Responding to Kelly Scoles’ Second Opinion
The Russian-Ukrainian war grinds on. Ukraine is winning on points despite being outgunned 10-1. The victory Putin bragged would take a couple of days is into its fourth week with soaring causalities and enormous loss of equipment.

Biden, the ever-reluctant Commander in Chief, handicaps Ukraine's progress by slow-walking the critical supplies of arms and ammunition, while the Russians decimate civilian targets. Reported a week ago, Russia has destroyed 15 hospitals, several of them children's hospitals.

Every American should understand that Russia must be defeated in this unprovoked war against an innocent, peaceful, democratic, sovereign country. If there is to be freedom for Ukraine when the war is ended, and security for the Eastern European nations, Russia must be stopped in its tracks. That means the West must stand up to Putin's threat to use nuclear weapons against us, otherwise nuclear blackmail will decide America's and NATO's future forever. We have many nuclear weapons as well. Putin should be constantly reminded of that fact (as should China, as it prepares to attack Taiwan).

Kelly, you approve of Sun Tzu's, advise, often admired as the oldest (500b.c.) and greatest military strategist, and there are many of them from before Alexander the Great to Machiavelli and Clausewitz. It should not be surprising that he advises that "it's not the hothead seeking vengeance" who wins, but the "calm, detached warrior who wins." Sun Tzu is the subtlest of tacticians. I have three editions of his "The Art of War." If he wrote that short book himself, he is truly a genius among geniuses.

But I think you misunderstand the Ukraine war situation. Any "Putin-watcher" with even modest knowledge of Russian-Soviet history would not be "stunned" to hear Putin's public statement i.e. "to crack down on internal dissent...and begin a necessary self-purification of society". Putin is a communist in the historical sense of that word. He is not a soldier, he's the protégé' of monsters like Lenin, Stalin, Feliks Dzerzhinsky, and Mao Zedong. Putin idolizes Stalin, who starved millions of Ukrainians to death.

I'm not a psychiatrist, so I can't determine Putin's mental state. But I don't have to. Any Christian paying attention to what Putin is doing to Ukraine's citizens knows he is pure evil, e.g. - destroyed 15 hospitals to date. I come closer to the truth of Putin's character by identifying him as being spiritually possessed, as were all of his communist predecessors. His pride might prevent him from deescalating the war; he has trapped himself by losing face in view of China (even India, Iran, and North Korea) and his collapsing military.

(Note) I'm running late and will have to cut this short. Not my fault. I blame it entirely on age.

A nuclear confrontation with Russia is now (in my very un-professional opinion) probable. We are beginning to hear the word "sub-kiloton nukes - tactical nukes". It's their smaller size that would tempt Putin to use them in Ukraine. The smallest U.S. nuclear bomb was the Davy Crockett, fired somewhat like a mortar, from a tripod set up in the field. The launcher systems were muzzle loading weapons.

"Although the Army had already deployed nuclear artillery systems, by the late 1950s U.S. generals wanted a battlefield system that combat units could use against Soviet troops at close range." "The initial Davy Crockett could be hand-carried and fired from its tripod by two or three soldiers. Since the Davy Crockett was meant for close-range use, the explosive power of the warhead was limited to 20 tons and 10 tons" [not kilotons] - a fraction of the explosive power of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki devices (15 kilotons) but enough for the blast to kill advancing Soviet or Chinese troops. "In the late 1960s, the Army began to remove the Davy Crockett from service." About 2,000 units had been disbursed throughout Western Europe.

I have to close. Putin must be stopped ASAP by conventional means before it will require nuclear means. The free world must provide all support Ukraine forces need, now.

A Davy Crockett at the Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland, 1961.