Sunday Drive: There but for Fortune

 Cher, 1967.  The lyrics are particularly poignant just now.

What I Say:  The Ukrainian situation poses a terrible moral dilemma.  It tugs at the heartstrings to see the defiant Ukranian people erecting barricades of used tires and empty crates, making Molotov cocktails out of empty liquor bottles, or manning their defenses with handguns, knives, and hammers, whatever they can lay hands on.  And this in the face of overwhelming odds against a wicked and implacable foe.  

The miracle of modern communications, showing us the happenings in real time, makes it all quite vivid and deeply moving.  One wishes of course to send them every help - including what they most need, friendly troops with the firepower to vanquish the enemy decisively and send him scurrying from Ukrainian soil.  That would be an immensely good deed in the checkered annals of humanity.

But wisdom requires us to look beyond the current moment, and to recollect that there is more to the world than just Ukraine.  It is necessary to balance the fate of 40 million Ukranians against that of the other 7 billion people on this planet.  It might well be that a concerted strike by NATO forces could rid Ukraine of the invader in a week's time or less - but then what?  We now know for certain that Putin will stop at nothing to get what he wants.  

Is saving Ukraine worth turning New York, or London, or Paris, or Berlin into a parking lot?  And much more besides just those cities?  We might save a million lives in Ukraine - but what about the 100 million lives, or more, that would be lost in a nuclear war?  Which way does the moral compass point?

It is a long established rule in the common law that one is not under obligation to go to another's aid if it requires endangering one's own life.  If someone is drowning, you do not have to jump in the lake with him.  We have no treaty obligations to Ukraine that compel us to act in her defense; and to do so on the scale needed would almost certainly open the nuclear door and unleash who knows what horrors upon the rest of mankind all around the globe,  If it came to that, the heartbreaking scenes in Ukraine we see today would be repeated endlessly and with even greater anguish in many other countries.

And yet, one feels greatly ashamed of not jumping into the lake to save that drowning man.  Must we sacrifice the many to save the few?  A horrible dilemma of the heart and the conscience - glib phrases and quick answers are not helpful when such weighty questions must be weighed in the balances.  Students of history will remember that this is not the first time humanity has confronted such a dreadful choice.  

And all because of one bitter, frustrated old man, without conscience or remorse.  Would that he had never been born!  The news at noon reports that he has now put Russia's nuclear forces on alert.  Does anyone in Russia have the courage to say No for once?  Must one evil man's hunger for domination consume the whole world?  Will no one rid us of this ruthless monster, this loathsome blot upon the earth?  

Must all mankind suffer to make the world safe for Putin?

Suddenly, the world has turned a corner and entered a frightening new era.  This is the most dangerous hour in our lifetime; it is a good time to put one's affairs in order.  If Putin were to lob just one nuke against any NATO country, there would be hell to pay.  It may be that there is some happy way forward not apparent to me at the present time.  If so, I pray that the leaders of the world will find it, and soon.  

May God bless the brave, beleaguered Ukrainian people, and deliver them and us from every evil.

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