As of yesterday, seventeen days since Russia invaded Ukraine, Putin’s war had moved into western Ukraine, increasingly beginning to threaten the capital. Putin’s military has proved to be less capable than expected, and Ukraine’s more so. But size and weaponry matter, and artillery is now targeting civilian targets—against all conventions and making the Russian decision-makers war criminals. Several hospitals have been attacked, and Putin is attempting to strangle all the larger cities and to block western aid from getting in. Mariupol has no electricity, and food and water are at a point of dire scarcity.
It is clear that NATO will neither put boots on Ukrainian ground or planes in its sky or strike Russian targets inside Ukraine from bases within NATO countries. I understand it—World War III we are told—but I hate it. So many people will have to die because of this man. He will ravage the cities, decimate the infrastructure, and kill tens of thousands, including so many in his own army. Zelenskyy will neither leave nor yield, and I fear he will die in a bunker under artillery fire, or be arrested and sent to the Gulag. But the Ukrainian Resistance will fight on, and Russia’s installation of a puppet regime in Ukraine will not be stable, especially as an extended occupation by Russia increasingly becomes too costly and Russian support for the war ebbs. As the sanctions take hold, as western businesses abandon Russia, as modern conveniences Russians have accustomed themselves to crumble, as the last vestiges of a free press are extinguished, as unemployment and costs for everything rise, as Russian boys come home in body bags, as Russians realize the propaganda they hear is all a lie, as they weary of a war most of them probably never supported in the first place, my hope is that Biden will say, Do you want this to end? Do you want sanctions lifted and your boys brought home? Then let us examine, at a site of our choosing, the body of Vladimir Putin; or, if you prefer, send him to The Hague to stand trial for war crimes. We prefer the latter—but will accept the former.
When I was in the sixth grade, there was an undersized, poorly dressed, somewhat unkempt kid named Robert Alexander. I remember that he looked vaguely Hispanic, with dark eyes and unruly dark hair. He had very large, protruding front teeth; he had not one friend that I knew of. He slept a lot on his crossed arms at his end-of-the-row desk, which, to my surprise, the teacher let him do. It’s possible that Miss Burks, probably in her fifties, had given up on him. Alternatively, her knowledge of him may have been much deeper than ours and she may have felt that decency entitled him to sleep. He was clearly from the other side of the tracks.
One day another kid in the class, Craig Burton—the biggest kid, and a bit of bully—said something mean to Robert, but Robert did not respond. My memory may be faulty here; it may have been that the big kid generally treated Robert with contempt. But in any event, a third kid in the class took Robert’s side, and the third kid and the big kid determined to settle things at recess. I remember that part well: right around the pitcher’s mound (which really was not a mound), after possibly a few moments of mutual staring, the third kid landed a fist to the jaw of the big kid, which sent him crying from the field and ultimately to the principal’s office. For some reason the teacher did not send the third kid to the principal, but made him sit by her on the low wall overlooking the playground in the shade of a large oak.
Nuclear weapons were not even a threat, of course. But was the third kid wrong?
John Rachal's Blog 
Churchills, Not Chamberlains
March 15, 2022 at 11:10 pm (Ethics, Political Commentary)
Three weeks after the February 24 invasion
There is no off ramp for Putin. None. He is far too committed to what he has already done, killing thousands of Ukrainians (2,100 so far in Mariupol alone), targeting residential areas and hospitals in a war of terror. He has turned several Ukrainian cities into wastelands. He knows there is no turning back. He must win, and he must intimidate the West and NATO into a willingness to allow Ukraine to go under. He threatens the use of tactical nuclear weapons, of which he has thousands and the United States has some 230. Lenin had a motto: “You probe with bayonets; if you find mush, you push. If you find steel, you withdraw.” So far, the bayonet has not hit much NATO steel.
I am still hopeful that—short of Western military intervention—once he has destroyed the country and killed tens of thousands, he will be unable to occupy the country for the long term and that a Ukrainian Resistance and sanctions will somehow bring him down. But hope is not a dependable strategy. He has terrified us into thinking that World War III will ensue if NATO takes any military action. Putin has already said that we have committed an act of war merely by supplying Ukraine with weaponry. I am off the fence now: Enact a no-fly-zone as a start. Eliot Cohen, noting both Putin’s military weakness (despite his one advantage in tactical nuclear weapons) and NATO’s strength, has pointed out that American aircraft have fought the Russians in third countries, including Syria, Korea, and probably Vietnam. A NATO military presence over Ukraine is not the same as attacking Russia on its own soil. If Putin thinks he has a right to be on his enemy’s soil wreaking desolation, we have a right to be on our friend’s soil stopping him. We should at least bring a knife to the knife fight—and probably a gun. Our unwillingness to even support Poland’s offer to supply its own Migs to the Ukrainians and “backfill” the Poles’ reduction with our F-16s suggests that we are too afraid to even come to the fight, and are willing to watch the Russian Bear gobble up a country and murder its people, and not just its soldiers. We should be Churchills, not Chamberlains.
Short of that, we have the Hope Strategy—an unsustainable Russian occupation of Ukraine, a strong Ukrainian Resistance, Russian war fatigue, China choosing not to throw Putin a lifeline, and eventually Putin’s fall. And maybe the Hope Strategy will eventually be enough. But there is an alternative possible scenario: The West will tire of their own sacrifices in imposing sanctions, and rather than rising up against Putin, Russians may be duped by Putin’s propaganda and stand with him, while dissidents disappear. Ukraine will be in his pocket, and more countries may be on offer. He will smile at the political and moral weakness—the mush—of the much-vaunted NATO, America in particular. And what is left of Ukraine will glower at America and agree with Putin at least on that.
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