Reflections on the Ukrainian War and the Fates of the U.S. and Russia

Amici,

The saddest thing about this war, aside from the casualties on all sides, is that there's no "Good Guys" to root for (see below for a consideration of the Ukrainian government), but the most distressing thing about this war is how our "side" in the West is demonizing Putin and the Russians. The U.S. has invaded all sorts of countries and overthrown all sorts of governments since World War II (before that, we did such mostly in Central America and the Caribbean). Yet despite all that, our cultural betters and MSM 'bots ('bots = robots) demonize any naysayers to our government's official 'narrative'. And before this war, they demonized anyone who didn't buy wholly into the fraudulent George Floyd-Black Lives Matters lies, and then they demonized anyone who didn't wholly swallow (hook, line, and sinker) the faux Covid "narrative".

Now they're doing the same to Col. Douglas MacGregor and Tucker Carlson and anyone who doesn't buy into the "narrative" about the Ukrainian War. Enough of the demonization! There are enough real demons all over the place! See: Mary's Role in Spiritual Warfare | Fr Chad Ripperger [2022] and Fr Chad Ripperger on his new book 'Dominion' | [@TheTerryandJesseShow].

Aside from damning certain American politicians (Mitch McConnell and the RINOs) I refuse to tolerate demonization. It is poisoning our civil society so that the only alternative is brutal, no-holds-barred survival fighting. Pure evil. And naturally the actual demons want that!

Other than that, some observations:

From what I read, and it isn't from the MainStream Media, is that the Poland-MIGS-to-Ukraine idea is flat out, absolutely insane – and suicidal to boot. This action would have created a true casus belli for Russia and the planes would not have "helped" in any event. (That's because Russia has not remotely unleashed it full Air Force.) We ought to be trying to stabilize the situation, anyway, not destabilize it. But our governments in the West are either trying to destabilize or profit off of this mess.

I came across this article, which seems to me to be pretty sound and commonsense, at American Thinker.

An excerpt:

Zelensky could end this in two hours if he wanted. Instead, he seems to have developed a Churchill complex. He's begging for money and arms, which will prolong the bloodshed. No one is reporting the billions in medicines, foodstuff, and other aid the Russians are shipping into Ukraine.

AnP again: about the U.S. and the MIGS fiasco

The essence of this airplane mess is that U.S. Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, a fool, a poltroon, an imbecile, (i.e. not a "demon" but a knave) tried to do a "Hillary", i.e. repeat what she did with the then French president to pry Obama into attacking Libya. Remember Libya? Anyone? 

Excerpt:

This dueling scenario was not, and is not, a fracture within NATO. What surfaced in the insanity is a fracture within the United States government as an outcome of a rogue U.S. State Department led by Secretary Anthony Blinken.

This rogue U.S. State Department now represents a key reference point, but the U.S. media will not discuss it. This is another example of how the Fourth Branch of Government, a completely independent national security system, is operating.

A strong previous example is evident in the U.S. response to Libya, when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton wanted war with Kaddaffi, but President Obama was not originally in agreement. Clinton sought help from French President Nicolas Sarkozy because President Obama was not on board.

At the beginning of Hillary’s Libya operation, Joint Chiefs Admiral McMullin and Defense Secretary Robert Gates were not on board with Hillary’s intervention plans, nor was Turkish President Recep Erdogan.  Secretary Clinton worked around the refusals by unilaterally going to the United Nations and NATO Supreme Commander General Stravridis. Eventually, Clinton, Susan Rice and Samantha Power created enough international momentum to force President Obama to intervene in Libya. The rest is history.

(And yes, Hillary is pretty darned demonic.)

AnP again:

Thanks be to God that Poland, P.O.L.A.N.D! once again saved the West from utter catastrophe. It must truly be a blessed nation.

An almost final word about those Polish MIGS:

• Putin always controlled the skies and these couple of dozen updated but essentially out-of-date MIGS, etc. would have been burned out of the skies the moment they appeared. They would have made NO difference, except to encourage Putin to unleash his massive Air Force. I think it is unrealistic in the extreme to say we could "fool" Putin's military into not seeing just where these planes came from and who got them there. Thus, I am in no way surprised the Pentagon denounced this as soon as they could. The Department of Defense is an absolute mess and what they've done to our military is criminal, but at least they won't go along with the State Department!
  

Also, finally, about those Polish planes, "thedoc00" in the Comments to the above article at The Conservative Treehouse writes:

Poland already has 3-4 squadrons of F-16’s and those Mig-29’s were about 30 left overs from Poland’s Warsaw Pact days. The Polish Aerospace Company PLZ was struggling to maintain them and the avionics were not compatible with NATO. Those plane’s were being transitioned out of the Polish air force, to be replaced by F-16’s or better. Poland does not have a lot money, so it was likely F-16’s. Other Warsaw Pact nations were doing or had done the same.

Note that the Polish Army and even the German Army still has units equipped with Russian Tanks and other armored vehicles.

The Ukraine is in the same boat and somebody in DoD or State Department was smart enough to notice that Poland and Ukraine both had on inventory the very SAME Russian equipment …. Blinken the Blind was equipped with this knowledge and launched on this dangerous gambit.

AnP again:

In other words, sending those old MIGS to Ukraine stood to be as stupid a ploy as sending Brewster Buffaloes and Devastator torpedo planes against the crack Japanese pilots of the First Air Fleet at Midway. (All the planes and almost all the American pilots were slaughtered.) Don't we EVER learn from history?

So what do we do for the Ukraine?

As for Ukraine, cut if off. That sounds "heartless" and "cruel" but I'm not "romantic" about World War; who could be? Imperial Russia should have cut off Serbia in 1914 because World War I was not worth Serbia. Simple. Cruel to say it, maybe, but necessary. That first world war killed and wounded about 40 million. (Maybe Tsar Nicolas thought about that as he and his family were all shot to death in a basement?) Almost all the dead were Europeans. It nearly destroyed – maybe it did – Western Civilization. Serbia, I'm sorry, but this is true, was not worth all that. Sometimes a war is worth fighting; I think Korea was, but Vietnam wasn't. It's a gamble, always. China will throw the dice and try to take Taiwan, most likely, but that is a massive gamble. Taiwan is a continental landmass: i.e. it is large and chock-full of mountains. Admirals Nimitz and King wanted to invade it in WWII, but Douglas MacArthur talked them out of it.

Second to that, (The) Ukraine (we're not supposed to use the "The" because "The Ukraine" means "The Border", and that indicates the dodgy "nationhood" of that contested "border-land") has been the cesspool of absolute U.S. government and Ukrainian corruption for decades, with its "leaders" drowned to the gills in U.S. taxpayer money in off-shore accounts, and that includes Zalenskyy. This new "Ukrainian aid" bill McConnell is pushing through Congress ("Cocaine Mitch" is a wretched POS if ever there was one, and I think he is true traitor to the U.S.; so yes, I do demonize Mitch), is going to pay-off the Ukrainian government thieves again, and Biden and Family/Friends, also. Not to mention McConnell & Co. as well. But we can't stop it because we do not control our government!

The Ukrainian Government

(The oddest thing about the following is it is true.) This current Ukrainian government consists of a bunch of comedy writers and has-been entertainment types who are feverishly promoting homosexuality and the hellish sex-change dogma and the rest of our dying culture's carnal psychosis. Never forget that the Democrat Party leaders are often sexual exploiters (Biden is exhibit A; his surviving son exhibit B) and one of the major reasons Democrats and Leftists won't control our border with Mexico is they're getting sex slaves from there. Ukraine is a major hub of sex-exploitation and sex slaves – never forget that. I remember reading years ago about Cyprus, how the culture on the island was ruined by "Russian" prostitutes flooding the place. Cyprus! That was YEARS ago! We seem to be helpless before this brutal carnal carnival of evil that is rotting the guts out from our Western world: our lusts are eviscerating our culture, and in the U.S., we can't stop the deviants pushing homosexuality and sex-change even in our grade schools! Look at the pressure DeSantis is under for trying to stop this diabolical sex-perversion propaganda – it's actually called 'grooming' – in Florida schools K-3! C'mon on! K-3! And all because the "Frankfurt School" of Communist ideologues back in the 1920s decided to destroy our culture from with via sexual license and perversion. Seems to have worked.

• Zalenskyy and his Friends of Zelenskyy are the same sick types, and ironically he and his crew came in as "reformers" who were going to fight "corruption" and did nothing of the sort. The whole thing is a grotesque joke. In fact, I would insist Zalenskyy and his government – which you know has locked up his political opposition and instituted censorship (Putin has too, but we're doing the very same in the U.S.!) – so how is Zalenskyy any better? At least Putin pretends (if it is pretense) to support the Church and Orthodox Christian morality (something he doesn't live himself in his private life, to be sure, but I'll take what I can get).

War Estimates (Ukraine has already lost)

As for this war, it was over before it began.

1. Sun Tzu would have told them to make the "Estimates" and see whether there was a chance to fight off what is the third largest military in the world (I assume) after China and the U.S. Japan should have done this rational estimates procedure in 1941 but didn't.
   
2. History is full of examples. I've mentioned Japan, but also Ireland, Scotland, Poland in the 18th century, the Southern Confederacy, and so on.
   
3. Exceptions: The American Revolution worked because A. the distances and terrain involved; the Brits could not surround and cut of the Patriots they way they did in Ireland or Putin is doing in the Ukraine; B. that the British rulers didn't really have their hearts in it (read up on the Howe brothers, Richard and William), and C. of course the Royal French Navy. The Vietnam War we lost because Vietnam was backed by its connection to the landmass of Asia and its allies replenished their supplies, and also our rules of engagement limited what we could do. Or consider Afghanistan: much the same. So, what exceptions exist tend to prove the rule.
   
4. For flat, fertile, and bordering-on-Russia Ukraine, however, it was never a contest, but what exists now is endless lies and propaganda about the Ukrainians beating the Russians. Our MSM news media is in full propaganda mode, and anyone not pushing the "narrative" gets "cancelled" (they've tried to do that with Col. MacGregor, to mention one example again). On the ground, Putin has been going slow to try to save lives, something the Ukrainian Regime is not trying to do.

Otherwise, read also St. Luke 14:31-32 for an exactly Sun Tzu-type parallel expressed by Our Lord himself:

31Or what king on his way to war with another king will not first sit down and consider whether he can engage with ten thousand men the one coming against him with twenty thousand? 32 And if he is unable, he will send a delegation while the other king is still far off, to ask for terms of peace.… 

Right now, the Ukrainian army has collapsed and has "gone to ground" among the civilian population, whom it is using as human shields. Indeed, Zalenskyy has imported a few hundred Al-Qaeda terrorists! (Not to mention the CIA flooding Ukraine with mercenaries.) But all these tactics can do is slaughter more people. Considering what Putin has said he wants to stop the war, most of the demands being fait accompli according to the situation on the ground, it is madness to continue. I mean, if one values human life.

And no, I don't believe Putin is trying to recreate the Russian or Soviet empires. If that was the game, he's had Clinton, Bush II, and Obama to maneuver against in major ways, but he hasn't. He's given a lot of interviews and seems honestly animated about the steady approach of NATO to his borders, of course, and Russia has been invaded by not only the East but the West, by Germany (twice in the 20th century) and by Napoleon in the early 19th century, and before that by both Sweden and Poland. (Ever hear of the Great Northern War?) Putin is a thug, in the "strong man" tradition of Russian rulers (and Byzantine and Ancient Roman rulers) yet he has let the situation in the Ukraine go on for decades, the last eight years of which the Ukrainians have been shelling their fellow Ukrainians in the Donbas (the Russian sometimes shell back, but not nearly as much as the Ukrainians do). During the feckless Obama administration, Putin could have invaded in 2014 when Obama (or the Deep State without him) overthrew the Ukrainian government. Or if Putin and Obama were in cahoots, he could have just walked over Ukraine. Didn't happen. Putin finally invaded only days after when that literal "ho" Kamala Harris, went to Germany and openly declared U.S. support for Ukraine joining NATO. 

Thug, murderer, adulterer, all that, but at least Putin isn't destroying his country like the Biden Regime is, or Bergoglio has destroyed the Vatican II Church. Maybe, ultimately, Putin is a World Economic Forum plant, but so is a good portion of the U.S. government. There's a lot wrong with the world, and I'm afraid we're all damned to live in a 'Big Brother' type of George Orwell nightmare. But Poland bought us some time and saved us from a true conflagration. And thank God for that.

An Préachán