In War, Morality Is the First Victim

I noticed that the American government very recently confirmed that yes, the murder of a daughter of a Russian nationalist with ties to Vladimir Putin was, indeed, committed by forces loyal to, or part of, the Ukrainian resistance to the Russian invasion, now seven months in and running. As if it could have been anyone else. (Maybe it could have; Putin is rumored to be in ill health, and maybe some of Russia's own citizens might have been interested in hurrying that along.)

But it makes some people feel better in some echelons that "official" verification of this somehow satisfies a need for accuracy. The ethics of such an act are now in "official" question.

That includes the accompanying statement that the Biden Administration, had it known, would have advised against it. That brings with it a whole bunch of other questions.

Such as: Is this announcement a very weak effort to appease Putin so he doesn't freak out and contemplate, more than he already has, the use of nuclear weapons to settle Ukraine once and for all? Is this an effort, again a weak one, to give the U.S. clean hands, although it sounds like the "damned spot" of Macbeth, one that cannot be removed no matter how hard you try?

Such as: Do you really think the particular Ukrainians who had this in mind would have rung up Anthony Blinken, the Secretary of State, or someone with similar juice in the American government, and asked for consultative assistance? Like, "We've got her set up now, so we need your okay. We won't tell a soul"?

You got hopes. Focus on this would be all about cherry-picking, though. Especially because Russian troops, in their all-out attempt to intimidate the Ukrainians and perhaps believing their own propaganda that Nazis infect the population, have murdered thousands of Ukrainian civilians. The killings are often willy-nilly, incredibly random, done by what seems to be mere impulse. Sometimes the Russians have even made up excuses, but usually not. (For more on this, please read Masha Gesson's article in The New Yorker, published on August 8. I don't keep the issues forever, but I kept this one.)

In the popular vernacular of the day, these are known as war crimes. But in that frame, war is supposed to be refined to the battlefield, where the people directly involved actually have on uniforms belonging to their side. Unfortunately for the Russians, their invasion hasn't worked the magic they've planned, so Ukraine still has most of its land and all of its court system left over. If they ever catch them, woe be to the Russians who have perpetrated these atrocities.

In the meantime, vengeance is to be expected. A message got sent to Putin with that assassination: We are coming for you. Not that that hasn't already been contemplated by his side: Little doubt remains that Vloydymyr Zelenskyy, the President of Ukraine, would be left alive if his country is overrun by Russia, though right now that doesn't appear likely. Brave as he is, he is no more brave than his soldiers, and will die with them if worse comes to worst. That it would solidify a good place in the history written by those with a moral base may or may not be a comfort to the family he leaves behind. Make no mistake, either: the Russians are trying to kill him this very minute. They just can't get to him.

All of which makes the U.S. a side player in acts of warlike nature. Yes, we have supplied Ukraine with plenty of weapons, which they have clearly utilized to their benefit: the Russians, to this date, have lost territory previously conquered. The spending for this has, so far, been gladly paid by a Congress with a majority of its members who see the clear and unmistakeable threat to democracy overall. It's much the same as Lend-Lease, out of which we supplied the Allies against Germany and Japan before Pearl Harbor forced us in. 

But that permission was razor-thin in the House of Representatives--it passed by exactly one vote--and I cannot help but think that, under the disgusting thumb of ex-, the Republican Party, should it take control of the House in January, might very well cut off funding in anticipation of another ridiculous term of its banner carrier, who has managed the greatest con job in American history. That would pave the way for ex- to take control again, shut down any attempts to even make Russia look bad, not to mention Ukraine's defense, and let ex- have his hotel to make money, the only thing he truly believes in, in Moscow in a horribly proportioned quid pro quo.

So what would we have done had we known ahead of time: threaten Ukraine with reducing or cutting off the funding if it carried out what constitutes a war crime of its own? Not a chance. The Democrats are caught, too: caught in the rabbit hole of supporting a war and taking on the moral debris that comes with it. Will they recommend that the actual perpetrators be tried for war crimes, too? You really think so?

I know a fellow who, early in his career before he turned to teaching, worked in Southeast Asia for Air America, a passenger and cargo company that served as a CIA front for supplying forces friendly to the U.S. in that region (and attacking those unfriendly). He was there in the early '60s--six decades ago--when almost no one knew of it. Very little has still been written and researched about it, a gap in our history which should be corrected. He brought it up in a conversation.

He didn't mind discussing the possible death of civilians one bit. "It's part of war," he said with a straight face. "Civilians are going to get in the way." He knew people were being bombed, way before Congress ever considered entering that tragic war. He knew that while some of them could be called enemy, many of them weren't. He didn't seem remorseful. In acts laden with moral dilemmas, he had settled his long ago.

Should this be written off as the "price of freedom"? A defense against worldwide communism that couldn't be opposed? The moral implications of that are sorry to contemplate, including the very fact that this very respected union member who told me didn't have a problem with it. 

I demonstrated and worked with those who opposed that war, once that it was exposed. I didn't, and still don't, have a problem with that, either.

Considering that, who is right and who is wrong? What is justifiable and what isn't? Does the murder of one who also had nothing to do with the actual war going on become the exception to the moral rule, or should it be lumped into the same bin as the murder of many? I leave that to you.

As long as it appears to be a one-off, I doubt that many Americans will object to this murder. If it's tied to Putin, nobody will mind much. But that young woman, Daria Dugina (yes, I will say her name), couldn't have known what was about to happen to her. That is a randomness no less chilling because it happens on the other side of the world, no less outrageous because it happened to a single person rather than to thousands. (Something that should be also connected to school and supermarket and church and nightclub and concert and newspaper office and movie house shootings, but I digress)

Unquestionably, morality of any sort is one of the first victims when war is waged. It reinforces what I once told a class of mine: "The only real issue of war that gets decided is whether or not you're alive when it's finished."

Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

Maybe We Should Step Aside for the Newer Folk

Time is another one of those periodicals that has shifted from a conservative curmudgeonly approach to public affairs to a far more progressive one. As such, it is welcome to see.

One of its semi-regular features--every couple of months or so--is to display people of the next generation who are already making a difference in our world, a hundred at a time, in different aspects of our culture. This past week's edition, for instance, gives brief bios of:

• Mykhailo Fedorov, 31, Ukraine's Minister of Digital Transformation, who is the front line of his country's battle against Russian disinformation, a.k.a. lies;
• Eugenia Kargbo, 35, the first ever Heat Officer of Freetown, Sierra Leone, who strategized the planting of a million trees to reduce the core temperature of that city;
• Leah Stokes, 34, political science professor from the U-Cal Santa Barbara, a major contributor to the Biden effort to significantly lower emissions;
• Jessica Nouhavandi, 37, co-founder and lead pharmacist of Honeybee Health, which became the first mail-order pharmacy in the U.S. to ship abortion pills;
• Cassidy Hutchinson, 25, who bravely testified to ex-'s horrible behavior and the threats to democracy caused by insurrectionists to the January 6 committee;
• Lawrence Wong, 49, Singapore's Deputy Prime Minister;
• Wally Adeyemo, 41, the first black U.S. Deputy Secretary of the Treasury;
• Kaja Kallas, 45, the Prime Minister of Estonia;
• Chris Murphy, 49, Senator from Connecticut, a Senate leader in gun control;
• Annalena Baerbock, 41, German Foreign Minister;
• Dr. Caitlin Bernard, 38, an ob-gyn in Indiana, who has put herself in the forefront of the twisted, ridiculous ban on abortion in that and many other states.

That's out of a hundred that Time has noted. Note the ages. There are extremely competent people coming up now, and it indicates that they want to take on the world that our--my--generation has largely screwed up: climate, authoritarianism, backwards thinking, abuse of religion, resistance to change, endless bickering, etc., etc., etc.

The time is coming when we'll have no choice but to get the hell out of their ways. The elder statesmen are running out of energy, and running out of ideas to motivate people. The political ads we are being pummeled with during this dismal election season is but one example.

The sooner, the better. Our selfishness, which some theorists have tried to justify as leading to a better way (Ayn Rand, for instance), has led to rabbit holes all over the place. Nobody wants to rely on anyone else anymore. Nobody thinks they can.

This invading world of just me, only me, nobody else matters, is cascading humanity right off a cliff. The insistence of some people to base their decisions on outright lies is frightening, and will lead to conflicts entirely avoidable.

Somebody has to clean up this mess. Not my generation. We've created it.

Some of us have been waiting for the next bunch of burgeoning adults to grab the reins and guide us in a new direction. The above people are examples of those who could. My only piece of advice to them: Hurry the hell up!

H.G. Wells said that humanity is in a race between education and catastrophe (and that quote is over a century old). The above people are examples of those who have watched things start to crumble. I hope they have learned well. They have a big job ahead of them.

Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

Mr. C's Theory: Russia Is Losing the War

I taught a course called 20th Century Conflicts back in the day. The last time I taught it was 19 years ago, so it's possible that you might conclude that I might be ineligible, or at least outdated, to recall it.

I don't think so. I used to teach something that I had thought up all by myself--hadn't read it in any book as such, hadn't heard it in any college lecture. But in all the wars we studied in that course, it was consistently true. 

I gathered the relevant facts together and concocted a theory. I think it still works, and the war in Ukraine verifies it.

To wit: to win a war, a country facing another country must be superior in four areas: Technology, production, strategy, and morale. If it wins all four, it will win. If it loses just one, that one may have an adverse effect upon the other three, and it may easily lose. If there is no clear advantage, the war may easily grind into a stalemate.

The only variable is time. Over time, things a country may have in advantage might turn against it. A country might have a good strategy starting out, but that might prove to be too costly in men and materials. It might have the advantage in men and materials to start, but its strategy might prove to drain that advantage as things move along. It might also build that advantage through a spike in production, as the U.S. did in both world wars. And all countries who engage in war have plenty of morale starting out, but often that morale wanes.

When Russia first attacked Ukraine, it gained ground fast, partly because Ukraine's government tried to remain calm and panic-free right up until invasion time. So Ukraine's overall preparation was poor--bad strategy.

Ukraine was also frightfully undersupplied. It had weaponry, true, but not nearly enough to handle Russian tanks and planes. But it has gained enormous ground in that regard, since American President Joe Biden made a strong stand against the invasion, did a great job organizing NATO behind Ukraine's defense, and began shipments of both American offensive and defensive weapons. Technologically, then, Ukraine is catching up after being clearly outgunned at the start. By year's end, it will have the benefits of another $12B in American military aid, too.

Russia, led by the fascist monster Vladimir Putin, propagandized its troops into believing that somehow, Ukraine represented a threat to their borders (which it never did and never wants to), and that its claims for that land were legitimate (they never were). That provided sufficient morale boosts for them to invade and try to conquer the whole nation, reaching the outskirts of the capital, Kyiv, as well as destroying parts of the city itself.

In the meantime, though, Ukrainian President Vlodymyr Zelenskyy rallied his country's defenses. Not only enlisted solders responded, but also the population at large, which certainly did not agree with Putin's insistence that certain lands naturally belonged to Russia. There is no more powerful defensive force than national reverence and pride. Russia's experience in the Second World War ought to have been enough evidence of that, since it sacrificed a great deal of life to the Nazi invasion, which got to the outskirts of Moscow.

The war has now lasted seven months. In that time, Russian casualties have been enormous. Russia has felt the need to call up reserves and then to institute a draft. Nothing rare about that.

But just as some Americans decided to flee their country during a war in Vietnam they had real issues with, so too are thousands of Russians now fleeing that country to avoid being called into service to put their lives on the line for a war they are no longer sure of. That's a sure sign that, regardless of the horribly misleading propaganda that the Russian government is trying to guarantee that its citizens absorb, hopefully (but not absolutely by any means) divorced from what news is coming in from the West, people have concluded that getting killed for Ukraine just ain't worth it.

Ukrainian forces have been reported to have pushed the Russians back in more than one area. Whatever strategy the Russians employed at the start of the war has now been thrown back in their faces. Calls back home, recorded surreptitiously, indicate that Russian soldiers are getting nervous and cynical about that strategy. Morale is weakening.

Putin has hinted of the use of nuclear weapons if things continue to go badly. But that may be a standstill as well, since the U.S., as a member of NATO, has warned Putin about going off the deep end. We will have to see about that.

So let's go over my theory's parts again:

• Technology--Ukraine's defenses have seemed to catch up to Russia's assault.
• Production--As long as NATO and U.S. aid continues, Ukraine should benefit. But providing soldiers is part of production, too. Right now, Ukraine doesn't seem to need any. That may change.
• Strategy--Russia seemed to assume that showing up would be enough, and that throwing superior numbers at Ukraine would prove decisive. But it has lost more than 50,000 killed. We lost 58,000 killed in Vietnam, true. But that took eight years. And Ukraine has counterattacked successfully in places.
• Morale--It doesn't look as if Ukraine's men are leaving the country. They're making a brave stand. Their president is leading the way. Russian men are trying to escape the new draft.

As time flows, these things may change, of course. They may get worse for Ukraine. But they may also get much worse for Russia. And gains recently made on the battlefield by Ukraine will assist in the will to resist and absorb what for them have been frightful casualties, including the slaughter of innocent civilians--except that slaughter may well increase the will to resist, not diminish it.

To try to make things "official," Russia has claimed that it has annexed four parts of Ukraine--as if the besieged country will now accept that. That's kind of like the American colonies declaring themselves to be free from Great Britain; bold gesture, but it had to be backed up with military force (which it was, or just enough of it to wear down the British). Russia might not be so lucky, though. Diplomatically, it seems to be an effort for Russia to withdraw from Ukraine while claiming victory.

As such, it may be an effort, too, to bolster morale within Russia. National pride is now at stake there. Russia is now stuck with justifying all those dead soldiers, all those families now without their sons. As in America with Vietnam, that will linger through the decades and serve to wear away national loyalty.

America responded by making wars it had no right to make. That is the pushback that results from defeat: register a victory, or try to, to even the scales. Doesn't always work. Yup--Russia will not go away if it loses. War begets more war. And Russia is losing this one.

Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark