Russia, in its actions, is not terribly different from Nazi Germany. That is not a point worthy of debate. It is factual.
Russia, for weeks, has been engaged in aerial terrorism, hitting non-military targets, in an attempt to break the will of the Ukranian people. It has failed, but the Russians keep doubling down on failure.
Strategic bombing to break the will of the opposing population is a military theory that has been around for over a century. The basic problem with the theory has been that in practice, it does not work. The only country that, in a general war, threw in the towel because they were being bombed was Japan, and that was after two atomic bombings. The massive fireraids by General LeMay's B-29s, an action that LeMay himself recognized as a war crime, didn't break the Japanese. Putler should well know this; his family comes from Leningrad. German bombing, shelling, and besieging the city did not break the people of Leningrad (something that they take pride in to this day).
The Russians are crossing the line between criminality and madness. If anything, they are going to make it even harder for their fellow travelers in the GOP to align with them. Oh, they'll try, they'll pretend to care for the people of Ukraine and say that appeasing the Russians will end the suffering of the Ukrainian people. They'll blame Ukraine for not recognizing reality in their goal of expelling the Russian invaders. But it would be a sellout on a historic level, everyone will know that.
The Ukrainians are not asking for us to fight their war for them, They are only asking for our support. Only craven fellow-travelers of Putin will not see the justice of helping the Ukrainians fight for their own freedom.
Edited to add:
In an address on his Telegram channel, Mr Zelensky said those who carried out Saturday's attacks were inhuman and they would "lose".
Switching from Ukrainian to Russian, he then attacked Mr Putin.
"Your leader wants to show you that he's leading from the front, and his military is behind him," he said.
"But in fact he is hiding. He's hiding behind his military, his missiles, the walls of his residences and palaces.
"He's hiding behind you, and he's burning your country and your future. No-one will forgive you for terror. No-one in the world will forgive you for that. Ukraine will not forgive."
5 comments:
Don't forget Bomber Harris
Harris's continued preference for area bombing over precision targeting remains controversial, partly because many senior Allied air commanders thought it less effective and partly for the large number of civilian casualties and destruction the strategy caused in Continental Europe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_Arthur_Harris,_1st_Baronet
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhunRo5FybQ
Oh, I hadn’t. I chose to mention LeMay because he acknowledged that his methods were war crimes.
(Also, he was Wallace’s running mate in 1968, a duet sarcastically known as Tweedledum and Tweedlebomb.)
Funny thing is ... the Russian peasantry have a history of only taking so much.
Then things get ugly (bets on when Putin 'falls out a window?') ...
The experts keep predicting that the Russian supply chain is going to run out of missiles and artillery soon enough (Ukrainian reports that Russia has about three rounds of long-range artillery left), and there's been signs that they don't have enough rifles and bullets at the front lines. While China, Iran, and North Korea are supposed to be providing more material, I doubt they can keep up (and Iran is dealing with an internal uprising that could take them out of the fight) with Russia's demand.
Putin can try another round of 300,000 conscriptions to fill the zone with more bodies so he can keep claiming the territories belong to him, but he's already scraping the dredges from Russia's prisons and it's not helping. Lacking sufficient armor and weapons, all those conscripts will do is provide speed bumps to Ukraine's counterstrikes.
Putin is probably a war criminal, but I doubt he's worried about going to trial...when he's removed from office it'll be feet first. Natural causes or multiple defenestrations, I don't care which, but I don't want him to suffer a long and lingering death solely because his life prolongs the conflict and attendant deaths he's caused. My only concern there is whether his successor stops the war.
Pappenheimer
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