We spent twenty years and trillions of £/$s on liberating an ungrateful Iraq, but we are doing nothing substantial to help a European city defending its freedom from being cluster-bombed.
Russian forces have started using MLRS cluster artillery to indiscriminately attack cities.
This shows them bombarding the centre of Kharkiv.🇺🇦
Use of such inaccurate and indiscriminate weapons in a civilian area very probably constitutes a war crime.pic.twitter.com/5ykQzLZnBD
— Jimmy (@JimmySecUK) February 28, 2022
We think that we can avoid “World War III” by heeding Putin’s threats and staying out of his way. We can’t and we won’t. Putin knows if he backs off now, he will never get to the gates of Kiev again. He has played his biggest card – the threat of nuclear war with the West. He has threatened the world. If he doesn’t follow through, he is finished as a world leader, his oligarch and mafia cronies will have no further use for him (and may well wish him dead), and the world will neither take him seriously again, nor work with him or his regime since they cannot be trusted. The world will view everything Russia does with suspicion.
And indeed, as his propaganda minister said today, if Russia has no place in the world, what use is The World?
Unlike Saddam Hussein’s regime, Russia actually has weapons of mass destruction – not merely pretending to have them. It is threatening to use them. Our choice is to take the initiative or to be caught on the back foot.
We must question our values too: what prompted us to act in Iraq, but leaves us on the sidelines now? Is it only the threat of nuclear war? What do we think Russia will do when Putin is in his final bunker? What would Hitler have done? There’s your answer. And if Putin has not finally retreated to his bunker, where is he? Has he prevailed? What does that look like? Where is he instead? And more importantly, where are we?
Perhaps the question is not so simple after all.
