My dad, an Irish immigrant’s son who by dint of hard work and good luck became a seaplane instructor from Stamford, Connecticut, could take a crowded train down to Arcada, Florida, and teach British farmboys how to fly on Stearman biplanes, incredible planes that are still flying. After learning how to take off and land in one piece, the British cadets quickly graduated to aerobatics fifty feet off the deck. The ones who survived were well-prepared to move on to Spitfires, the planes they used to drive back the mighty Luftwaffe. To this day, British families of pilots who died at Arcada gather once a year to honor them.
President Biden! In the time we’re wasting nitpicking how to get Russian MiG 29s from Poland to Ukraine, we could be picking up Ukrainian pilots at the border and having our Top Guns train them on American fighters that the Ukrainian pilots can fly back to their homeland. It would be like delivering big Javelins, which we are already doing.
WW II1/2 might be a good thing. As with Hitler and Hirohito, we could put Putin out of business and allow Russia to have truly free elections and a market economy where all can play, not just a few oligarchs/Friends of Putin…
It would need to be a stealthy blitzkrieg from all NATO countries bordering Russia. But from what the world has seen so far in Ukraine, this is a typical Communist military machine–large and clumsy and over-managed from the top. Back in the days I spent with the 601st Photo Flight, F-4s from Ubon, Udorn, and Korat, Thailand, could easily chase the Russian MiGs that were sent up over Hanoi because they barely had enough fuel to do more than take off and land.
The Pentagon and NATO fear nuclear war if they engage with Russian troops, in the air or on the ground. But Russia already occupies Chernobyl and the largest nuclear power plant in Europe in the south of Ukraine. Putin already declares himself ready to use his nuclear arsenal and has already aided Bashar in Syria to use nerve gas on his own civilians. Putin has no end game, no way out other than escalation. The US and NATO need to take the initiative, declare war on Putin and take him out with surgical precision. Russian media needs to be reopened free of Putin’s obscene censorship so all Russian citizens can know the truth.
The world paid a horrendous price for WW II, but WW II 1/2 can be limited to Ukraine, western Russia, and Moscow. The brush fire in the Ukraine can be stomped out quickly with US and NATO aid, with Ukrainian Air Force MiG 29s controlling the skies over its homeland, but with NATO attacking Russian air defence across the border. That means war–yes. Putin has already declared merely supplying the Ukraine an act of war. Likewise the worldwide sanctions on Russian banking and trade. Putin is already at war, but once the US and other NATO nations declare war on Russia, Putin’s days days are numbered.
Russian jails are already filled with thousands of protestors who no longer fear him. Russian troops in the Ukraine are abandoning their heavy weapons and surrendering. Why not recruit them to lead a March on Moscow that will lead to Putin’s arrest for war crimes? If little old ladies and students can stand up to Putin, why can’t the NATO nations, led by the US with the most powerful military in the history of the world?
Curmudgeon in the Land of Smiles 