UKRAINE: Sleepwalking into Armageddon

Anyone studying the headlong rush into war in 1914 or the tremulous appeasement that sparked a second war in 1939 cannot help but wince. The unprecedented conquest, war, famine and death loosed on humanity highlights the critical role that purposeful choice plays in keeping the peace.  

After the global abattoir’s gates were closed in 1945, survivors in all nations made it their top priority to prevent another General War. In the long twilight struggle between Freedom and Communism, both sides scrupulously kept the peace between the USA and USSR. The Cold War was fought with cultural competitions, space races, wars of assassins and proxy battles.

Even Godless Communists like Stalin, Khrushchev and Brezhnev knew bone-deep the incalculable costs paid by Russians and Soviets in both World Wars. Gorbachev and Yeltsin experienced the aftermath.  

Today, Putin desperately grips the tail of the beast that he so foolishly unleashed in the Ukraine. His backers in Beijing have no personal experience with real war, nor do the members of the permanent bureaucracies that run the Biden Administration and much of Europe.  

They glibly make choices, such as toying with allowing the Ukrainians to use top-tech U.S. arms in attacks that strike deep into Russia; an act of war. Billions could die, the climate could be ruined, and humanity could cause a self-inflicted Mass Extinction.  

If there are future historians, they will be shocked that this is happening without serious public deliberation, through bureaucratic inertia. We are sleepwalking into Armageddon. Americans, awaken!

RALPH K. GINORIO

Coeur d’Alene