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From: kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: Pearls Before Swine: Uncle Is Not Good With Money
Date: 15 Jan 2025 14:42:52 -0000
Organization: Former users of Netcom shell (1989-2000)
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Lynn McGuire  <lynnmcguire5@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>Go watch the new Napoleon movie.  Towards the end of his career, 
>Napoleon takes 650,000 French and German troops to Russia, intent on 
>taking Moscow.  When he gets to Moscow, no one is there and it is 
>torched while they are in it.
>    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_invasion_of_Russia

Everything else aside, is the movie good?  I have seen Abel Gance's movie
and read Tolstoy's discussion from the other side.

>My point is that the Russians have been willing to go to extreme lengths 
>to fight off invaders.  And at this point, they consider Ukraine to be a 
>extended part of Russia.

This is absolutely correct, but it doesn't change what the right thing 
to do is.  And because it's absolutely correct, it means any capitulation
now is just going to kick the can down the road a bit, which the Ukranians
know perfectly well.  Because the Russian attitude won't change.

I don't think kicking the can down the road is a ever a good strategy,
although it sort of worked for the Germans at the "end" of WWI.  Kind of.

Dealing with monarchies is a weird thing, because it comes down entirely
to figuring out what the monarch is thinking, which isn't always what he
is saying either domestically or to the foreign press.  Whatever happened
to Kremlinologists and Sovietologists anyway?
--scott
-- 
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."