments including the EU) notoriously corrupt, and heavily complicit in various frauds including those involving Hunter Biden - who really seems to get around for someone with his, er, "qualifications", that is, as a ne'er-do-well influence peddler.
All that aside, the Russians *did* invade a sovereign country, with the stated purpose of recreating the USSR, which is a clear violation of the principles of international law, and more importantly, *exactly what the Nazis did*. We are at least complicit with them for exactly the same reason we were in 1939, we sat by with nary a peep when they took over another country, hoping they would stop at the Crimea. We know how this story goes, we have seen it before, it is not in our interest to allow first the Crimea, now Ukraine, and the obvious progression to Poland, etc.
In any case, we have a stake in the outcome, we do not want to allow them to turn back the clock to 1989. We are in a better strategic position if they lose in Ukraine, it is worth some effort to halt them and push them back. Obviously, we could end it in 15 minutes if we wanted to, and it is a fair question how much to give up to make that happen. But I point out that one mistake we have made over and over is to just feed in enough resources to make a stalemate, but not enough to decisively end it. We did it wrong in Korea, Vietnam, and Afghanistan and we did it right in Iraq the second time.
That's just my opinion, I think we are better off making darn sure this is over so it doesn't either drag on indefinitely, because the end result would be far better for us than dragging it out for years/decades or allowing the Russians free reign. Yes, the ever-feckless Euros should take care of this themselves, but you know they won't and I sure don't want to bet our asses on them doing something about it.
The Russians still as evil as when Reagan was around. Keeping them from reforming the USSR is definitely a matter of US National Security. What is that worth?
Brett