My friends, some writing in the Herald, keep saying “we must stand with Ukraine.” Trouble is, while we keep standing, the Ukrainians are being slaughtered by the big bad bear. Paradoxically, though, I think the situation is going surprisingly well. The Ukrainians will no doubt lose, but they are extracting a stiff price. And Russian President Putin seems to have never learned the best military lesson Hitler had to offer – blitzkrieg. The fabled Soviet army is barely crawling, too risk-averse, bombing apartment buildings in Kyiv and Kharkiv. NATO and the EU, self-serving bumblers from way back, are still more united now than 30 years ago.
Near home, our slow-mo president is still chugging along, making decisions about three to 10 days later than he should. Not the best way to run a war, but then, why should he know? And he’s still a saint compared to his Republican counterparts, who cannot decide between those “patriots who just expressed their opinion” on Jan. 6, their darling Russian autocrat and their former commitment to freedom and democracy.
So when the dust settles down, say a month from now, there’s going to be enough losers and not too many winners. For war is seldom for free and defeat is a lonesome orphan. Then the real fight will start – finger-pointing, assigning the blame, meting punishment. This is, by the way, the very same dynamics as in Athens of 404 B.C., when the 27-year Peloponnesian War was finally lost, and when the winners – Spartans and their allies – abolished Democracy. Not a comfortable thought.
Tom Givon
Ignacio
