It must be killing him seeing what the GOP has become:
In March 2022, three weeks into the war, the Russians dropped two 500-kilogram bombs on a theater in Mariupol, Ukraine, where hundreds of civilians, their homes having been destroyed, were sheltering. On the pavement on each side of the theater was painted in giant Cyrillic letters the Russian word for “children.” Perhaps 600 people died. The implausible idea that this was an accident became even more so 23 days later when, after a missile attack on refugees at a railway station, the words “for children” — up to 9 children were among the up to 63 people killed — were found painted on fragments of the missile. Did this mean revenge for children killed, according to Russian propaganda, by Ukrainian military actions in Russian-occupied portions of Ukraine? Retired Army Gen. David Petraeus and historian Andrew Roberts think not. In their new book, “Conflict: The Evolution of Warfare from 1945 to Ukraine,” they ascribe the missile attack not to revenge but to “a truly depraved psychology.”
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A Russian military consistency has been barbarism: Remember the explosive toys Russians scattered to maim Afghan children who would thereafter be burdens for adults too distracted to fight. This is the Russia that some congressional Republicans would, by ending aid for Ukraine, rescue from the criminal misadventure Vladimir Putin began on Feb. 24, 2022.
Today, for a second year, Russia is engaged in what is called “weaponizing winter.” The aim, Petraeus and Roberts say, is to freeze “the Ukrainian people to death in their homes, barracks and foxholes, by destroying power stations, water treatment plants and electrical grids.” But neither Napoleon’s bedraggled troops on their 1,500-mile retreat from Moscow to Paris in 1812 nor Hitler’s ill-equipped legions, some of whose frozen eyelids fell off, were as used to extreme cold as Ukrainians are.
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Churchill in 1942: “There is a winter, you know, in Russia. … Hitler forgot about this Russian winter. He must have been very loosely educated.” It is fitting that eight decades after Hitler’s hubristic invaders discovered that they should have been supplied with winter clothing, Putin’s invaders blundered into Ukraine assuming that they would subdue a nation roughly the size of Texas in 72 hours: Soldiers were given only five days’ provisions and were told to pack their dress uniforms for the victory parade scheduled for Kyiv on May 9, which Russia commemorates as the anniversary of Germany’s 1945 surrender.
Putin’s barbarians have, unsurprisingly, slaked their thirst for destruction by assaulting culture. “It is hard to escape the conclusion,” write Petraeus and Roberts, “that by looting some museums and art galleries, and deliberately targeting others for destruction, the Russians were hoping to destroy Ukraine’s sense of cultural and historical identity.” Never mind that Putin’s war justification is that Ukraine has no distinct identity. And how should we categorize the barbarians’ would-be abettors on Capitol Hill?
Days into the war, Russians attacked Red Cross evacuation routes. Later they would use thermobaric weapons, a vacuum bomb with two charges, as Petraeus and Roberts explain: “The first disperses fuel into the air and the second ignites it, sucking all the oxygen out of people’s lungs.” It was a notable barbarity, “especially against civilians trapped in enclosed spaces.”
Russia’s war crimes — targeting civilians, kidnapping children, mass executions, torture, rape — are not incidental to, they are premeditated tactics in, the war that some congressional Republicans seem eager to help Putin win. He knows the help he needs. “If Western defense supplies are terminated tomorrow,” Putin said on Oct. 5, “Ukraine will have a week left to live as it runs out of ammunition.”
This blithe acknowledgment that killing Ukraine is his intention came as some congressional Republicans were intensifying their opposition to aiding Ukraine. Their canine obedience to Donald Trump is congruent with his vow that if reelected he will end the war “in 24 hours.” These Republicans, and the constituents to whom they pander, are not less odious than the congressional and campus progressives “contextualizing” (a progressive synonym for “justifying”) Hamas’s sadism.
In his poem “September 1, 1939,” as the war in Europe began, W.H. Auden wrote: “As the clever hopes expire / Of a low dishonest decade.” Today, during the biggest European war since then, many Americans seem so indifferent to its outcome that they are prepared to decide the outcome by abandoning the bleeding victim with a low, dishonest shrug.
In March 2022, three weeks into the war, the Russians dropped two 500-kilogram bombs on a theater in Mariupol, Ukraine, where hundreds of civilians, their homes having been destroyed, were sheltering. On the pavement on each side of the theater was painted in giant Cyrillic letters the Russian word for “children.” Perhaps 600 people died. The implausible idea that this was an accident became even more so 23 days later when, after a missile attack on refugees at a railway station, the words “for children” — up to 9 children were among the up to 63 people killed — were found painted on fragments of the missile. Did this mean revenge for children killed, according to Russian propaganda, by Ukrainian military actions in Russian-occupied portions of Ukraine? Retired Army Gen. David Petraeus and historian Andrew Roberts think not. In their new book, “Conflict: The Evolution of Warfare from 1945 to Ukraine,” they ascribe the missile attack not to revenge but to “a truly depraved psychology.”
Make sense of the news fast with Opinions' daily newsletterA Russian military consistency has been barbarism: Remember the explosive toys Russians scattered to maim Afghan children who would thereafter be burdens for adults too distracted to fight. This is the Russia that some congressional Republicans would, by ending aid for Ukraine, rescue from the criminal misadventure Vladimir Putin began on Feb. 24, 2022.
Today, for a second year, Russia is engaged in what is called “weaponizing winter.” The aim, Petraeus and Roberts say, is to freeze “the Ukrainian people to death in their homes, barracks and foxholes, by destroying power stations, water treatment plants and electrical grids.” But neither Napoleon’s bedraggled troops on their 1,500-mile retreat from Moscow to Paris in 1812 nor Hitler’s ill-equipped legions, some of whose frozen eyelids fell off, were as used to extreme cold as Ukrainians are.
Press Enter to skip to end of carousel
Churchill in 1942: “There is a winter, you know, in Russia. … Hitler forgot about this Russian winter. He must have been very loosely educated.” It is fitting that eight decades after Hitler’s hubristic invaders discovered that they should have been supplied with winter clothing, Putin’s invaders blundered into Ukraine assuming that they would subdue a nation roughly the size of Texas in 72 hours: Soldiers were given only five days’ provisions and were told to pack their dress uniforms for the victory parade scheduled for Kyiv on May 9, which Russia commemorates as the anniversary of Germany’s 1945 surrender.
Putin’s barbarians have, unsurprisingly, slaked their thirst for destruction by assaulting culture. “It is hard to escape the conclusion,” write Petraeus and Roberts, “that by looting some museums and art galleries, and deliberately targeting others for destruction, the Russians were hoping to destroy Ukraine’s sense of cultural and historical identity.” Never mind that Putin’s war justification is that Ukraine has no distinct identity. And how should we categorize the barbarians’ would-be abettors on Capitol Hill?
Days into the war, Russians attacked Red Cross evacuation routes. Later they would use thermobaric weapons, a vacuum bomb with two charges, as Petraeus and Roberts explain: “The first disperses fuel into the air and the second ignites it, sucking all the oxygen out of people’s lungs.” It was a notable barbarity, “especially against civilians trapped in enclosed spaces.”
Russia’s war crimes — targeting civilians, kidnapping children, mass executions, torture, rape — are not incidental to, they are premeditated tactics in, the war that some congressional Republicans seem eager to help Putin win. He knows the help he needs. “If Western defense supplies are terminated tomorrow,” Putin said on Oct. 5, “Ukraine will have a week left to live as it runs out of ammunition.”
This blithe acknowledgment that killing Ukraine is his intention came as some congressional Republicans were intensifying their opposition to aiding Ukraine. Their canine obedience to Donald Trump is congruent with his vow that if reelected he will end the war “in 24 hours.” These Republicans, and the constituents to whom they pander, are not less odious than the congressional and campus progressives “contextualizing” (a progressive synonym for “justifying”) Hamas’s sadism.
In his poem “September 1, 1939,” as the war in Europe began, W.H. Auden wrote: “As the clever hopes expire / Of a low dishonest decade.” Today, during the biggest European war since then, many Americans seem so indifferent to its outcome that they are prepared to decide the outcome by abandoning the bleeding victim with a low, dishonest shrug.
