Ukraine attacks Moscow; Americans obsess on transgender participation in women's sports

The movie Shane, released in 1953, is a classic Western movie that depicts the struggle between good and evil. The good guys are homesteaders who want to establish farms and peacefully raise their families. The bad guys are cattlemen who hire an assassin to drive off the homesteaders.

Stonewall Torrey (played by Elijah Cook, Jr.) is a hapless homesteader who boasts to his friends that he’s not afraid of the assassin, and he straps on his revolver and rides to town. In the town's saloon, Torrey meets the assassin (played by Jack Palance). The killer taunts and insults Torrey until he foolishly goes for his gun. The assassin kills Torrey with one bullet.

America is replaying the movie Shane. The United States is the foolish and bombastic Torrey, and Russia is the assassin waiting for an opportunity to strike.

A couple of days ago, Ukrainian drones attacked the suburbs of Moscow. Who believes the Ukrainians took that provocative action without the approval and cooperation of the United States? 

What in the hell are we doing? Does our government believe it can arm the Ukrainians with sophisticated weapons that have killed perhaps 100,000 Russian soldiers without suffering repercussions?

America’s media elites, intellectual elites, and government technocrats may think it’s fun to poke the Russian bear. If war breaks out between Russia and the United States, it will be the kids living in flyover country who will do the fighting. 

But perhaps the boobs who are running our government have miscalculated. Have they forgotten that we’re messing with a nuclear power?

Meanwhile, Americans obsess about transgender participation in women’s sports and drag queens in school libraries. How long will the Russians put up with our foolish dabbling in Eastern European affairs?

I oppose American involvement in the Ukraine war.  I can see no positive outcome for anybody.

I’m bored: Let's go to war with Russia

Peter, Paul and Mary, the iconic folk singers from the 1960s, sang several songs protesting the war in Vietnam. “Where have all the young men gone?” they sang. “Gone for soldiers, every one.” And then the refrain: “When will they ever learn? When will they ever learn?”

Apparently, the answer to that question is not yet because our government is resolutely pushing the United States toward war with Russia.

So far, Ukraine is doing the fighting and dying in its year-long conflict with Russia, sustained by American weapons, technology and military expertise. Ukraine appears to be holding its own, but it would be a mistake to believe that Russia will simply give up and abandon its imperialistic ambitions to annex a portion of its western neighbor. Certainly, in my opinion, Russia will never surrender Crimea.

The American mainline media is fond of describing Russia as a regional power with an incompetent military and unstable leadership. I’m not sure that’s true.

Napoleon thought he had defeated Russia when he captured Moscow in 1812. In Napoleon’s mind, all that was left to do was wait for Russia’s military leaders to admit they had been beaten and formally surrender.

But the Russians never showed up to surrender. Instead, winter set in, and a cataclysmic fire burned down most of Moscow.

Rather than spend the winter in a burned out city, Napoleon decided to march his troops back to France. That’s when the Cossacks showed up. Russian cavalry harassed the French army on its long retreat and Napoleon lost ninety percent of his troops before he reached safety.

During World War II, Hitler invaded Russia in the summer of 1941 and drove the Russians back across a broad front. The Nazis made it to the outskirts of Moscow but they never captured the city. The Germans besieged Leningrad for 900 days but the Russians refused to surrender, although one million Leningrad civilians died from starvation during the siege.

Are there any lessons to be learned from history? I think there are. Russia may appear to be on the verge of defeat in its war with Ukraine, but that’s what Napoleon and Hitler believed when they picked a fight with Russia.

But what do I know about military strategy and geopolitical affairs? After all, I’m just a retired professor who lives smack dab in the middle of flyover country.

That’s a fair point. On the other hand, what do the bozos in Washington know about military strategy or the tangled history that connects Ukraine and Russia? Apparently, not much.

The witless diplomats and policy wonks who are recklessly pushing our country into war with a nuclear power probably think it’s fun to muck around in eastern European affairs. Who knows? They might get a lucrative book contract out of this fracas or a teaching gig at Harvard.

But what is their goal? Is it to weaken Russia or is it to weaken the United States?

I, for one, do not favor baiting the Russian bear. I do not want my children or grandchildren to suffer or die because some fools in Washington have no idea what the Russians are capable of.