Seeing Through Fog of War  

                  This is our blog, but today we give you Mona Charen,                      columnist, journalist, commentator: 

   "Imagine that Russian President Vladimir Putin had used different tactics. Imagine that Putin had just been a little less nakedly aggressive; if he had worked to undermine democracy and dismantle the post-Cold War architecture with a bit more subtlety; if he had stuck with the tactics he employed in Georgia and Crimea and in American and European elections; he and Russia would not now be the international pariahs they have become. 

   "The fact is that Putin has done more than enough over the past two decades to earn the hostility and suspicion of free people. He has murdered his political opponents. He has crushed the free press. He committed war crimes against Chechnya, targeting civilians in Grozny and causing the deaths of up to 50,000. 

   "He invaded Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014, annexing Crimea. He sided with Bashar al-Assad in Syria, bombing civilian targets including hospitals in Aleppo and facilitating the use of chemical weapons. And through subterfuge, he sowed division in Europe, the United States and around the globe, supporting extremists of the left and the right and undermining confidence in elections. 

   "You can do all that and more and get away with it. What you cannot do is roll tanks into another country. That, apparently, is the sort of act that finally reminds people of good and evil in this world. 

   "Ukrainians deserve our gratitude. Their heroism in the face of this brutal attack has shocked people into hard-headed realism. Putin did the one thing that no one can misinterpret or explain away. No more illusions. Aggressors are real. Freedom is worth defending." 

Continued tomorrow: Her answer to two problems in plain sight