For once, America’s doing the right thing
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Anyone who knows me, knows that I have for decades been a bitter critic of America’s foreign policy, its obsessive militarization, its inexorable finger on the scale of every election in the world toward the right and authoritarianism, the tragicomedy of its military belligerence based on bogosities followed by its Keystone-Kops-level failure repeated in wars of choice over generations, and its general poor conduct on the world stage.
But when it comes to Ukraine, the US is actually doing the right thing.
Nuclear war is unthinkable. Direct conflict between Russia and the US is unthinkable. But allowing Putin to take Ukraine would be a very bad outcome.
A no-fly zone leads to direct conflict and is unthinkable. Zelenskyy, the master showman, keeps hammering on the no-fly zone precisely because he will never get it, and meanwhile NATO offers material support, at least delaying the bad outcome, while avoiding the unthinkable.
And Russia has received a mortal blow. This isn’t 1979: we are financialized now, baby! Being cut off the “monetary grid” (I just made that up, it isn’t official) makes the Russian economy bleed out and at some point everything will just stop — you see the first signs already.
Putin has been unexpectedly weak in his ability to wage war, perhaps because inflexibility is literally the worst trait for a commander-in-chief in battle or war.
A much better strategy would have been to have backed out early when it was obvious that it wasn’t going to be whatever Russian for “blitzkrieg” is, and simply executed a couple of generals as an apology.
“Sorry guys, I went out for borscht and when I came back they had started this crazy war! Our bad, they were liquidated. Now check this picture of my pecs as I wrestle this bull.”
I blame the SNAFU Principle:
The SNAFU Principle is a popular principle in Discordianism. It states that Communication is only possible between equals. In any hierarchy (business, government, military, etc.) people and employees inevitably distort the truth of reports when…
