They Have Sown the Wind
And now they should reap the whirlwind.
On July 8th, Russian bombers launched a large wave of missile attacks on civil infrastructure across Ukraine, including the cities of Kyiv, Dnipro, Kryvyi Rih, Pokrovsk, and more. Among the targets struck was the Okhmadyt children’s cancer hospital in Kyiv, the largest such facility in the country. At least 47 civilians were killed, with hundreds more being injured.
If it was not already obvious, the intentional targeting of residential areas and non-military civil infrastructure - including children’s cancer hospitals - is a heinous violation of the laws of war.
Russian forces have struck, on average, two medical facilities per day since the start of the war in Ukraine, in addition to dozens of other non-military targets. Many of these targets were hit on purpose, others out of a gross and criminal disregard for the safety of noncombatants. The Russians have employed in these attacks a variety of weapons and platforms, none more prolific and deadly than waves of cruise and ballistic missiles launched by dozens of strategic bombers based deep inside Russia.
These bombers - and the men who command them, and the bases that house them, and the leaders who direct them - are legitimate targets. They are legitimate not just because they are military in nature, but because they have repeatedly, intentionally, and knowingly violated the laws of war in a manner that has become routine. It would not even be fair to treat these bases and bombers as merely “normal” military targets - their actions are and have consistently been criminal in nature, and in a fairer world, those responsible for their perpetuation would have already been seen by the Hague.
Ukraine has every right to retaliate against these targets, to ensure that attacks like these do not happen again. It has had that right since the very first city, hospital, child was struck, on the very first day of the war. Ukraine not only possesses the weapons it needs to make such retaliation a reality, it has even been given explicit, public permission multiple times from the nations who have built and supplied such weapons to use them in that very manner.
And yet it has not done, not because it does not want to, and not because it cannot do so, but because the United States refuses to allow it to respond.
By permitting these attacks to continue, by blocking Ukraine from using the weapons it has been provided to strike legitimate targets responsible for conducting innumerable war crimes, we become not just witnesses, but complicit accomplices. To permit these raids to continue unhindered, to deprive Ukraine of the ability to retaliate and respond, encourages them to be carried out again, and again, and again. Current Western policy - American and German in particular - is intolerable, outrageous, and morally repugnant. We force Ukraine to fight with limitations we ourselves would never accept, to suffer indignities and brutalities that we admit are barbaric, counseling them to simply lie down and suffer what they must, sacrificing innocents so that we may shield criminals for fear of what justice might mean to us.
There is a lizard-like element of cold reason that creeps into discussions around topics like this. It is easy, sitting in an air-controlled room on a pleasant day in land that has not known war in decades, to pretend that action is dangerous, that inaction is righteous, and that dead children are merely the cost of doing business. They are not our cities, some say. They are not our hospitals. They are not our kids. It is better to be cautious about this; it is better to be rational; it is better to be wise.
Personally, I do not think any reptile spouting bullshit like that is worth listening to in the slightest, because I do not think it is just or even wise to place our policy and future safety in the hands and minds of heartless men.
Furthermore, it is not worth listening to them because they are plainly wrong. Foreign policy is not and has never been a realm of cold, perfect logic - if it was, Vladimir Putin would not have invaded Ukraine. War and politics is a deeply messy, and often deeply emotional, undertaking, and it should be, because we are not really arguing about planes or missiles, but about the things they can and might do to people, to human beings. That is not to say that our foreign policy should be based on gut reactions and pure emotion - reason and strategic thinking have vital, paramount roles to play. It is to say, though, that one should look at the images of bloodied children emerging from the dust and rubble of a children’s cancer hospital and want to do something about it, instead of ignoring the sight and pivoting to talking about invisible rungs on an imaginary escalation ladder.
And it is worth remembering that said ladder is imaginary. I challenge anyone who is feeling truly lizardly to find rational reasons as to why we should be ducking and bowing beneath every Russian threat, not one of which has been acted upon in the more than two years since the Kremlin first started issuing them. If those lizards want to be realists, then I challenge them to answer why a weak Russia should be permitted and encouraged to dictate terms and red lines to a strong America. If those lizards want to hide behind the threat of war with Russia when we are busy dealing with China, then I want them to answer why displaying such hesitation and timidity in the face of that hostile, revisionist, watchful power is sound policy that does not place our Pacific allies - reliant on our willingness to take much larger and more significant risks on their behalf - in danger.
American policy in this matter is long overdue for change. Continuing in the present manner is not only unjust and deeply immoral, it is strategically bankrupt, even ignoring the wider global context. The Russian bomber fleet has always posed a large and serious threat to vital Ukrainian infrastructure. This includes not only the energy and thermal infrastructure that we are set to spend billions (potentially tens of billions) repairing, but the airfields that will soon house dozens of newly-furnished F-16s. Russia will use these bombers, this weapon, so long as it retains unfettered access to it. It will do with that weapon all of the damage it can, on whatever targets it can reach, whenever it has the opportunity to do so. No amount of words, no number of photos, no number of dead children will change the Kremlin’s calculus in this regard. No strong condemnations or words of disgust will breed deterrence. That is a feat that only burning Tupolevs and dead airmen can accomplish.
Ukraine has not just the ability, but the will to make that happen. It is disgraceful - it is shameful - that we do not.
“The Nazis entered this war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everyone else, and nobody was going to bomb them. At Rotterdam, London, Warsaw, and half a hundred other places, they put their rather naive theory into operation. They sowed the wind, and now they are going to reap the whirlwind.”
— Marshal of the Royal Air Force Sir Arthur “Bomber” Harris