Ultimate Choices, Nearly Impossible, about Ukraine

photo by Yehor Milohrodskyi on @unsplash

Last night on MSNBC, Rachel Maddow asked the crucial question: is there any country willing to jump in and stand with the Ukrainians against the Russian aggression?   General Barry McCaffrey (Ret), explained that anything the US and NATO did to directly confront and fight with the Russians could provoke Putin, already clearly unhinged, to bring nuclear weapons into an expanding worldwide fight.

Of course, no one wants any kind of nuclear war.  And a nuclear war between the US and Russia could well be the end of our civilization across the planet.

Avoidance of nuclear war therefore has been a cardinal objective ever since the end of World War II.  We're here today, flourishing across the Earth, with all our problems, because, beginning with the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, we succeeded in keeping that world-destroying demon in the bottle.

So, McCaffrey's analysis makes sense.  But, what then, for Ukraine?  What are we supposed to do?  Continue to massively arm Ukraine and hope that that will be enough for them to stop the Russians? Hope that President Xi of China puts pressure on Putin to pull back?  Ukraine has heroically done far far better against the Russians than anyone thought they would.  But Russia nonetheless has overwhelmingly superior resources to replenish its soldiers and supplies.   Most knowledgeable observers, including McCaffrey, think it's just a matter of time before Ukraine succumbs.

So, what are we -- the United States, NATO, the free world -- supposed to do?  Stand by and watch Ukraine fall, curse Putin and his moral dementia, a month or more from now, as the overwhelming military numbers of Russia even with their blundering eventually succeed in their vile mission?  Stand by because the icey logic of at all costs avoiding a nuclear war demands that?   Yesterday afternoon a woman in Ukraine on MSNBC remarked that whatever we in the United States do, Putin's use of nuclear weapons is unpredictable.  He could see fit to launch them for whatever reason even if we hold back and Ukraine is obliged to counter the savage attack with just their own limited number of freedom-loving people.

But the implacable need to avoid a nuclear war between Russia and the West says yes, that's what we must  do.  But ... the prospect of watching Ukraine go down, when we and our allies have the military power to stop that, makes me sick to my stomach.  No, it makes me sick to my soul.

Had I the power, I'd put in place a no-fly zone over Ukraine to stop the Russian attempt to annihilate Ukraine.

Narcos: Mexico 3: Lives and Deaths

I really enjoyed the third and final season of Narcos: Mexico, and regret that there won't be another season, devoted to Chapo. Yeah, I know there have been other series and movies about Chapo, but his story deserves to be done up in the inimitable Narcos way, especially his ingenious escape via tunnels, which (as I've mentioned before ) I've always admired.  When I was kid living in the Bronx, I used to think that the best way of escaping police if they were after me was to dig a big tunnel under the Hudson and up to the Catskills.  Fortunately, I didn't commit any crimes and they never came after me,

Back to Narcos: Mexico 3, it was great to see Pacho (good acting by Alberto Ammann) again.  He's the only character to appear in every season of Narcos and Narcos: Mexico, and that's quite an accomplishment.  The character and the real person had a hand in the drug traffic in both Colombia and Mexico.

Alas, Pacho ends up dead.  As does Amado (good acting by José María Yazpik), the Lord of the Skies. Though for Amado, there's a hint at the end of the season that maybe he actually escaped from the hospital plastic surgery, or with that plastic surgery that changed his face.  In real history, Amado definitely died.  But the circumstances -- exactly what went wrong in that hospital -- are not clear. In Narcos: Mexico 3, we see his lover -- the love of his life -- walking back to her house after taking a stroll on a beautiful beach in Chile.  We see two glasses of wine on the bureau.  Who was that second glass for?  And we see a model plane, obviously suggestive of the Lord of the Skies.  So ... who knows what that scene was suggesting, and, who actually knows what happened in real history?  Maybe they did plastic surgery on some recent corpse to make his face look like Amado, while the real Amado, not looking like himself after successful plastic surgery, left the hospital and got to Chile unscathed.

The rest of this final season was good, too, hammering home the message that the U. S. barely knew what it was doing in its war on drugs.   I had to laugh in one of the concluding episodes when Barry McCaffrey, U. S. drug czar, says in a real newsclip that we had the situation well in hand.  I know Barry, he's currently a commentator on MSNBC, and if I ever have a chance I'll ask him how he felt about that clip in Narcos: Mexico.

But drugs, though the U. S. badly bungled our declared war on them, are no laughing matter.  And the whole Narcos series stands as a powerful, brilliant portrayal of how and why that war went so wrong.

See also Narcos: Mexico 2: "I Don't Have Partners" ... Narcos: Mexico: A Riveting Prequel ... Narcos 3: The Gentlemen of Cali ...  Narcos 2: In League with The Godfather Saga .. Narcos on Netflix: Outstanding 

 

                   the Neanderthal cartel