Russia and Turkey just escalated their two-front war over which country will be the big dog in the Middle East. The two rivals have been at this game for a couple of centuries, but it just got a lot more serious this week when Russia introduced jet fighters into the Libyan civil war.

Coronavirus may have shut down Texas beauty parlors and Louisiana bars, stopped international travel and cleared streets across the globe, but hasn’t brought war to a halt. Rather, Russia and Turkey are in the midst of a multifront proxy escalation in both Libya and Syria.

Russians have long memories. They recall when Imperial Russia fought Ottoman Turkey in the bloody Crimean War. Ottoman Muslim forces fought Christian Tsarist troops on the Black Sea peninsula, where more fighters fell to the Asiatic cholera epidemic than on the battlefield.

Turkey won. Russia today, however, once again occupies Crimea. The 19th-century Crimean War was the crucible in which were forged Russo-Turkish antagonisms and their 21st-century imperial dreams. READ MORE

Vegas is surreal on any given day. A place of fake pharaonic pyramids, Imperial Roman palaces, Venetian canals, an Eiffel Tower.

Surreal.

In the middle of the Las Vegas Strip is the New York-New York hotel-casino complex, with a faux cityscape — a scaled-down skyline. In front of the Statue of Liberty, a faux harbor floats a replica of the New York Fire Department’s fire boat #2 that was spontaneously turned into a living monument to New York 9/11 firefighters.

First responders and citizens garlanded this model city with flowers, firefighter T-shirts, images of the fallen, loving notes. This makeshift 9/11 firefighter memorial told the world that we will never forget the bravery and sacrifice of the first responders who rushed through ash choked streets and into burning buildings to save our souls.

At this moment, we have a new set of heroes putting down their lives to save us from an invisible viral scourge: doctors and nurses. They are on the front lines fighting the coronavirus, intubating patients and working against all odds without sufficient protective gear and medical equipment.

Naturally, we voluntarily need to stave off the illness and protect our potential saviors — wash your hands!

We also need a way to honor these individuals for their bravery and sacrifice. It’s time to design and fund a meaningful monument to the nation’s medical practitioners. READ MORE

In fight for Libya, Russia and Turkey keep a 19th-century war on the front burner

Honor the heroes of the war against coronavirus with a national monument