Putin's War

Here's our mascot that we've used regularly since this blog started back in 2006.  The kid is pissed off. Can you blame him?

I cannot believe this has been going on for what? Fourteen years of Fun, Travel and Adventure.

But today is a grim one.

First, people are going to die. That's a given.

Second, as far as the moral outrage thing goes, being an American  I recollect Viet Nam, Iraq 1 and 2, Afghanistan, Grenada and Panama. 

Seems like we've got our own bloodstains to deal with.

But there's always the question  the boys ask.

"What the hell was it for? Why did my friends die?"

I don't have answers. 

When Jake asked me this a while back I mulled it over for a few hours and all I could think of was that it-Afghanistan in his case-it happened because of bad policy choices made years earlier in places like Washington and Beijing and Moscow and Berlin and London and Paris by people who are never made accountable, and the 'knock on' effects as the Brits like to call them. 

They're more like waves in the ocean that may travel thousands of miles before they bury some village somewhere.

What's clear to me today is that Ukrainians will die, but in this war they will be held blameless for defending themselves. Russian GIs will die, and that country will suffer hard times and their leaders will have to answer to another generation of disaffected soldiers asking 

"What the hell was this for, and why did my friends have to die?"