Terrible things are going to happen

To The Eagle:

Vladimir Putin, Russia’s autocratic tyrant, has ambitions to be the new all powerful Tsar of a resurgent Russian empire. Once a KGB officer of the former East German secret police, he has had an ax to grind with Europe and NATO since the fall of the Berlin wall and the Soviet Union in 1991. Having spent the last 20 years regressing Russia back into a Fascist dictatorship, he’s now reestablishing the horrific grandeur of the Soviet Union through the incremental recapture of former Soviet satellite states who regained their national freedom after the collapse of the U.S.S.R. He’s been subverting Ukrainian territorial integrity since 2014 when he forcibly annexed its Crimean peninsula.

Now, he’s launched a major military onslaught upon Ukraine, intending to extinguish its independent nationhood. The powdered bones of its citizens and the shattered stones of their heritage will be mixed into mortar for the reconstruction of a new, tame Russian province. This is 1936 redux. Like Europe’s Nazi nemesis of that era, Putin is megalomaniacal, anti-Semitic, anti-democratic, anti-European, and determined to grab as much territory as might be ceded by the Western democracies now trying to prevent a bloody, destructive conflict with Russia by imposing economic sanctions. Appeasement failed to curb Hitler in ‘36. Attempting to appease Putin today will only encourage his future aggression.

This despot has made dreadful threats against anyone attempting to thwart his Ukrainian conquest. He will act on those threats. Terrible things are going to happen. European and American blood and treasure are going to be spent to forestall the descent of another iron curtain upon Eastern Europe.

Histories tell how we once helped defeat global tyranny. Then, as now, there are no guarantees the democracies will prevail. We must do everything we can to buttress free nations against extinction level events like that overtaking Ukraine today.

JB Bouchard

Puget Island