flighty

 

Flighty: as a nation, we are astonishingly fickle, undependable, of short attention spans. Our outrage at Russia's aggression against Ukraine has evaporated, and our shock about 7 October. We are not reliable friends and allies. We are manipulated by the media, who, profit-minded, move us along giddily from headline to headline.   

Putin is no dummy: attacking Ukraine, he knows our character and politics, that we would soon lose interest, and he had the reserves to wait us out. We fled Vietnam. We fled Afghanistan. We are backing away, and Ukraine will fall to Russian control; is this bad? IDK, none of it had to be - - I remember the Russian leader, right after 9/11, speaking of "our American friends," and I remember feeling encouraged and hopeful. Some Time, years later, I read of Putin asking rhetorically of America, "If we can't be friends, at least why do we have to be enemies?"

Are we really at the mercy of what, as he left office, President Eisenhower warned as this "military industrial complex"? IDK 

Now the French president speaking of NATO "boots on the ground" in Ukraine? - - holy jumping Jehosophat. This is not the 19th or 20th century, NATO troops shooting at Russian troops, war is to win, not to a draw: the war for Ukraine cannot be won on the ground in Ukraine, but only from the skies over Russia, and that will begin the Eschaton because no nuclear nation's government will hesitate if it fears its territory threatened. The apt acronym for the strategy was MAD. 

In Gaza and the West Bank, IDF and the Israeli government doing their best while doing their worst. There can be little intelligent doubt that, for their own good reasons, every Palestinian hates Israel and wants them gone; so Israel's lack of interest in Palestinian civilians is understandable even if not acquiesced in because of the terrible human suffering. The lambs. Cynically, the world's handwringing about Gaza is not sincere humanity, but jostling for political reasons.

As for 7 October itself, it was the worst military political miscalculation of all Time, and the Palestinian people, who rejoiced in it, are paying dearly for it.

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Wednesday: up early as usual to labor while my brain works. Ahead: a busy morning and full day ahead. At 88&c and fighting CHF's exhaustion with each thing, I will have to do a lot of collapsing to rest between things. Remembering a film line, "I have to remember, I'm not 82 anymore."

RSF&PTL anyway

T88&c

photo from Jazeera, Palestinians wading out in the ocean to retrieve relief supplies dropped by Jordan military aircraft