Hypocrisy Run Amok

American sanctions against Saddam Hussein caused the deaths of over 100,000 Iraqi children. When asked by ABC's Barbara Walters if it was worth it, then-Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright - on national TV - paused for a moment, and said, "That is a tough question, but, yes, it was worth it to protect...blah, blah, blah...the American people...blah, blah, blah...from Saddam Hussein...blah, blah..." 

I was astounded. Albright not only acknowledged that it happened, which is extraordinary, but she said: "it was worth it." One hundred thousand children sacrificed to secure an ideology. Sounds like something Stalin would have done. Yet, this happened in America, by Americans, on the eve of the 21st century. 

Then last week, on Fox's "The Five," co-host, Geraldo Rivera, called Russia's President Putin "a beast" whose shelling has caused the deaths of 105 Ukrainian children. Fellow co-host, Jesse Watters, lamented how these "civilized people" were being murdered, (as though the uncivilized people of Iraq and Afghanistan were simply collateral damage.) I suspect to Rivera, Korea who, thanks to US sanctions, die as we speak, do not matter much, either. I just wonder: Do we Americans has a national conscience, besides the fake one, I mean, that tells us how compassionate we are. 

Last month, President Biden decreed that of the seven billion dollars of Afghan funds the US holds, he will give 3.5 billion to 911 survivors - the same survivors whom we have already lavished millions upon since that tragic day 20 years ago. Biden, too, must consider the Afghan people "uncivilized" and therefore unworthy of what belongs to them, and what they so desperately need.  

America's hypocrisy runs amok. Do we not see ourselves? Are we not still a Christian nation? Do not believe God is watching? Do we care? 

King James

Lebron James, who is recently averaging close to 40 points a game, declares he is having "the time of his life." His team, on the other hand - the Los Angeles Lakers - are getting their doors blown off most every night. They are currently 11 games under .500. I wonder if his teammates are having as much fun as he. Lebron seems to have taken the tact, "Hey, I'm winning my match-ups every night. They're the ones losing." 

Something has changed with Lebron. He was "old school" - of the fraternity of Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, and Kobe Bryant. There, losing is hateful. That's all. Suddenly, Lebron finds a way to factor losing into a good night?  

Hands Down, Play Ball

Defense wins games; offense sells tickets. This might have presented a conundrum, except NBA teams, and the league, itself, work from separate paradigms. Teams want to win games. They will be happy winning a game 50-49. The league, on the other hand, wants shoot-outs. It doesn't care who wins. When offenses are spectacular, ratings rise; the league wins. And, the league has made this decision: Hands down, play ball.

The NBA will not admit it, but it discourages defense. (Why do you think they let players "step" all over the place?) Contesting shots only slow the game down. And teams - certainly players - are willing falling in line. Think about it: They accumulate most of their fouls on the defensive side of the ball. Play too much defense, like Giannis Antetokounmpo did the other night, and you end up fouling out, which severely limits your offensive output. Just ain't worth it. Besides, adulation, pay checks, post season honors, are all infinitely more impacted by offensive production, than what is done at the other end of the court. 

Lebron James know what time it is. Once a stellar defender, he now saves his 37-year-old legs for the offensive end of the court. He doesn't win many games, these days, but as he, himself, says, he is having a damned good time.  

 

More Weapons, More Weapons...More Blood

There is no romance in war. Romance is for the movies, and literature books. War is bloodshed and death. Yet, Americans want to romanticize the Ukraine debacle, and pretend that the glorious Ukrainian people have reaffirmed our faith in the human spirit. They have not. The nature of most biologies, when cornered, is to fight back. Putin has done the reaffirming. He has reaffirmed man's inhumanity. 

Ukraine made a mistake when it lined up and fought the Russians. There was a middle ground they could have chosen, one that would have admitted humility, but would have spared their families and their cities the devastation they now will be left with. What a tremendous waste. 

Now, we want to label Putin a "war criminal." Of course, Putin is a war criminal for his unprovoked attack on a sovereign nation. So, too, are John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon war criminals - that trio who led an unprovoked invasion of an agrarian society, and slaughtered a million Vietnamese people. George W. Bush is a war criminal. He launched an unprovoked attack upon the Iraqi people under the guise of ridding the world of "weapons of mass destruction." Finding none, he killed 100,000 Iraqis in the ensuing conflict. Then, there is Obama, Trump, and Biden who continued Bush's "war of choice," killing countless men, women, and children because we were there.  

How soon we forget, though it was only months ago when Biden slaughtered a family of eight with a drone strike on his way out of Afghanistan. Who will adjudicate Putin's crimes - the International Criminal Court, the same people who looked the other way when America committed similar crimes, and worse? 

Putin is Putin. He is a relic of the Soviet past. He cannot help himself. What is our excuse? Let us look in the mirror and see the modern war criminal: It is us who cry for "more weapons" to feed the Ukraine, who cry for "more blood" to be spilled. It is the media, the politicians, the average American citizen who lionize those "brave Ukrainians" who fight and kill and die; they who blow up their own bridges (until their own refugees cannot get away); they who watch as the future of their nation - those precious, precious babies - flee a gutted country, while we cheer them on. We stop to commisserate over the  carnage, then cry for more weapons to create more carnage in the name of twisted romance. 

We supposed-civilized people are the war criminals who wisdom has forsaken us, whose imagination has shrunken to a primordial cry for "more weapons, more blood."

Make Sense of Today by Looking Through History's Prism

In support of their independence from Russia, Ukrainians assert their "own history" prior to once being a part of Greater Russia. To that, I say, almost every state on Earth had its own histories before being incorporated into the nations they belong to today. Germany, Japan, Italy - each started out as collections of geographical regions, like the city-states of Athens, Ithaca, Sparta, etc., who clung to their singular identities until they combined to become the Greece we know today.

In the United States, Texas can legitimately claim to have had its own history before becoming part of this great nation; so can every other state in this union. Once each state became a part of the U.S., each of their singular histories became subservient to the history of the whole. 

Without defending Putin, I suggest that his obsession with Ukraine is similar to the obsession this nation had with Texas, Virginia, Tennessee, and the other states who quit the U.S. and formed the confederacy. It was a secession President Lincoln, and the states which elected him refused to recognize as legitimate. As a consequence of this secession, the Union pummelled the secessionist states, none so vigorously as the state of Virginia. 

In a lot of ways, Virginia was to the Confederacy what the Ukraine was to Russia. Its size, resources, and political importance made it critical to the visibility of the larger state. And, like the Ukraine, which bore the brunt of World War II, Virginia bore the brunt of America's Civil War. 

President Lincoln, himself, told General Sheridan to lay waste to Virginia's Shenandoah Valley, the breadbasket of the Confederacy, "until even a crow flying over, will have to carry his own provender." More battles were fought on Virginia soil during the Civil War than any other state in the Union. Likewise, the Ukraine became the central meeting place for the slaughter that became World War II. At the end of a single battle between the Germans and the Russians - the Battle for Kyiv - the Germans took 600,000 Russian soldiers prisoner and marched them to slave labor camps in Germany. Other great battles followed on Ukrainian soil - Kharkiv, Donetsk, Zhytomyr, and the bloody sieges of Odesa and Sevastopol. Russians bled a river defending the Ukraine from Hitler's Germany. 

Perhaps, Putin feels that Ukraine's place in Russian history is far more fundamental than any history Ukraine can muster on its own. This does not excuse his invasion of the Ukraine. It only gives it some perspective.