Every Parent Grieves

Michael Gloss, a twenty-one year old American, was reported killed fighting for Russia in its war on Ukraine. This is news primarily because Gloss is the son of a relatively high-ranking official with the CIA.

In his obituary, his parents noted his love for "JRR Tolkien and his depiction of fellowship among heroes", and described him as "forging his own hero’s journey" when he was killed in "Eastern Europe."

It's easy to make fun of this. And Gloss' "journey", which took the form of a particular virulent type of anti-American tankie-ism that saw him volunteering to fight for a reactionary imperialist invasion of a democratic nation, is repellant to me.

But perhaps it's a function of being a parent, that I cannot fault any parent for how they grieve their child. When I saw that obituary, all I could think of was how Gloss was twenty-one years old, which meant that his fascination with J.R.R. Tolkien probably began only five or ten years ago. Twenty-one is an adult, but it wasn't that long ago he was a child, and no doubt his parents still vividly see him as a bright-eyed adolescent jabbering about orcs and hobbits and wizards and Gollum.

This doesn't mean he wasn't an adult now, or that he shouldn't be judged for his choices. Many other people, and from far less advantaged backgrounds, have been judged as severely or more for the choices they've made at similar ages. 

But if anything that makes it worse for those who are grieving him; knowing that in some way the rest of the world cannot join them in their grief. Like all parents, I have a persistent background fear of someone hurting my baby; of something terrible happening to him. But I also have nightmares of him growing up to hurt others, of him being in a position where something terrible would happen to him and in the eyes of the world it being warranted. What a horrible, helpless, lonesome feeling that must be.

Everyone is someone's child. The victims are someone's child and the perpetrators are someone's child. I read today about a nineteen-year old man arrested in Berkeley for attempted murder after stabbing someone during a fight outside a bar (as it happens, a bar I periodically frequented). When I read that, I was hit with a wave of despondency -- in part over the senseless of the stabbing, but in part as a sort of third-party grief on behalf of his parents. Didn't he know he had people who loved him? Didn't he realize how much him doing this would hurt them? How awful they must feel, and how alone, given that (understandably, and reasonably) the bulk of the community's care and concern will be directed at the victim and his family, not the perpetrator.

Does this mean that people who stab others should be let off without consequence? Of course not. But I can't expect the parents to abstain from fully grieving a child who is (or is practically) lost to him.

Sometimes It's Who You Most Suspect

A former writer for Mintpress News -- a notorious conspiracy website infamous for antisemitism, Assad-apologism, and overall tankie-ism -- has been arrested after allegedly vandalizing a synagogue and planning to pin the blame on the Azov Battalion.

Apparently, she had been arrested for trying to set fire to a church, was released on bail and given an electronic tether to wear, which she cut off the next day prior to her escapade at the synagogue.

She confessed to the crimes at the synagogue in Royal Oak, police said, and further told them she also painted a swastika on a child’s stroller and on a car at a synagogue in Oak Park. As of Friday no charges had been filed against her in Oak Park’s 45th District Court.

“She said she planned to do as many hate crimes as possible and blame them on Azov,” Royal Oak Detective Dan Pelletier testified at Nord’s arraignment in Royal Oak.

The purpose of the hate crimes was aimed at undermining the U.S. support for Ukraine after the country was invaded by Russia.

Say this for the Mintpress folks -- they don't lack for dedication. 

Biden Visits Ukraine

President Joe Biden made a top-secret (but now public) visit to Ukraine in a show of solidarity as the country continues to face down Russia's war of aggression.

I don't have a lot to add to this except to say that as symbolic gestures go, this is quite the move. It obviously is reminiscent to trips Presidents Bush and Obama had made to Iraq and Afghanistan, but even more difficult to pull off given that Ukraine doesn't have American troops on the ground providing a security buffer.

As the GOP continues to play footsie with Putin's authoritarian thuggery, and the usual red-brown alliance pushes for Ukrainian capitulation and subjugation, this act of solidarity by the President is more than welcome.

The Aesthetics of Election Rigging

Russia has announced the results of the totally free and fair referenda conducted in occupied Ukrainian territory and wouldn't you know it: everybody is just beside themselves with excitement at joining the Russia Federation.

The Russian state news media was reporting what it described as results showing enormous levels of support for joining Russia in four occupied territories. Tass, the Russian news agency, reported 92.68 percent in favor in Zaporizhzhia, 86 percent in Kherson in the south, and 93.95 percent in Donetsk and 98.53 in Luhansk in the east.

When it comes to these sorts of obviously rigged elections (remember when Azerbaijan accidentally released its election results the day before anyone had actually voted?), I always wonder how these figures are decided. Which bureaucrat is deciding that, yeah, 98.53% is the right figure for Luhansk? Not 98.52,% god help us not 97%, but 98.53%? There must be some thought that goes into it, yes? I wonder who has that job.

The other aspect of it is why the margins in these rigged elections are so ludicrously lopsided. I get wanting to have (the illusion of) a resounding consensus, but everyone knows results in the upper 90s are not even remotely credible. If they had made up a 60/40 victory spread, the news coverage probably would have concentrated on it being "surprisingly close", but it might have actually treated the election itself as if it wasn't transparently fixed. Sometimes less is more, people!

If Russians Want Out, Let Them In

As the Russian government announced new military mobilization decrees to reverse their faltering Ukraine campaign, the world has witnessed a sharp spike in young Russian men attempting to flee the country and avoid a military call-up. This immediately poses the question: should other countries open their borders to Russians attempting to skirt military service?

One way this question is commonly debated is whether the Russians in question are morally culpable for their nation's actions in Ukraine. A common form of the argument goes something like "many of those trying now to flee Russia are hardly conscientious objectors or paragons of moral virtue. Most Russians support Putin and support the Ukraine war; they just are trying to save their own skin now that the war is going badly." While it might be one thing to give refugee status to those who've genuinely and consistently resisted Russia's war of aggression, it's another entirely to reach out and protect persons who actually support the war but simply don't like the idea of fighting in it.

One response to this argument is to observe that the people now being called up to fight are disproportionately being drawn from historically-oppressed ethnic minority groups in Russia's hinterlands -- an attempt, as one commentator grimly put it, for Russian nationalists to wage "two ethnic cleansings for the price of one."

But I'll go further: when it comes to Russians seeking to evade military mobilization, I'm less concerned about judging any individual's moral character than I am about thwarting and sabotaging the Russian war machine to the greatest degree possible. If the Russian military is feeling starved for manpower right now, I want to burn some of their grain silos to turn the screws even more. The fewer military-aged Russian men the Russian army has available to it to deploy to the front, the happier I am.

I certainly don't want to give sanctuary to out-and-out war criminals. But consider the marginal case -- the Russian man who had no problem with the Ukraine war right up until it became a live prospect that he'd have to fight in it. I wouldn't exactly nominate that man for a Nobel Peace Prize, and no doubt many would say that a trip to the front lines would be nothing more than just deserts. Perhaps they're right -- but I care significantly less about him getting that particular form of comeuppance than I do about Russian having one fewer soldier firing bullets at Ukrainian men, women, and children.

The easier it is for Russian men to choose not to fight in this war, the harder it will be for the Russian government to get them to fight in this war. And that's my lodestar for approaching this question. Every Russian who wants out of Russia right now is another dent in an already battered Russian war machine. So if they want out, I say let them in.

Why is Ukraine Different?

Why has the Russian invasion of Ukraine grabbed and held international attention? It is not, sad to say, the only example of armed conflict right now or in recent years. And Americans, in particular, are not known for being gripped by foreign affairs. So what makes Ukraine different from other conflicts? Here are a few (non-exclusive) potential explanations.

First, Ukraine is a European country being invaded by another (coded-as) European country. That, for better or for worse, makes a difference, though I don't have much more to add to it.

Second, it's a (relatively) evenly matched hot war conflict between two (relatively) modern and modernized military powers. Most of the major military confrontations involving modern militaries in recent years have been cases where one party is far more powerful in conventional terms than the other (e.g., either of the Gulf Wars). The traditional "war" part of the conflict was pretty much a walkover; any difficulties came later in reconstruction and/or insurgency. Here, neither side has the ability to decisively demolish the forces of the other in the short run even as we remain in a phase of traditional battlefield confrontation as opposed to guerilla resistance and insurgency/counterinsurgency.

Third, the war here involves a relatively stable, relatively liberal democracy on the defensive, being invaded in an existential threat to its existence. That is quite rare in my lifetime. Cases where, say, America has been attacked by illiberal forces tend to be sporadic and asymmetrical terrorist events; America certainly hasn't experienced nor has been at any substantial risk of an invasion in decades, or any other assault that poses a genuine existential risk of seeing the country dissolved. That's been true of most of our European allies as well; ditto countries like Japan or Australia. To see the liberal democratic camp on the defensive like that is, I think, quite shocking.

Other factors I might be missing?

Some Things I'm Already Really Tired of Seeing "Debated" Everywhere (Israel on Russia/Ukraine Edition)

A non-exhaustive list (though I, personally, am quite exhausted):

1. Is Israel (or Palestine) more the "Ukraine" or more the "Russia"?
2. Who is supporting Ukraine more, Israel or Palestine?
3. Do the incipient boycott/sanctions efforts against Russia make it hypocritical to oppose BDS against Israel?
4. Does the justified backlash against boycott/sanction overreach targeting ordinary Russians make it hypocritical to support BDS against Israel?
5. Does praise for Ukrainian resistance against Russia's invasion make it hypocritical to oppose (which forms of?) Palestinian resistance against the Israeli occupation?
6. Is Israel really supporting Ukraine, or really supporting Russia, or really staying neutral to serve as an "arbiter"?
7. Is Ukraine inspired by Israel's example or furious at Israel's faint-heartedness?
8. Is Israel offering asylum to Ukrainian Jewish refugees salutary or colonialist?

Some of these are, in isolation, at least marginally interesting questions, but the degree to which they are constantly dominating my Twitter feed -- and admittedly, that's in no small part due to selection bias re: who is on my Twitter feed -- is absolutely draining. Marginally interesting as they may be, these are sub-sub-tertiary questions that often are treated as the critical geopolitical fulcrum around which all other Russia/Ukraine debates must revolve, and I just can't.

Anyway, since they're apparently inescapable in my neck of the internet woods, here are my very quick answers, with the caveat that I probably won't expand on any of these because -- again -- they're of sub-sub-tertiary importance and my opinions simply do not matter that much.

1. Israel is more the "Russia" re: Palestine but historically has been more the "Ukraine" re: the rest of the Middle East; this entire stupid debate depends on the frame of reference.
2. Don't know, and you can probably find cherry-picked evidence to support either claim.
3. Not necessarily, but it does further weaken the "singles out" argument while also normalizing boycott-type activity as a non-extraordinary tool in the political activism toolkit.
4. Yes, at least as far as the more over-reaching forms of boycott that target Israelis-qua-Israelis (e.g., the Moshava Philly incident), but not all forms of boycott activity are that sweeping (and are not being subjected to the backlash).
5. Public opinion probably would be different if Ukraine's "resistance" took the form of firing rockets into Moscow, but at the very least the Ukraine example seemingly requires one to affirm that Palestinians have the right to military resistance against Israeli military targets.
6. If I had to guess, I'd say Israel is trying to tip-toe around Russia (for reasons including but not limited to Russia's dangerous presence in Syria) and is using the "we have to preserve our ability to be a neutral arbiter" as an excuse to refrain from some more aggressive anti-Russia actions without publicly dissenting from their legitimacy. That said, the real answer is unknown, as the stories are constantly in flux on this and frankly Ukrainian public officials have more important things to do than be sure that international media outlets receive the most perfectly accurate impression about how earnest or not Israel's diplomatic efforts have been.
7. Probably a bit of column A and a bit of column B, but again mostly they're not thinking about Israel at all and it's the height of vanity to assume otherwise.
8. Salutary, full stop.

What Does a Ukraine Peace Deal Look Like?

Russia's war against Ukraine has begun in full force. So far, the Ukrainian government and people have done a remarkable job in slowing Russian aggression. But Russia is much bigger than Ukraine, and every day this war goes on is another day of wholly unnecessary death and bloodshed.

There are reports that Ukraine has asked Israel to mediate peace talks with Russia (Israel being one of a very small number of countries that remains on at least halfway decent terms with both nations). Obviously, if Israel can do anything to bring this horrific war to end I hope it does so. We also, unfortunately, know that what with Israel being, you know, Israel, any hiccups in the negotiation process, or any sense that a resulting agreement is unfair or unjust (and someone will always find it unfair or unjust) will yield a quite ... predictable sort of discourse as a consequence.

Which leads me to ask: what, even roughly speaking, does a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine even look like?

This is an area I want to emphasize I am no expert in, and so I invite people who are experts to correct or supplement me. But here are some of the assumptions I'm working off of (which, again, I'm very open to correction).

1. First and foremost: this was a complete and unprovoked pure war of aggression by Russia against Ukraine. In a just world, they should get absolutely nothing -- not Donetsk, not Crimea, not Luhansk, nothing but a barrelful of summons to an international war crimes tribunal.  Any end to the conflict which appears to reward Russia for launching this invasion will be hideously unjust. Unfortunately, the ends of wars needn't be any more just than their beginnings.
2. While Ukraine has done an impressive job stymying Russia's advance so far, in terms of pure military material Russia retains a considerable advantage. It is highly unlikely that Ukraine can actually push Russia back on the battlefield or force Russia into a position where it has to "surrender", even though it can inflict heavy losses on Russian forces.
3. Ukraine is in a bit of a paradox: it obviously wants the war to end as soon as possible, but it's only chance to prevail is in slowing it down -- putting Russia in a morass, making the price unacceptable for the Russian people on the home front.
4. The war has not gone as quickly or as smoothly as Putin predicted, and that's a big problem for him. Europe is far more unified than he expected, his military is underperforming, and his normal allies are saying "nuh-uh, this is your mess". He needs something to come out of this that he can point to as a win, and undoing western sanctions that only came into play because of his own recklessness won't cut it. Launching an obviously optional war of aggression and limping back in pure defeat potentially puts his entire regime in jeopardy. In this context, it realistically puts Putin's head in jeopardy.

Basically, the core of the problem is that a viable deal almost certainly needs to give Putin something face-saving, but there's nothing obvious to give him that would not rightfully be a non-starter from the vantage of Ukraine and which wouldn't set a horrible precedent in terms of incentivizing offensive wars of aggression. Now to be clear: I, personally, have no interest in saving Putin's face or any other part of his body. He can swing for all I care. But while Ukraine can perhaps stop Russia from achieving total victory, it can't force Russia into a position of abject defeat, and so cannot compel a deal that -- however just -- Putin will never accept and can never accept without probably being ousted from power outright.

So that's my question: under these constraints, what does a peace deal look like? What proposal can be put together that maintains Ukraine's territorial integrity, deters Russia from undertaking similar actions in the future, but actually can get Russia's signature? If such a deal cannot be contemplated, it is hard to see how this war can be prevented from dragging on for the foreseeable future.

Russia Invades Ukraine

The war has begun. It is pure, unadulterated, irredentist imperialist aggression by a far-right authoritarian state against an American ally, and if there's the tiniest of silver linings it's that every serious commentator -- which includes people like Bernie Sanders but excludes people like Donald Trump, Tulsi Gabbard, and Tucker Carlson -- is unapologetic in recognizing it as such.

We can only hope that something convinces Russia to turn off this course of action with a minimum of bloodshed and human suffering. But acts require a united response from the liberal democracies of the world, and so far thankfully it looks like that's what we're seeing.

The DSA Seizes The Tankie Moment

The original "tankie" incident, the one that gave the term its name, came when the Soviets invaded Hungary in 1956 to crush a workers' uprising. "Tankies" were those leftists who followed Moscow's line in supporting the invasion, dutifully repeating Soviet propaganda about how this was "anti-fascist" or how it was responding to "American aggression", despite the fact that under any objective metric it seemed a straightforward form of imperialist aggression by a powerful state against the very democratic and labor forces that these same leftists claimed to stand in stalwart defense of. 

Most of us, of course, were not around in 1956 and so missed the opportunity to be original tankies. But all that's old is new again, and we now literally are faced with a seemingly imminent decision by Russia to once again send in tanks to invade southeastern Europe! And the Democratic Socialists of America have responded by showing just how excited they are at the chance to fly their tankie flag high. Their statement that regurgitates every predictable horseshoe-theory trope about why Russia is really the victim here, everything bad is America's fault, and "solidarity" means telling Ukraine it deserves what it has coming to it. Way to seize the moment, DSA! Who even cares that Russia is now itself a right-wing kleptocracy? It's adverse to American interests, and that's (apparently literally) all that matters.

It's a side issue, but I think there were some Jewish progressives who had some sympathies with the DSA, at least on matters of domestic policy, and were accordingly a bit rattled by the DSA's decision to go all-in on backing BDS in its most extreme and uncompromising possible form -- not because of the "trend" it did or didn't portend, but because it caused them (the Jewish progressives) to second guess their own instincts that were averse to BDS. If the DSA is a reliable guidestone to good progressive policymaking generally, what does it say that I'm bucking them here? It is, I imagine, a relief to remember that the DSA's foreign policy approach is consistently terrible, anti-democratic, and pro-authoritarian (see also: Venezuela), and that there is absolutely no reason to feel even remotely anxious or skittish if you end up on the opposite side of the argument from them.

Great Moments in Juxtaposition

Mila Kunis described a visit to her childhood home, without sparing mention of the antisemitism she had experience. And so we get this fantastic bit of editorial juxtaposition:

Some residents of Chernivtsi, including people who knew the Kunis family, took offense at her unemotional description of the trip and at the 2012 interview, Komsomolskaya Pravda reported.

“We still have a large Jewish community, so talks of ‘anti-Semitism’ are nonsense and insulting,” one resident, Lyudmila Skidova, was quoted as saying. 

Last year, the words “death to the Jews” were spray-painted on the city’s main synagogue.

The absence of Jews may not stop antisemitism, but it's not a prerequisite for it either.