Kitty Genovese and The Ukraine

site of Kitty Genovese murder (Union Turnpike)

The Russian destruction of the Ukraine brings back the Kitty Genovese case from l964, in which a Kew Gardens woman was stabbed to death while everyone watched and no one came to her help. The logic for non-intervention both makes sense and doesn’t. Sure the minute the no fly zone is protected, NATO forces will find themselves up against Russian MIGs. But isn’t that precisely what’s bound to happen anyway if Putin seeks his ultimate goal, the reconstitution of the USSR or Imperial Russia? NATO forces may be waiting at the Estonian, Latvian or Lithuanian borders, but what will be the result? Either war is avoided and the country run over or you have war. Putin seems to be an advocate of the famed Clausewitz saying about war being the continuation of politics by other means (leaving out, of course, the politics part). He has also said that sanctions are a declaration of war. Trauma is usually associated with victims of an assault (like the Ukrainians). But it was  traumatic for Kitty Genovese's neighbors, burdened with helplessness, subsequent guilt and feelings of responsibility for her death. The images Ukrainians screaming as they flee their bombed-out houses, of burning nuclear plants and hospitals under siege and of cluster and vacuum bombs (which literally suck the air out of lungs) are indelible and make one feel that perhaps the ante has to be upped in some way—perhaps through secret weaponized guerilla units (a foreign legion?) or selective cruise missile bombings (to counter those of the Russians). Remember Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile? What about "modified deployments?" Maybe the old adage about the best offense being a strong defense has to be taken even more seriously. Who's to tell who is Ukrainian military or not, if everyone is wearing the same uniform?

Read "The Final Solution: Democrazy" by Francis Levy, HuffPost

and listen to "War"by Edwin Starr