This morning, here in Mississippi, we drink our coffee, walk the dog, pet the cat and get kids off to school and a myriad of other places they wish to go. At my farm, I feed the horses, tell them I love them, and drive to work. All is peaceful; birds sing and squawk– cardinals on the back fence, blue jays in the yard.
There remains no hint of the determined 160-year old track of General Grant and his Union men, passing by to assault Vicksburg and receive the city’s surrender with compassion and much needed food. That road is long paved over and the print of their horses’ hooves has vanished. Brother no longer fights with brother – except in Ukraine.
Many miles away and far over a restless ocean, there is a brutal, relentless assault on the lives of leaders and populace of one of the largest countries in Europe. Putin wants it. They don’t want Putin, who is engaged in attempting to destroy every living thing his missiles, tanks and bombs may find in Ukraine. Putin is a Slav, and in the distant past, Russia and Ukraine were hardly distinguishable.
This week, Putin’s Russian Army bombed a hospital, causing the death of at least one young mother and her child, about to be born. War has no favorites. Neither does he. Putin gives hourly orders to destroy to his rag tag conscripted army and bought Syrian mercenaries until there is little space on the ground in Ukraine which has not become rubble.
A nation which once was 40,000,000 free people, many of them historic Slavs, crawls out of blasted buildings as Putin seeks another satellite to Moscow. His Final Solution is at hand, to dominate and possess a peaceful country now carpeted with bloody corpses, many of them Russian soldiers, who lie unburied as stray dogs eye them as a food source.
This is a ghastly, horror-filled war; no one in Ukraine and many in Russia did not provoke it, nor do they wish it to continue, for many of the ancient Kievan Russ’ are Slavs, also. Kiev was the central settlement and site of expansion for Viking warriors 1,000 years past. It is the home seat of the Russian people, and Putin is dead set on taking it over.
With two years of pandemic in which to hide at his dacha and brood about the scattered peoples who were once part of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, Putin is on a fanatical, ice cold rage to blow apart all opposition and everyone who does not see the world today as he does. In the land of the first Czar, the great Vladimir Monomakh, hard history repeats itself, not always kindly. Brother again assaults brother, in a Cain and Abel holocaust which the President of Ukraine, Zelensky, is gallantly trying to stop and defeat the horde. This is not about religion, for Zelensky is Jewish, though much of his nation are Catholic or Orthodox Christians – as is Putin himself. Things become more than extreme when a secular leader co-opts the approval of a religious one, and Patriarch Kyril in Moscow has signed onto the war with his support. This is not new in history, but always deeply regrettable. To be in command of a nation at the time of its greatest peril, and to make decisions meaning life, death or freedom, is a thorny privilege sought by few: glory and adulation are seductive; not many are willing to choose the hard and desperate road that accompanies duty well done. We are on that road with the Ukrainians, now.
Like us in America, they want to stay free, and we have a definitive moral obligation to try and help them. Babies, children and soldiers die every day, and there is no cessation of violence in this conflict, as freedom in East Europe, as anywhere, is quite costly. And we – the United States – are at a crossroads, and our President has declined to send warplanes to Kiev, even older ones, but which the Ukrainians can fly.
The hardware we have thrown their way – by last count, over $500,000,000, is designed for defense from the ground. It is also designed to pacify Putin – he cannot say American pilots are flying against his. Zelensky has repeatedly pleaded for aerial hardware, guns he can put in the sky, supplied by the western countries but for his pilots only.
Still, President Biden refuses, and our allies, taking their cue from him, decline also. U.S Intelligence, in sterling wisdom, has advised Biden that since we know what Putin is capable of, it is unwise to offend him further. I’m not joking: this is the line of reasoning, buoyed by fear, which Biden is fed daily.
A man of good but not infallible will, our President is a decent human being – compared to Putin, a veritable saint – but he has never served in the military, and has fought in no wars. A clever negotiator, he has never until now been confronted with the up or down decision of whether to face down a cowardly global bully or ignore his crimes. He has made the wrong one.
Biden does not want to bear responsibility if he sends desperately needed planes to Zelensky and American lives are lost because Putin ultimately attacks us. And at some point, this must be faced, for Putin – and possibly his authoritarian successor - will not stop with Ukraine.
To shine an unwelcome spotlight on this matter, this administration has almost exactly paralleled the actions of Britain’s Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, in appeasing Hitler just prior to WW II. One cannot safely shake hands with the devil, nor can one avoid the coming deluge, if we do so. And Ukraine is looking more and more like a bloody Sudetenland, which Hitler grabbed first, then more, then more until it was clear that a bad bargain was made and Hitler would not keep it.
So has a disastrous, passive bargain been made in Washington, which still does not grasp the depth of evil which has been unleashed, and which expects that Russia – for Putin IS Russia in this time – will, after swallowing Ukraine and murdering its President – go home in peace and leave us to it. He will not. Foreign policy dictated by fear is never a good idea. Putin has sized up the U. S. leadership as both weak and indecisive, and has sent undisguised warning to the White House that he must not be interfered with.
In not giving clear-cut air support to Ukraine, either from us or from our NATO allies, we close the coffin on some 40,000,000 decent people who relied on our strength and help. Though he goes to great lengths not to reveal this, Putin is terrified of the combined firepower of NATO and its nearly 2,000,000 soldiers compared with his 190,000 doubtful conscripts and mercenaries. He bloviates threats, then checks to see if anyone is looking, holding Ukraine hostage to carve up as he desires.
Perhaps we have looked too long, taken his threats at face value seriously and backed away, a course which history cannot whitewash. Meanwhile, the Ukrainians desperately need free air to fight off the numerous Russian attack jets, and we could provide this by shipping as many planes as the Ukrainians can fly, as soon as possible.
Still, the answer from Washington is “No”. I am reminded of George Washington’s advice to his doubtful commanders near the end of the Revolution, when their army was depleted and outmanned by British regulars. “Gentlemen – never take counsel of your fears.”
He was correct. There is strong bilateral support in Congress for helping the Ukrainians where they most need it, and this by a number of lawmakers who have actually fought in a bloody war and seen what happens when a dictator is given free rein. When we – the Americans – desperately needed help, King Louis of France sent ships and a canny admiral who advised Washington that Yorktown was a more opportune target than New York, and he was correct. British surrender came not long after.
Today, our European allies – and enemies - from this 250 years-old war are in eternity, and I expect they are aware of what they got right and what went wrong. Putin cares little for eternity, he wants absolute power NOW, over as much of the former Soviet Union as he can get. He dreams of being an empire builder; he has studied Ganibal, the African general who commanded armies for Peter the Great. And he has doubtless read Caesar’s Commentaries on Gaul, in which of course, since he was writing history, Caesar was triumphant.
Not for long. Soon Putin will be gone from earth, and we must deal with who and whatever government succeeds him. Best to not go into those negotiations looking timid and overcautious, as we do now.
Linda Berry is a Northsider.
