Category Archives: War Commentary

History, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, War Commentary

Ukraine’s Deadly Gamble

66 Comments

A history you won’t read much of anywhere else.

There should be hearings on this when the Republicans take back Congress.

[Update a few minutes later]

Broken link fixed, sorry.

[Update a while later]

Kyiv is holding out, and Putin is furious.

I’ll bet he is. He believed his own propaganda about Ukraine, and Ukrainians.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Putin’s failure.

[Update later afternoon]

An assessment of the current situation. The Ukrainians have surprised everyone, and for Putin the surprise is quite unpleasant.

Business, History, Political Commentary, Space, Space History, Space Science, Technology and Society, War Commentary

Ukraine And Space

32 Comments

Thoughts on the implications of the invasion, from Bob Zimmerman.

[Friday-morning update]

The repercussions of this for the space industry could be broad and unforeseeable.

It was always a mistake to make ourselves so reliable on Russian/Ukrainian hardware.

[Afternoon update]

Ukrainian invasions have affected our own space policies in the past.

As Jeff notes, if the Russians pull out of ISS, their human spaceflight program wouldn’t have much to do.

[Mid-afternoon update]

Yet.

[Saturday-morning update]

Eric Berger runs through the potential implications for space.

Business, Economics, History, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, War Commentary

The Ukraine Debacle

28 Comments

…showcases Joe Biden’s failures.

[Thursday-afternoon update]

The Ukraine invasion was the result of a quarter century of appeasement.

[Update a couple minutes later]

From June through last month, I had been working with a bunch of young Ukrainians in Kiev (men and women). I suspect that some of them have enlisted. And the Russians are protesting the war in Moscow and St. Petersburg.

General, Humor, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Social Commentary, Space, War Commentary

P.J. O’Rourke

9 Comments

RIP. He will be missed.

Little-known fact: He was a big fan of space. He was on the board of The Space Foundation. He never used email, but I sent some stuff to him once via his wife, and he wrote a nice letter thanking me.

[Update late afternoon]

John Podhoretz remembers him.

[Update Wednesday morning]

This kind of thing is why he was a national treasure.

[Monday update]

Matt Labash remembers him, as does Jonathan Last.

[Bumped]