The Man Comes Around (Glory To Ukraine IV.)

There's a man goin' 'round, takin' names
And he decides who to free and who to blame
Everybody won't be treated all the same
There will be a golden ladder reachin' down
… When the man comes around
The hairs on your arm will stand up
At the terror in each sip and in each sup
Will you partake of that last offered cup?
Or disappear into the potter's ground
… When the man comes around?
Hear the trumpets, hear the pipers
One hundred million angels singin'
Multitudes are marchin' to the big kettledrum
Voices callin' and voices cryin'
Some are born and some are dyin'
… Alpha and Omega's kingdom come
And the whirlwind is in the thorn tree
The virgins are all trimmin' their wicks
The whirlwind is in the thorn tree
… It's hard for thee to kick against the pricks.

~Johnny Cash, When The Man Comes Around

Over the last six days, I've been watching this nasty business in Ukraine, like the rest of the world is, I suppose, and I've noticed something. It seems like whatever evil spell has cast a pall of apathy on the world is starting to lift a little bit...or at least, maybe enough people are starting to give a shit again? 

Or at least, the majority of us that aren't far-right "Conservatives" are?

Of course, like it or not now we're all watching as one society comes together in the face of an absolute horror, an onslaught by a larger neighbor, which seems to have as its goal not conquest, but simple destruction for its own sake. I mean, if the Russians had wanted to fight and win blah blah blah, wouldn't they have given their troops enough food or fuel or trained them properly? This is, like it or not, the descendant of the Red Army that fought the Nazis all the way from the suburbs of Moscow in 1941 to kicking in the gates of Berlin in 1945 and raising the Hammer and Sickle above the Reichstag in one of history's most famous photos.

But the Russians collectively aren't That Guy anymore, the way the Russians are doing this smacks of how the Soviets fought in Afghanistan, only worse, it's not just no food and poor morale. Now it's no fuel, no training, hell, not even knowing why they're there. 

And Ukrainians are literally martyring themselves to stop the invader...like so many Soviet citizens did in 1941, to be honest. Here's a whole town, kneeling reverently as a Ukrainian combat engineer is laid to rest. Goddamn, I hope they at least name something cool after that kid, like a park or a scholarship program for engineering students or something.

I mean, in a way it's no wonder that the Ukrainians are kicking Ivan's ass...and it's not like Ivan doesn't deserve it, at least as far as I'm concerned. The way the Russians are fighting this war, they deserve to lose, to lose badly, and to spend a generation trying to rethink themselves, like we supposedly did after Vietnam. (Yes, I get that those lessons were applied unevenly and ignored by too many. I know, I was there for a little of this.)

Of course, by 2001 we had forgotten or started ignoring a lot of those lessons, and the Bush-era ethos of "If we believe it hard enough, we'll win" was all-pervasive. All too many of the units created because of those hard lessons in Vietnam....light infantry divisions, whole wings of A-10 Thunderbolt II strike fighters, etc. had gone on the ash heap of history right along with the First Cold War, and not entirely without reason, of course.  Other things, like precision-guided munitions, have if anything become the standard for us. We're not even talking about BUFF's or Bones dropping sticks of Mark 117's on targets anymore, or search and destroy missions or thunder runs, or even Tactical Control Parties in harm's way to call in a strike. Nowadays, it's so often drones, GPS and satellites now...and all the munitions are PGM's.  And more importantly, discipline, training, and volunteerism. The Ukrainians get this...or they got it fast enough when the situation called for it, anyway. And their ethos and use of technology, training and weapons we've provided them has been amazing.

Against that, it's no wonder that the Russians can't get it up. But the fact that Russian soldiers are being cursed by random Ukrainian women probably isn't helping.

I'm going to be honest, I fully expected the Ukrainians would give the Russians a bad time of it, but not this bad. I very much expected a larger-scale repeat of Georgia in 2008, the Georgians gave better than they got, too. But that war was still in every real sense, a Russian victory. I figured they would try and grab some territory, face some clap back from the West and not only that it would have been over now, but that despite bloody losses the Russians would grab some territory, and come out ahead...drawing a reduced Ukraine further into Western orbit....but not from a position of strength, and with all that entails.

Instead, the opposite happened, the Ukrainians are kicking ass, and being drawn further into Western orbit. And there's a real chance, I think, of NATO intervention on Ukraine's side in this. Even if we half-ass it like I think we will, that's a disaster for the Russians. It's basically the level of worst-case scenario somebody probably would have had to eat a Polonium sandwich for predicting last week.

So, what the hell is Republicans' collective problem, here?

Guys like Chuck Colson, George H.W. Bush, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan must be watching this from the Afterlife with Gerald Ford popping the popcorn and John McCain throwing stuff at the TV while shouting "Valuable" tactical advice while JFK and LBJ go out on a beer run and Ike and Truman grill the steaks and nobody can find G. Gordon Liddy 'cause he's rubbing one out in the bathroom. 

I mean, so far this shit is making Afghanistan in 1986 look like a walk in the park. The old Republican Party would've been all for it.

Meanwhile, modern Republicans are complaining about Russia being "Canceled" and Madison Cawthorn is talking complete nonsense and Blowbert and MTG are going full Grocery Store Karen on the House Floor...I mean, Jesus, what the fuck?

Against all odds, against every possible prediction, the Ukrainians are not just holding their own...in a tactical sense they're winning, strategically forcing the Russians into bloody stalemate, and all the usual Soviet-era terror tactics are doing is enraging the Ukrainians even more.

And at least some of the Republicans hate the Ukrainians for winning. I used to be a Republican, I would never have imagined that in my own lifetime Republicans would be rooting not just for Russia...but for a KGB agent.

Of course, the absolute truth here is that too many Republicans were hoping for a Russian victory because they see both Russia and Ukraine as Culture War proxies and they thought Putin was going to crush the "Sexual Anarchy" in Ukraine that exists only in Republicans' heads.

But like Tea Party Joe Walsh said, Republicans want a bully, a dictator, and of course Putin is their Replacement Trump now. So there's that. 

But Republicans would do well to remember a few things.

The first one being, of course, that somebody will always stand up. It's to profound Republican and Russian misfortune that somebody in this case is basically the whole damn country of Ukraine.

Second, a bully or a dictator is always going to meet somebody worse than they are, eventually, and to their profound misfortune. Unless they cave in completely like Trump did to Putin in Helsinki.

Third, horror always begets more horror. Ukrainian special forces are saying now that they won't take Russian field artillery troops prisoner. That's a nasty business there, and while I doubt anybody will prosecute the Ukrainians for it, especially considering the scale of Russian atrocities, it's a war crime in and of itself. I've written about this, or at least I did so in an American context.

But the point is, like attracts like. You start doing unto others, they're going to do it back. Fate or God or History or whatever is always going to settle up with you eventually, just like it did with us in Afghanistan. The Man always comes around, in the end, and everybody won't be treated all the same.

Remember that part, there'll be a test later.

I quite honestly wonder, if it was us, and not Ukraine, would we be fighting so hard or holding together so well? Or would Florida and Texas and a couple other Red States governments be trying to join the Russians?

How many of these "Let's Go Brandon" and "MAGA" idiots would be hanging new flags printed in Cyrillic? How many Donetsk and Luhansk little Potemkin "People's Republics" would there be here?

How quickly would Kyiv and Washington D.C. or Kharkiv and New York City simply become battlefronts in the same war?

Most Americans would fight like hell. But some would happily join the bad guys.

Their fate is our fate. Together we win, or none of us do. You're either an American, a Western person steeped in the values of the Enlightenment that shaped our modern world...or you're not.

You're going to have to pick a side. Every person is going to have to. Either you believe in freedom or you don't. We hang together, or we hang separately.

Remember that.

Part III

The martyrs of history were not fools, and our honored dead who gave their lives to stop the advance of the Nazis didn't die in vain. Where, then, is the road to peace? Well, it's a simple answer after all. You and I have the courage to say to our enemies, "There is a price we will not pay." There is a point beyond which they must not advance. This is the meaning in the phrase of Barry Goldwater's "peace through strength." Winston Churchill said that "the destiny of man is not measured by material computation. When great forces are on the move in the world, we learn we are spirits — not animals." And he said, "There is something going on in time and space, and beyond time and space, which, whether we like it or not, spells duty. ~Ronald Reagan

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