We are sending aid to Russia. REALLY?

Okay, we are going to give Ukraine a billion dollars of support, loans I suspect.  But, its like loaning my brother some money - we are never going to see that money again.  Of course, Russia raised the price of natural gas to Ukraine by 80%. And Ukraine already owes Russia a couple of billion.  Of course, others are putting together aid packages.  Germany offered to send them natural gas, but not too much since a third of their supply comes from Russia.

So in effect, we are sending our money to Russia via Ukraine.  So, how is that supposed to punish Russia?  It's very unclear how we can do anything.  How disturbing is that to our national psychic?  We are the country that put a man on the moon, won World War II (almost buy ourselves if you ignore Russia's victory over Germany inside of Russia), won in Korea, backed off Russia in Cuba, didn't lose in Vietnam, wasted time and resources in three wars in the Middle East, etc.  For a few more years we still have the biggest economy in the world that at least keeps 65% of its work force employed and we are used to being top dog.  Of course, are we a top dog with a fatal weakness.

Of course, we still have the most powerful military in the world.  But, everyone has learned that our fatal flaw is that we do not take territory and we have a short attention span.  A group like the Taliban can defeat us by simply retreating before our superior force, fighting just enough to recruit the disenfranchised and religious zealots in the world to fight against the evil hedons from America, and then just wait until we leave.  We have no answer against them, time is simply on their side.  We are unable or unwilling to go after them where they live, which at the moment is Pakistan.  Like the Koreans and Vietnamese, they have learned that they just have to retreat across a safe-line in the sand.
When they need to lick their wounds, they retreat across the line.  When they want to fight, they come across it.  It is an untenable position that we take as Americans, but luckily, we have no memory of history and refuse to recognize our fatal flaw.

So, when will the reality sink in.  We can do nothing for Ukraine unless we are willing to have a major conflict with Russia ... where we hope neither side pulls out their nuclear weapons.  As a country, we are not willing to loss large numbers of people in a war.  Casualties in recent wars total in a year the number of soldiers we used to lose in a week in Vietnam, a day in the civil war.  We simply have no stomach for it.

We have fatal flaws.  We can not win against an opponent like the Taliban given our restraints on ourselves and our lack of a stomach for our own deaths.  And yet, we continue to pound our chests and act indignant to Russia.  We ignore the fact that our impact disappears before our last soldier leaves the shore.  It is lucky we have a short memory as we squander our resources on our latest venture.  And even luckier for us, we are so impotent in the current crisis that we are unlikely to find a way to spend large sums of money like we did in the Middle East wars (trillions).