After House Republicans demanded a border bill in exchange for Ukraine funding, guess which one was intentionally tanked? Pro-open-borders Republicans like Sens. Mitch McConnell, James Lankford and Lindsey Graham teamed up with Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to offer a pretend “border security” bill that would only make things worse.

Once again, voters are being told, Yeah sorry, something came up and we couldn’t get to the border, but if you’ll just give us $60 billion for Ukraine today, we’ll definitely get to your issue tomorrow …

By now, protecting our border has lost out to defending every other country’s border so many times that we currently have 750 military bases around the world. There are only 195 countries in the world.

But as long as we have troops spread out across the globe, why not stick our nose into every inter-regional bar fight? Since 2001, the U.S. military has been involved in combat in at least 25 countries. Name five. That’s how important these military interventions are to the average American.

We’re always told that there’s no reason we can’t wage pointless wars abroad, and protect our border at the same time. They’re not mutually exclusive! But somehow they always are.

First of all, we don’t have unlimited taxpayer dollars to spend on national security. Merely to maintain those 750 bases costs us more than $130 billion annually, to say nothing of the hundreds of billions of dollars required to build them in the first place.

By contrast, the absolute highest possible cost of a border wall — as calculated by people adamantly opposed to a wall — is $25 billion.

Second, why did the ruling class freak out when Gov. Ron DeSantis said he cared more about our border than Ukraine’s border if defending both isn’t mutually exclusive? Can’t he have a preference?

The reason is, the warmongers know they need to keep the words “our border” as far as possible from the word, “Ukraine.” Otherwise voters might start making unreasonable demands about protecting our country.

But when you give politicians a choice between:

— Spending hundreds of billions of dollars on bases in Afghanistan so our military can paint George Floyd murals 20 years after we’d already won that war;

     Or

     — Building a wall on our border;

… 100% of Democrats and 70% of Republicans choose the George Floyd murals.

At least liberals I can understand. They hate our country, so depleting the U.S. military on worthless missions abroad dovetails perfectly with allowing a full-on invasion at our border.  If America faced any real enemies abroad, I promise you, liberals would be stone-cold pacifists.

Also, it’s so Walmart-y to care about your own country. True sophisticates obsess over what’s happening in Burkina Faso. (Yes, of course we have a military base there. How else do you think we got up to 750 bases?)

But conservative war hawks are perplexing. While liberals think we’re still at war with the USSR — Donald Trump is colluding with the enemy! — warmonger conservatives seem to think it’s 1941 and every world leader is Hitler.

Or maybe their war fever is just a cover for flinging open our borders: Sell out your country on immigration, while cosplaying Gen. George Patton.

Just as gun rights and pro-life go together, putting U.S. troops all over the world while leaving our country unprotected go hand-in-hand, too. President George W. Bush, his father and brother, Sens. Marco Rubio and Lindsey Graham, and Ambassador Nikki Haley all support the entire third world moving here. Curiously, they also all support nonstop wars. Ditto the Wall Street Journal and Fox News. (To be fair, after his thumping by Trump, Rubio seems to have gotten religion on immigration.)

The late Sen. John McCain demonstrated his enthusiasm for starting wars by singing “Bomb Bomb Bomb, Bomb Bomb Iran” to the tune of the Beach Boys’ “Barbara Ann.” That was in between his repeated attempts to pass an amnesty for illegals. Only when McCain ran for president did he grudgingly allow, “I’ll build the g-damned fence if they want it.” (Yes, voters have been asking for a wall forever. Trump isn’t the first politician to betray us.)

Suzy Warmonger Haley wants to wage war on three continents at once, but is so chary of reminding voters about the border that she blames China for something that is entirely Mexico’s fault: the fentanyl flooding our country.

What’s the calculation on that?

— Mexico: 0 miles away and responsible for every molecule of fentanyl in the U.S.

— China: 7,000 miles away and isn’t even sending fentanyl precursor chemicals to Mexico anymore.

Yes, definitely blame China. True, hundreds of thousands of Americans will continue dying of drug overdoses and destroying our cities in the process, but Nikki will get another foreign war!  And that will give her husband more social work to perform in countries other than ours, while she gets to play the brave military wife at home.

Haley keeps falsely telling voters that her husband has gone to “war,” is “protecting our family and our freedom,” and has “the courage to fight for our country.” In fact, her husband has never gone to war, he’s not protecting our freedom and he hasn’t had to fight for our country.

A decade after we invaded Afghanistan and vaporized the Taliban, Michael Haley was sent there to teach Afghans to grow crops other than opium — which failed, as any half-wit knew it would. Currently, he’s in Djibouti, holding bazaars and Ramadan dinners for the locals.

I wouldn’t mention it — it’s not his fault that the Department of Defense decided to take the best fighting force in the world and turn it into a bunch of social workers — except that Haley keeps acting like she’s Martha Washington bringing food and medicine to the troops.

Law-abiding citizens in Chicago face more risk of death on a daily basis than Michael Haley. But they’re just Americans, so who cares?

     COPYRIGHT 2024 ANN COULTER

     DISTRIBUTED BY ANDREWS MCMEEL SYNDICATION