WAR CRIMINAL (a brief preview of my new book)

                               

      It is now official. Putin has an arrest warrant issued by the I.C.C. (International Criminal Court) for War Crimes. War Crimes are serious violations of customary and treaty law rules that are classified as criminal offenses for which there is individual responsibility. Andriy Kostin, Ukraine’s Prosecutor General, has registered more than 65,000 Russian war crimes so far in the one-year conflict. 16,000 Ukrainian children have been forcibly taken hostage and taken into Russia. Seventy-five thousand civilian structures have been turned into rubble. Half of Ukraine has lost its energy sector, which has caused much suffering by civilians even freezing to death. Russia has become a pariah state, and Putin has been justly labeled a war criminal. After World War II, a special tribunal was created, the Nürnberg Tribunal, and 16 war criminals were executed, and many more were given prison terms from 10 to 20 years. Putin certainly qualifies and would need to be executed by Nürnberg standards. In 1899 the Hague convention created the first formal “Laws of War” that set standards that the combatants could not violate. Subsequently, others have been tried, the most notorious of whom are Slobodan Milosevic for genocide, Adolf Eichmann for complicity in the Holocaust, William Calley for his role in the Mỹ Lai massacre, and Muammar Gaddafi, who ordered the shutdown of  Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, with 270 fatalities,  but he was killed before he could be tried. It would be an appropriate designation for Putin if Flight M.A.S. 17, shot down over Donetsk Oblast, could be memorialized in that fashion for a future historical reminder of a brutal murderer.            
     “They will find a way to kill the killer!” said Vladimir Zelensky, “I just don’t know when.” Putin’s inner circle eventually may come to that conclusion to stop the insanity and rescue what is left of Russia. Russia has been decimated militarily and as a country. 200,000 Russian men of military age have been removed from the workforce, and the husbands and fathers that are so necessary for the families of Russia. 100,000 Ukrainian soldiers are dead, not counting the 18,000 Ukrainian civilian casualties. As many as 1,000,000 people are said to have left Russia, mostly the more educated and professionals. Over 8,000,000 have fled from Ukraine. Believe me, Putin has thought of his culpability for all the military, and civilian deaths that will be brought up in his trial should Russia lose. It must give him trouble going to sleep at night even if he uses his new hyperbaric Oxygen tank bed, just like Michael Jackson, which is meant to make him live longer. I could recommend a doctor formerly employed by Jackson to help him sleep. I am sure the doctor has learned from his past mistakes!           
     The atrocities committed at Bucha on Putin’s orders are enough to make him a candidate for a war criminal. (Just a little reminder for the three Stooges Congress people and Tucker Carlson that they are promoting a war criminal as heinous as Göring and Hitler, just in case they didn’t realize it). He has already made plans for the escape should he need to do so. Various places have been mentioned, like a permanent spot at the Space Station, where Russia has some real estate. But the most likely is Venezuela. He has friends there, and with his hefty bank accounts in several Swiss banks, he will hardly suffer. He could sell his former housekeeper and lover, Svetlana Krivonogikh’s Monaco apartments if all else fails. Svetlana has come into quite a bit of money, $102,000,000. Housekeepers earn quite a bit when working under the right person. The other option is the Swiss Chalet near Lugano which has been on the market for $75,000,000 Swiss Francs, just a little over $82,000,000 US dollars, where he is hiding his current girlfriend, Alina Kabaeva, along with her children.      
     Putin is in an untenable position that he alone has created. He is on the wrong side of International Law regarding annexing Crimea and the southeastern Oblasts of Donetsk and Luhansk. He is also losing the war. All Russian Czars that lost Wars have not been in power too long after their failures. He also knows that if he brings out “Nukes,” there is a good chance he will destroy the World, which I believe his inner circle, who are not interested in suicide, will not let him do. He has ruined Ukraine, he has ruined Russia, and he has killed at least 39 Oligarchs, important scientists, and politicians, along with 300,000 or more Russians and Ukrainians. How much longer can “THEY” tolerate him and his minions?         
     The arrest warrant for Putin, issued by the International Criminal Court, was met with apparent indifference as a useless piece of paper. But in fact, it did make all those obscure dark creatures that inhabit the Kremlin concerned that they could be the next Heinrich Himmler or Joseph Göbbels, both of whom did not fare so well at the Nürnberg (Nuremberg) Trials, choosing suicide over execution by hanging.
      Some on the ultra-right say we are spending too much for Ukraine when we should worry about the Fentanyl crisis, the Southern Border, and not enough baby food in grocery stores. How exactly not supporting Ukraine is going to solve those problems is a mystery to me. Aid to Ukraine has cost us peanuts compared to the total U.S. defense budget of $715 billion a year. Our cost for Ukrainian support has been $40 billion for 2022, money well spent to degrade the military of a previously formidable opponent and expose his weakness! We would never have guessed that Russia, one of the major world powers, could be contained this cheaply! The cost to defeat Hitler was $ 4.1 trillion, along with 50 million lives—something we do not want to repeat. To date, not one American soldier was lost to Russia.   
     The view that our support of Ukraine is unduly costing our taxpayers and that we have no business in interfering in a territorial dispute between Ukraine and Russia unmasks an incredibly shortsighted worldview, very reminiscent of our view when Hitler marched into Poland on September 1, 1939. It took the U.S. over two years to conclude Hitler had to be stopped. It is the same reason Putin must be stopped now! It will be much costlier for us to disregard the clear and present danger in terms of dollars and lives! “The bang for the buck” has been well worth it, not counting the preview China got if they are thinking of doing the same to Taiwan! And, for that matter, anybody else emboldened by apparent military weakness. The World is a dangerous place with bellicose countries just looking for an opening to pounce, like North Korea, Iran, Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria, and Somalia. Just saying stocking grocery stores with more baby food will not help that!   
     More than two millennia ago, Plato, in his book, The Republic,  book 1, pointed out the view of Socrates that “justice requires strength.” That was the unfortunate truth 2,398 years ago, which is still true today. If we can show strength with just $40 billion rather than $4.1 trillion, we are ahead of the game despite what the three Stooges, Matt Gaetz, Loraine Boebert, and Marjorie Taylor Greene said.   
     Let us learn from history and not repeat the mistakes of the past. I’ll take Socrates over M.T.G. any day!