World War III Watch: It could still happen if people get stupid

It was only a couple of days ago that the democratic West was buoyed by Ukraine’s deep strikes into Russia. From The Washington Post:

Ukraine’s drones disrupt Russia with airport closures, internet blackouts

As Ukrainian drones strike deep into Russian territory, they are disrupting day-to-day life and reminding Russians that the war is not confined to the trenches.

by Mary Ilyushina | Memorial Day, May 26, 2025

Large-scale Ukrainian drone attacks have rattled multiple Russian regions for the third consecutive day, grounding flights, disrupting internet access and stretching the country’s air defense systems thin.

Russian officials claimed more than 700 drones were intercepted within the past 72 hours, nearly 100 of them near the capital. The attacks, while far less destructive than Russia’s missile barrages on Ukrainian cities, still demonstrate Ukraine’s evolving use of this low-cost, high-impact technology.

The Ukrainian drones are striking deep into Russian territory, and although the damage is limited, they are disrupting day-to-day life in a jarring reminder to Russians far from the front lines that the war is not confined to the trenches.

Ukraine’s drone attacks on Russia, though disruptive to Russian civilians, still pale in comparison Russia’s constant attacks on Ukrainian civilian areas, both in terms of the type of weaponry, the level of destruction and the number of civilian casualties. From late Friday to early Saturday, Russia attacked Ukraine with 250 drones and 14 ballistic missiles, including some made in North Korean, injuring eight and sparking six fires in different districts of Kyiv, according to Ukrainian authorities.

But there’s a real problem outside of Russia and Ukraine:

NATO Scrambles Fighter Jets After Long-Range Russian Missile Strikes

Memorial Day, May 26, 2025 | 5:24 AM EDT

NATO fighter jets were scrambled near Poland’s eastern border on Monday as Ukraine was struck by a Russian missile and drone attack.

Poland’s Armed Forces said that Polish and allied aircraft had taken off amid “renewed activity of the Russian Federation’s long-range aviation carrying out missile strikes on facilities located in the territory of Ukraine.” . . . .

Throughout Russia’s war in Ukraine, Poland has regularly accused Moscow of carrying out provocative acts along NATO’s eastern flank. Warsaw’s military has also claimed Russian cruise missiles have entered its airspace.

“All necessary procedures to ensure the safety of Polish airspace have been activated,” the Polish military said in a statement on X, formerly known as Twitter.

“The Operational Command of the Polish Armed Forces is monitoring the current situation, with subordinate forces and resources remaining in full readiness for an immediate response.”

The jets were scrambled after Moscow launched a large-scale missile and drone attack on Ukraine for the second night in a row.

Russia’s military forces launched 355 attack drones and nine cruise missiles, the Ukrainian air force said Monday.

There’s more at the original.

Ukraine is not a member of NATO, so Russian attacks there do not require the “attack on one is an attack on all” provision of the North Atlantic Treaty. But what happens if one of those Russian missiles or drones misses Ukraine, and strikes inside Poland, which is part of NATO? The Poles are already keeping their military on alert and scrambling jet fighters when they detect the ordinance coming their way, “with subordinate forces and resources remaining in full readiness for an immediate response.”

I can’t speak for anyone else, but I’m not willing to go to war with Russia, with nuclear-armed Russia, just because an off-target missile blasts a crater in a nice, green pasture in Poland. Fortunately, we have a President who’s actually able to take that 3:00 AM phone call, and who is very uninterested in war. But, on the unfortunate side, we have some posturing tough guys leading the United Kingdom and France, and stupidity can always happen. World War I started due to just such posturing tough guys, tough guys who had no flaming idea what they were doing and what Hell they would unleash, when it didn’t need to happen in the first place.

I would like to think that a cratered pasture, or even a blast in a Polish border town, would not lead to war with Russia, but I’ve only small confidence that things would turn out that way.

Memorial Day is a time when we are supposed to be reflecting upon the sacrifices made by the 1.2 million American soldiers killed in all of our wars. We do not need to be adding to that number.
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So many who want to “Free Palestine” are willing to shoot unarmed Jews

I have said it before: if we had social media back in 1944, the Usual Suspects wopuld have been decrying the violence and whining that Germany was defeated, that there was no need to continue the march into Germany proper, and think of all of the poor, innocent civilians who would be killed! Had such people been around then, they wouldn’t have cared that their calls for a “Ceasefire Now!” would have left der Führer and his henchmen alive and in power, and a couple of the concentration camps in place, but still . . . .

This morning’s story is what piqued The Philadelphia Inquirer’s far-left columnist’s ire: Continue reading

Once again, Hahvahd is producing The Best and The Brightest!

Harvard University, our nation’s oldest and most prestigious institution of higher learning — though any college which accepted David Hogg and granted him a degree has to be suspect when the term “higher learning” is applied to it — is suing the Trump Administration over federal spending cuts to the school due to Hahvahd’s refusal to go along with measures to protect Jewish students and personnel from the anti-Semitism which has been running rampant through our (supposedly) top universities.

So, naturally the Usual Suspects decide to demonstrate their anti-Semitism! Continue reading

Requiescat in Pace, Pope Francis

My Twitter — I refuse to call it š• — feed was full of chortling posts claiming that the Vatican denied Vice President J D Vance a meeting with Pope Francis, sending the Vatican’s second-ranking official instead, in what the left loudly proclaimed was a deliberate snub to Mr Vance.

That’s not quite what it was.

The story behind JD Vance’s unlikely visit with Pope Francis

Vance and Francis had publicly disagreed in recent months on immigration policies and other aspects of church teaching.

Continue reading

#Hamas and the #Palestinians have told us who they are; why are so few people willing to believe them?

Imagine, if you will, that there were ubiquitous iPhones and the internet, and social media in 1944. The scenes, which Joseph Goebbels would be doubtlessly pushing across the West, of German families shattered by the deaths in collapsed houses due to Allied bombing, of orphaned children rescued from the rubble, where they had been buried next to their dead parents.

Were today’s American and European left alive in 1944, but with today’s mentality, we would be seeing all sorts of plaintiff cries on Quitter — the 1944 version of Twitter — saying that Germany was clearly defeated, that the Allied armies were at the Rhine and the Oder-Neisse and the Third Reich had been expelled from all of the territory it had captured in the war, and we should declare a ceasefire, leaving everything in place, to stop the killing, to stop the unnecessary deaths.

That, of course, would have left Adolf Hitler and his henchmen alive, and the concentration camps that were in Germany proper operating. All of the actual extermination camps were located in occupied Poland, to keep them secret from German civilians, but the fanatical Führer and his equally insane Schutzstaffel would have adapted camps like Bergen-Belsen in Germany for more mass killings. Continue reading

World War III Watch: Can one of the chest-thumping neocons tell me how they intend to actually win the wars they are pushing?

Elwood P Dowd is one of the liberal commenters on my good friend William Teach’s The Pirate’s Cove. The distinguished Mr Dowd is a Democrat and true hater of President Trump, and every so often, he gets me rolling in my response. He wrote:

If Trump abandons Ukraine to Putin, the Baltics are likely to be at risk. Do you believe King Donald would risk anything to help NATO defend Latvia? LOL.

Kind of a throwaway ending to a longer comment on a completely different subject, but that was the part to which I had to respond.

In 1939, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the Republic of France gave an unconditional guarantee to Poland that they would defend the Poles’ independence. Two days after the Nazis invaded, the UK and France declared war on Germany, but not a single British or French soldier, sailor, airman, or Marine ever fought in Poland to defend the country from the Third Reich! If der Führer hadn’t been stupid and invaded the USSR, it’s quite possible that the Nazis would still be in control of Poland, and all of Europe. Continue reading

World War III Watch: Comment rescue: Patterico’s Pontifications

The tactic was well used by the late Senator Joe McCarthy, to let everyone know that if you disagreed with him, you were a Communist.

I participated in the Weekend Open Thread on Patterico’s Pontifications, knowing in advance that if my comments were published, I’d be running into a buzz saw of opposition. The host, Los Angeles County prosecutor Patrick Frey, a conservative who has mostly withdrawn from the blog, leaving it up to a much nicer and better-looking Dana than me, is nevertheless a dedicated #NeverTrumper, as are the majority of commenters, a majority of whom also wholeheartedly support helping Ukraine in its war against Russian invaders. The commenters there are mostly well-educated, and many are lawyers, but it’s clear that many — certainly not all — view opposition to the kind of aid provided by former President Joe Biden is wholly unappreciated. Continue reading

World War III Watch: Why can’t those who want to continue the war in Ukraine ever propose a way for Ukraine to actually win?

There are times I worry that I am sounding like a broken record on the subject of Ukraine, but, checking Bluesky Monday morning — I check Bluesky so you don’t have to — I saw this skeet from The Philadelphia Inquirer’s furthest leftward columnist, Will Bunch, promoting neoconservative columnist Trudy Rubin’s latest:

After three years of war in Ukraine, a Trump-backed ā€˜Russian peace’ would spell disaster

Leaders who still believe in democracy — not only Europeans, but also Japan and South Korea — must ensure that Putin cannot destroy Ukraine.

by Trudy Rubin | Monday, February 24, 2025 | 6:00 AM EST

BERLIN — Today, on the third anniversary of Vladimir Putin’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, it is clear who should win the 2025 Nobel Peace prize.

I do not know if Mrs Rubin or an editor wrote that headline, but the war in Ukraine is already a disaster. Continue reading

Will any of the pro-#Hamas demonstrators rethink their positions following the brutal murders of Kfir and Ariel Bibas? My guess is that few will. We told them what the 'Palestinians' were like, but they wouldn't believe us

The Islamists know that hostages have value. From President Reagan trading arms for hostages held by Hezbollah in Lebanon, to the exchange of 1,027 ‘Palestinian’ terrorists — including Yahya Sinwar — for one captured Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit in October of 2011, the Islamic militants have realized that a few civilized Westerners have an outsized value to Western civilization and the democracies. On October 7, 2023, Hamas and their fellow travelers killed 1199 innocent Israelis, raping many of the women before killing them, and burned some of the victims alive. They seized 251 people to be held as hostages, including some children.

One would think that, if the ‘Palestinians’ had any brains, they’d have realized that live hostages should carry more value than dead ones, but realistically, no one ever accused the ‘Palestinians’ of being smart.

‘Unspeakably evil’: Kfir, Ariel Bibas were brutally murdered in Gaza captivity, not by IAF strike

Continue reading