Letters to the Editor

NATO might have matched Russian Ukraine invasion

NATO might have done something unexpected.

This group of countries might have matched Russia's action and sent a few hundred thousand peacekeepers to Ukraine.

If Russia is permitted to cross a sovereign boundary under the pretext of peacekeeping, NATO should have been permitted to do likewise to ensure peace. Of course, NATO troops would not have been allowed to fire weapons, unless fired upon. Were Russian soldiers to fire first, at NATO forces, or inadvertently harm them, the world would know who caused what.

Putin is obviously a stupid poker player. Even a foolish player knows that he could try to bluff an opponent, but not all of one's opponents.

I can understand why "America First" pacifists before Pearl Harbor, with images in their minds of WWI, would have desperately tried to prevent another world war.

And I can understand why current leaders shrink from the responsibility of provoking another war. However, just as generals are condemned for fighting a war, using methods of a previous war, politicians may be faulted for the failure to avoid the prewar mistakes of the 1930s.

Gandhi was preaching nonviolence, but other pragmatists fretted about the Axis Powers -- primarily Germany and Japan -- linking up across India.

Is it not ghoulish to watch with detachment the death and destruction in Ukraine; and almost inhuman to pacify one's indignation with "pragmatic" considerations and misbegotten sentiments?

Raphael O'Suna

Haiku