The idea of Ukraine taking on Russia by itself is terrifying. The US is sending equipment and weapons. But lives will still be lost. On both sides.
I don’t usually lie awake at night thinking about Ukraine and Russia, but that’s been happening lately. There’s a highlights reel that inevitably unfolds. In the opening scene: My maternal grandfather, one of my three grandparents of Russian descent, telling us about how his Jewish family hid soldiers under the bed and his mother escaped gunmen chasing her through the streets. His mother and the three youngest of her five children, including my 10-year-old grandfather, fled to New York in 1905. The story goes that they were smuggled out in a hay wagon under a haystack. The 1910 Census lists their birthplaces as “Russ Pol” – as in, Russian-controlled Poland. Their memories slide into my own: Decades later, the doomed attempt by President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to “ hit the reset button and start fresh ” with Russia. GOP nominee Mitt Romney’s assertion in a 2012 presidential debate that Russia was the nation’s “ No.1 geopolitical foe.” Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s apology, years later, for criticizing his analysis. Then, by fall 2016, Obama telling Vladimir Putin and his election hackers to “ cut it out ” and Democratic nominee Clinton predicting that Donald Trump would be Putin’s » puppet.» The flashbacks accelerate: Russia helping Trump win the presidency. Trump meeting with top Russians in the Oval Office. A photographer from the Russian-owned TASS news agency the only witness as the U.S. president spills sensitive intelligence to them and gloats about firing FBI Director James Comey. Special counsel Robert Mueller finding many contacts between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russians, and indicting multiple Russians and Russian companies. Trump taking Putin’s word that Russia never disrupted U.S. elections, instead of crediting U.S. intelligence findings that it most certainly did.
