For all the people of Ukraine, young and old.
What I Say: I don't suppose in all my life before the past week that I ever spent a total of 15 minutes thinking about Ukraine. But since Putin sicced his troops on Ukraine, I've watched at least 50 hours of war coverage, maybe more. And I've spent many hours reading various op-eds and commentaries on the war, principally from U. S. and U. K. news sites. It's getting to be a bit much, a psychic overload, but one can hardly look away from this wrenching, history-making drama playing on all our screens in real time.
I know my truckbuddies don't need me to narrate a daily account of the war news, and perhaps my opinions about it are not really necessary in the grand scheme of things, either. I suppose mainly I'm just talking to myself, "thinking out loud," as it were, on this blog. It helps my mind to get things off my chest this way. M.P. from day one imposed a strict ban on talking about the war because it makes him too upset for words. (We have spoken briefly about a few headlines, but not for long.) So the Blue Truck is my outlet for things I just need to say to someone.
One thing I do want to say right now is that among the many commentaries I've read is a continuing strain of shifting the blame - this is all Biden's fault, or Johnson's fault, or the West's fault. One European columnist went on at length about how it's all Angela Merkel's fault for trying to keep open a "dialogue" with Putin for many years, instead of somehow "confronting" him.
In other words, it's everybody's' fault except Putin's.
Make no mistake, my friends: Putin is the sole and efficient cause of this war. He and no one else gave the orders for his armies to invade Ukraine, an independent state he had already taken bites out of before. He did not have to do it; nobody made him do it. He wanted to do it, and did do it entirely of his own evil will. This fact is so obvious as to need no explanation. Do not let anyone tell you different.
Putin is Hitler's evil son, a bloody murderer whose name will be accursed for all time to come as one of the greatest enemies of the human race. And don't call him crazy or mad - that's excusing him. A crazy person does not know the difference between right and wrong, and hence cannot be found guilty of any crime, including murder. Putin is not crazy; he is evil. This war was his free choice. He may well have numerous lackeys and lickspittles to use as tools to accomplish his schemes, but he is the autocrat ordering his troops into a peaceful nation's territory, he is the one responsible for around-the-clock shelling of homes and schools and hospitals and apartment buildings; he is the fiend-in-chief at the top, ultimately directing his soldiers to shoot women, children, and babies in cold blood, and then walk away, leaving the still-living wounded to die in agony.
Putin is a mass murderer, a remorseless bully on a colossal scale. Only force will stop him. But the West cannot use force against him without throwing all of Europe and North America into another world war. Must we destroy the free world in order to save it? Our hearts break for the brave, defiant Ukrainian people and their undaunted Zelensky, a champion of freedom for the ages - but we simply must not let our emotions run away with us. To expand Putin's war to a wider battleground would kill many more people, and perhaps not even save Ukraine. Cool heads and clear minds are needed now, no matter how our hearts ache.
I do not know how it will all end; but we must never forget who willed this horror into being. It's no good for armchair generals to say now, "Oh so-and-so should have done this or that or the other thing." No, nobody knew that Putin would do this horrible, unthinkable thing; not one of these pious, oh-so-smart pundits forecast the storm before it broke. Remember that.
The record will show that the democracies before this war, as before Hitler's war, did all that they could to keep the peace by reasonable means, by dialogue, by compromise, by friendly engagement and encouragement in the direction of peaceful relations. That was a good thing, the right thing to do. As one of my college professors said, talking about international relations, "As long as people are talking to each other, they aren't shooting at each other."
But there is no reasoning with the Devil.
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| Fake cover of Time magazine, by artist Patrick Mulder. Click to enlarge. |
Update, 3/6/22, 8 p.m.: President Zelensky in his nightly address to his people vehemently condemned the callous murders committed by the Russian invaders. Excerpt:
Today is Forgiveness Sunday. A day when we always apologized. To each other. To all people. To God. But today, it seems, many have not mentioned this day at all. Have not mentioned the obligatory words: "Forgive me." And the obligatory answer: "God forgives, and I forgive." These words seem to have lost their meaning today. At least in part.
But we will not forgive hundreds and hundreds of victims. Thousands and thousands of sufferings. And God will not forgive. Not today. Not tomorrow. Never. And instead of Forgiveness, there will be a Day of Judgment.
We will not forgive the destroyed houses. We will not forgive the missile that our air defence shot down over Okhmatdyt today. And more than five hundred other such missiles that hit our land. All over Ukraine, hit our people and children.
We will not forgive the shooting of unarmed people. Destruction of our infrastructure. We will not forgive. Hundreds and hundreds of victims. Thousands and thousands of sufferings. And God will not forgive. Not today. Not tomorrow. Never. And instead of Forgiveness, there will be a Day of Judgment. I’m sure of it.
We will not forgive. We will not forget. We will punish everyone who committed atrocities in this war on our land. We will find every bastard who shot at our cities, our people, who bombed our land, who launched rockets. There will be no quiet place on this earth for you. Except for the grave.Here is the speech, with English subtitles. His righteous anger is a powerful thing to hear.
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