04:00 #Donetsk (occupied): “The oil depot in Kirovskyi district is on fire. `Have the orcs smoked again in an undesignated area?” via @hochu_dodomu A Tweet by English Luhansk @loogunda Occasional reporting and translations about Ukraine. (formerly “English Lugansk”)

Our Congressional Delegation traveled to Kyiv and met with @ZelenskyyUa to send an unmistakable and resounding message to the entire world: America stands firmly with Ukraine. A Tweet by Nancy Pelosi @SpeakerPelosi Speaker of the House, focused on strengthening America’s middle class and creating jobs; mother, grandmother, dark chocolate connoisseur.

The West is a series of institutions and values, Russia is European but not Western. Japan is Western but not European. Western means rule of law, democracy, private property, open markets, respect for the individual, diversity, pluralism of opinion…historian Steve Kotkin quoted in the New Yorker.

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has. ― Margaret Mead

Ukraine is a poor country, much poorer than it looks on TV. U.S. News – the same U. S. News that ranks colleges and universities and that I pick up at newsstands to see if my alma mater’s ranking has changed – ranks Ukraine #71 out of the top 78 countries, with a GDP per capita of $13,350 (for comparison, the GDP per capita of the US is $65,280 and Luxumbourg is highest at $124,590).

These numbers, however, although commonly used are deceptive, thrown off by the number of very rich in each country; if one billionaire gets richer but no one else does, the GDP per capita still goes up. A better number is probably the median income which is $4,434 in Ukraine, the USA is at $19,306, and Luxumbourg is at $26,321. Ukraine’s median income is about a third of the median income of South Korea or half that of Poland and twice that of nearby Georgia. Counterintuitively, I believe that is one of the reasons they are doing so well. These are not people who are used to having somebody else fix their problems.

In this case, however, somebody else is, at least, helping; NATO, Turkey, Japan, South Korea, Australia, Canada, and now, Isreal. Ukraine’s military budget is $5.94 B but, so far, NATO, alone, has given and pledged $6.4B worth of equipment to them and it is arriving fast.

Over the years, as we bollixed the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, I’ve been very critical of the US Military and even more critical of our Intelligence Community which seemed incapable of predicting world-changing events like the fall of the USSR. But, what our Military Establishment is great at is logistics and our Intelligence Community has been training for picking Soviet or Russian targets – mostly by satellite – for eighty-two years. Getting equipment to people who are willing to use it and giving them the location of high-value targets is exactly what is needed right now. We have been moving equipment into Ukraine at astounding speed, about 60% of the large artillery pieces Biden released were sent in 72 hours and they are killing generals at an unprecedented rate.

As an aside, I think a lot of this high regard for and expertise in logistics is because of the great Ulysses S. Grant. Much to his dismay, Grant was assigned to the Quartermaster Corps after he graduated from West Point but the training he got served him well during the Civil War. For example, the North built 22,000 miles of railroad track during the Civil War compared to only 9,5000 miles for the South. Moving soldiers and equipment fast was in Grant’s DNA, during the Mexican-American War War, Grant even dragged a canon up into a bell tower to give it better range. The Army he built during the Civil War was based on better equipment and faster movement and it still is in the United States Army’s DNA. End aside.

While Ukraine is a European country, it is not what I think of as European because, when I think of Europe, I’m really thinking of Western Europe. I’m really thinking of France or Germany, Spain or Italy. The Ukrainian character is closer to Russian than French, just like their language. Obviously, now, they want to change that and a large part of the population is willing to die for it. As the Ukrainians say, “Glory to Ukraine!”

It is drizzling and chilly outside but it feels like Spring. After an unending, cold, dry winter, in the last couple of weeks, it must have rained three inches and the garden, Michele, and I are happy for it. Between rains, the sky is blue and the sun is bright, and the flowers are blooming. Everything looks fresh, and new, just like spring. And, after being in what seemed like an endless loop of medical problems, it is starting to feel like spring for me too.

The endless loop started, about the time Fall had turned into Winter and I noticed, after trying not to – a troubling open wound on my leg. I had always sort of held a mindset that whatever the specific problem was, it was a specific problem and could be fixed. But The Wound really rattled me. Holy Fuck, it is like I’m rotting from the skin in, like a rotting pear. Like a leaper, like an old leaper. Unclean, unclean. This was not a problem to be solved, this was just my old body giving up the ghost.

Up until The Wound, I didn’t really think of myself as old. That’s not quite right, I thought of myself as old, but not Dianne Finesteirn old, more like oldish with a lot of new parts. Most old people I know seem to be stuck in the past and I don’t yearn for the past at all. I feel young-minded, but The Wound rattled me. It made me feel very old.

This was also a time of backed up doctor appointments, a foot doctor who would, after a month or so of my thinking about it, remove part of my big toenail to stop it from being driven into my very sore flesh by the neighboring hammer toe, and a skin doctor doing a biopsy on my arm. Neither doctor ran screaming from the room when I showed them The Wound which was encouraging and both bandaged the wound in different ways but it kept getting worse. Finally, a couple of days later, I went to a rheumatology specialist that Michele had recommended and he recommended that I go to the wound center. Now! They recommended that I start wearing compression socks to mitigate my varicose veins and they put a new bandage on The Wound.

As an aside, and, since it came from the certified Wound Center, I’m going to call it a tip. They put a square of Duoderm CGF directly on the Wound. The Duoderm CGF is like an artificial scab over a wound that retains the moisture and I left it there for something like four or five days between changing. Underneath, a wound just heals itself. End aside.

About this time, at the apogee of my age-angst, I tore the meniscus in my left knee making it much harder to get around and then I gouged a hole into my left hand with a sharp fingernail on my right hand and I sank into a winter lethargy. The Wound Center also recommended that I get an ultrasound of my varicose veins to see if they were a problem that could be solved. The ultrasound led to my having a radiofrequency ablation of my varicose veins last week and I feel like the endless downhill loop is starting to end. Next week I’m getting a steroid shot in my left knee and my hand gouge has even miraculously healed under its Duoderm CGF scab all of which has led to my feeling much more spring-like this week.

So, Happy Spring.

People who destroy whole nations do not have the right to teach us democracy and the values of living free. Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

Another recent report, from the International Institute of Democracy and Electoral Assistance, noted that more than half of all democracies have experienced a decline in at least one aspect of their democracy over the last 10 years, including the United States. American President Joe Biden

We consider ourselves a Democracy, it’s in our DNA. Moreover, our Democracy is so strong and so good that we have entrusted ourselves to be the protectors of Democracy: worldwide. At least that is what we tell ourselves, incessantly, more than is seemly, it seems to me. It’s like we need constant reassurance that we are not the bad guys. Our national story is that we are such a good democratic nation that our very existence is a threat to autocratic states – or fascist states if you prefer – because we are an advertisement for the wonders of Democracy.

We also, somehow, relate Democracy with Capitalism, in a soft sort of way. Nobody would say that Democracy and Capitalism are the same thing, but, in our national story, they are closer than distant cousins. When the Old Soviet Union imploded, our national reaction was less like “Oh boy, now they can control their own destiny by voting.” and more like, “Oh boy, now they’ll be able to get the nice things that are only available under Capitalism; they won’t have to put up with the shoddy clothes, cars, TVs, airplanes – the list is close to endless – that are a result of grey, faceless, Communism.”

However, our natural enemy isn’t really autocratic states – and here I was going to say it is Communist or Socialist states, but that is also wrong – we are fine doing business with the Saudis or China, or, even Russia, we are fine with selling weapons to Vietnam, after all. Looking again, it seems to me that our natural enemies are really countries that threaten our global hegemony.

For the first forty years or so after World War II, that threat came from the USSR – the United Socialist Soviet Republic – and they were our enemy. We fought a forty-year war over who would be the most influential – which is sort of a euphemism for most powerful – but, because both the United States and the USSR had tens of thousands of nuclear devices¹, both countries were afraid that the war would turn into a nuclear exchange destroying both countries. So we rarely fought directly and, then, not on the battlefield. Neither country wanted to be obliterated. In 2014, I wrote a post entitled, World War I and Cold War II in which I postulated that we were entering another Cold War that had been generated by the same mistakes we made with Germany after World War I that resulted in World War II (check it out here).

To quote myself, Russia is pushing back just like Germany did when its troops marched into the Rhineland, and we will not like it, but there is not much we can do except move troops around and install sanctions. I don’t think that the new Cold War II will turn into a shooting war but I do think it will involve a lot of pushing around the edges and posturing. It will make it much harder to solve our mutual problems.

However, I was sort of wrong on the no-shooting war prediction part. However, if President Volodymyr Zelensky hadn’t been so brave and President Joseph Biden hadn’t been old enough to have been around for the first round of the Cold War, Russia might have rolled over Ukraine as they did in Georgia and Crimea. But Zelensky seems to be another Hồ Chí Minh and Biden, unlike Bush or Obama, saw this as a continuation of the first Cold War in which the US and the USSR fought by proxy.

I know that this war doesn’t look like a proxy war: it is in Europe so it looks more like World War II than Vietnam, and, to state the obvious, the Russo-Ukrain is a shooting war for the poor souls who are actually in Ukraine and we see on TV. But it is similar to the Korean War or the Vietnam War in that one side is fighting a war with an opponent supported by the other side rather than fighting the other side directly. What is different from Korea or Vietnam is that our side is the covert player and Russia is the overt player. What I think is also different from Vietnam is that we are on the side that is fighting for their independence, the side that is trying to break away from the oppressor. In other words, what is different from Vietnam is that we are on the right side of history.

1. In 1985, the USSR had about 39,700 nuclear devices and we had about 23,000. Now, because of treaties, both sides have drastically reduced their nuclear capability. (France and the UK had about 350 each to give you an idea of scale.)

We cannot change the hearts of the people, but we can make war so terrible that they will realize the fact that however brave and gallant and devoted to their country, still, they are mortal and should exhaust all peaceful remedies before they fly to war. Excerpt from a letter by Major General William Sherman to Lieutenant General Ulysses Grant after Sherman’s leveling of Atlanta and his destructive March to the Sea.

In bombers named for girls, we burned
The cities we had learned about in school–
Till our lives wore out. A short poem by Randall Jarrell quoted in The Guns At Last Light, The War in Western Europe, 1944-1945 ( Volume Three Of The Liberation Trilogy) by Rick Atkinson

The brave Ukrainian resistance is a front in a larger fight: for the essential democratic principles that unite all free people. These principles are essential for a free society, but have always been embattled. Every generation has had to defeat democracy’s mortal foes. A Tweet, allegedly from President Biden @POTUS United States government official 46th President of the United States,

Great start to the season. We gave it our all and ended up with the best result we could have. Well done to the Ferraris, great to see them share the podium. Big week of work ahead but I know we got this Tweet by Lewis Hamilton @LewisHamilton Plant-Based Diet. Love Animals. Constantly searching for my purpose, for adventure, open-mindedness, and positivity

We, humans, have been warring against our fellow humans since we were all hunters/gathers. War may be as old as humankind but, for me, this winter has seemed like a winter of only war. First our Civil War, then everybody’s World War II, and then today’s real war between Russia and Ukraine, with its daily horrors. Now that war, the real war, is bleeding into spring.

Last January, I read my Christmas book from Michele. It was To Rescue The Republic Ulysses S Grant, The Fragile Union, and The Crisis Of 1876 by Bret Baier (chief political anchor for Fox News Channel). It seemed like a slightly different take on Grant with the emphasis on Grant’s last days as President. Surprisingly, at least to me, this Grant biography was written by a conservative. Surprisingly because Grant’s rehabilitation has always been a liberal cause while the Confederacy, Bobby Lee, and, The Lost Cause – allegedly about States Rights – have been championed by Conservatives. It is gratifying to read about Grant’s role in saving our country while he was President even if the book was written by a Fox News guy. The book had the usual narrative of Grant’s leadership during the Civil War, but, with the Russian build-up of forces in the background, it was especially troubling to read, again, about the carnage of our Civil War.

In February, I started The Guns At Last Light, The War in Western Europe, 1944-1945 by Rick Atkinson. It is volume three of what he calls The Liberation Trilogy I had read the first two books of the trilogy years ago and liked the first one, An Army At Dawn, very much. It had a lot of new information, for me at least, and was beautifully written. I didn’t like the second book as much but, now I think, this was because the endless carnage in Italy, which was the center of the book, seemed unnecessary and endless. So I was surprised and pleased anew, at the quality of Atkinson’s writing in this book. But this book feels nastier, maybe more truthful is a more truthful way to say it. Part of it is that the buildup to the Russo-Ukraine War and the attack on Ukraine has made a European war seem more real and part of it is that wars evolve and escalate and by 1944, World War II had escalated to the point that the killing of non-combatants had become routine.

As an aside, I knew a guy who was a photographer during World War II, photographing bomb damage from the plex nose of a British de Haviland light bomber. I asked him how he justified killing German civilians and he said that they were “willing to do anything to win and that involved killing as many people as possible.” (For the record, the British Bomber Command and the USAAF 8th Air Force killed about 410,000 non-combatants – mostly women and children – in what the British called “their city programme”. End aside.

As the Russo-Ukraine war grinds into its second month, I’m reminded daily that killing people is not an unfortunate byproduct of war, as we are told, it is the principal goal. War is a catastrophe for all involved. Killing people and destroying infrastructure is the point of war. No matter how virtuous the cause, no matter how right we are – or righteous, for that matter – war is still one of the worst things that can happen to a people, it is right up there with pestilence and famine. But pestilence and famine are, sort of, natural occurrences, and war is man-made. Almost always – no, always, really – the result of one man. One man who we all say is crazy but really isn’t, he is just a selfish son of a bitch.

Looking at pictures of trashed Mariupol, I’m afraid that this war will get worse for the people of Ukraine. Our fear of Putin starting a nuclear war seems to have resulted in our giving the Ukrainians just enough lethal equipment to push back at the Russian bear, but not enough to actually have a decisive win.

I am ready for a diversion from the horrible day-to-day reporting of the carnage from Ukraine and I’m hoping it will be an interesting Formula One season. This year, Formula One is making its biggest change to the regulations in, probably,  forty years, and, for the first two races, that has been a game-changer. During the last forty years, the cars had become very similar in design and performance so a game-changer is most welcome. One of the old similarities was that all of the cars left a big and turbulent air wake – for lack of a better term, think of a boat wake in 3D – and that wake made it very hard to follow close to another car and, of course, even harder to pass. The great majority of the new regulations were designed to change that. 

Last year, the main downforce holding the car on the road was generated by the front and rear wings which are upside down airfoils and the underneath of the racecar was flat. This year, the wing regulations make the wing force weaker with the main downforce being generated by the bottom of the car. Each team had to design this year’s car based on what they thought would be the best design direction to take but, each team built their car in isolation and they had no idea what the other teams were doing. Two cars that were at the bottom last year, Haas – the only American team – and Alfa Romeo, are doing much better and Mercedes which was fastest at the end of last year, is now much slower.

What makes this interesting to somebody like me who is interested is that, as the actual racing starts, all the teams are seeing what the other teams thought was the right answer and are changing and upgrading at a frantic rate. It should be fascinating.