Learning from the past

 “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it"

~George Santayana

There are some who seem to believe that Biden is appeasing Putin in Ukraine. Their analogy is to the "appeasement" of Hitler after the Nazi invasion of the Sudetenland which has sometimes been claimed to have led to WWII. While that claim is at best tenuous, it has been used to justify the US quagmires in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Look, Ho Chi Minh was not Hitler. Osama bin Laden was not Hitler. Saddam Hussein was not Hitler. And Putin is not a 70 year-old version of Hitler and Russia is not a modern-day Nazi Germany.

I'm a big fan of learning history and learning from history. One thing you learn if you do that is that generals often end up trying to fight the last war. Don't fall for this mistake.

This isn't the first time Russia has fallen into the Ukraine quagmire, and Putin made a huge mistake trying to conquer Ukraine. It is a sign of weakness, not strength, that Putin has to resort to propaganda moves like hostage-taking to distract from the dismal Russian economy and the paper tiger Russian military.

Make no mistake: Putin controls thousands of thermonuclear warheads that could destroy human civilization, as well as thousands of tactical nuclear missiles that could turn what remains of Ukraine into rubble. But those who urge US military confrontation of Putin in Ukraine are the ones giving up on Ukraine, since Putin will prefer incinerating the Ukrainians (including ethnic Russians) to retreat and defeat. If you doubt that Russia would visit such horror on Ukraine, read the history of the  holodomor genocide.

What's happening in Ukraine is terrible to watch, and the impulse to "do something" is strong and understandable. But you don't have to be a fan of Joe Biden to admit that he *is* doing something, indeed many somethings, to punish Putin. Appeals to specious historical analogies is a well-trod path to failure and futile suffering. Let's take a different path this time.