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."
1 comment:
Yo Man, I'm a believer that life without war is impossible, so 'that's the way of the world' but it's not exactly as Earth Wind & Fire lays it down. The world can be civilized and yet function at times according to the rules of the jungle (to which the first rule is there are no rules). People are still of hearts (spirits) that could mean well on both sides of the battle line, but it may not take digging too deep to find the moral difference which causes the conflict...even war. Romance most certainly can be a distraction during wartime, that's why if circumstances allow some need R&R. Issues of war crimes and war criminals ultimately are judged by GOD, that's my take on that. I found the Nuremberg trials very interesting to see mankind holding man morally accountable. Who's really being victimized in this current conflict? I feel the influence of democracy & its leaders are more of a delusion & fickleness than an ideal form of government for people...choices! When it comes to imposing or manipulating national wills globally, some people ain't havin' it, but what naturally prevails is the principle of the place of agreement being the place of power. That don't always fly spiritually though.
Keep Bangin' Cuz!
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