National Perspective: Challenge lies in ending, not starting, wars

If Winston Churchill were here — and some of us saw him, or his latest incarnation, this month, addressing the U.S. Congress on the plight of his beleaguered and besieged country — he would not know whether the conflict in Ukraine is only beginning, or is nearing its end, or merely is at the end of its beginning. But as always, the world knows more about how wars begin than how they end.

This particular war began with an attack that was not like Pearl Harbor, a sneak attack that truly has lived in infamy. It was well broadcast in advance, a bit like the American attacks in Iraq in 1991 and 2003 — and watch how Vladimir Putin will defend his invasion as clear analogues, which they plainly were not.