THE GUNS OF AUGUST is a masterful tome by Barbara Tuchman, exploring how civilized Europeans,  in 1914, blundered into World War I. The key moment in that disastrous descent into vast destruction, was when German Kaiser Wilhelm II gave the Austro-Hungarian Empire, carte blanche to attack Serbia. Joe Biden has just given President Zelensky of Ukraine, permission to use American weapons on, not just Ukrainian soil to defend Ukraine, but  use in attacking Russian forces, on Russian soil. French President Macron has strongly suggested that NATO should send its soldiers, to fight Russian forces on Ukrainian soil. The German government has given notice that it intends to increase the readiness of 900,000 reservists, in case of an European War. The Guns of June, 2024. The Russians have a history of beginning wars with spectacular failures ;then they engage in a war of attrition, grinding out victory over military geniuses, such as Charles XII of Sweden, Napoleon I of France an...

   In 1962, Barbara Tuchman published the masterpiece, THE GUNS OF AUGUST; about how, in August, 1914, dumb leadership in Europe plunged Western Civilization into one of the dumbest wars in  History. WORLD WAR I, in which the civilized nations of Western Europe, the nations of Tolstoy and Chekhov, Nijinsky and Beethoven, Mozart and Bach, Schiller and Shakespeare, Goethe and Michelangelo, Moliere and Monet, Pasteur and Newton, Galileo and Lister  gave themselves up and over to a moronic war. What is a moronic war? It is a war fought not for Greed, nor Empire, nor Defense nor Expanse, nor Opium Trade, nor Land, nor Defining a Border, nor Irredentism, nor Revanchism, nor Ideology, nor Meanness, nor Independence, nor Religion, nor Genocide, nor to end Slavery, nor Revolution; a moronic war is a war fought for no reason, no good reason, no logical reason, no bad reason, no evil reason. It is a war fought only because decision making has been suspended, not just good ...