Good intentions are easily hobbled by inaction. There has always been a murky and muddied No Mans Land in every war where the evil and the righteous trade the moral high ground. This is not the case in Ukraine. Putin’s actions are evil–pure, unmitigated, unprovoked evil. To argue otherwise is to be complicit in cowardice. History will, no doubt, soon be the arbiter of this perpetration of the lion against the mouse. In the looming carpet bombing of a sovereign democracy by Russian forces, our trepidation outweighs our bravery. The phrase “brave Ukrainian soldier” will soon be etched on untold thousands of gravestones, alongside thousands of other headstones of woman, children, elderly and infirm–all of whom could not or would not leave their homes, cities, towns and villages.
All the while we wait to see if our sanctions have any teeth sharp enough to pierce the the thick fur of a savage beast run amok in a caged corner of a burning world. We wait to see if sanity overcomes the insane. We wait to see if our daunting weapons will ferret some unscathed pipeline to soldiers fiercely standing and defending the rubbled ground of their battered homeland. We wait, and secretly hope, the Ukrainians will see a light larger than the exploding bombs, missiles and tank shells utterly destroying their land and quietly capitulate and save what they can. Are they too blinded by patriotism to sense the inevitable genocide unleashed upon them? Are they really ready to sacrifice their children, mothers, fathers in a stubborn will of defiance?
They are. We are not.
We are afraid of Putin. We are literally shaking in the comforts of our fine homes, schools and communities at the very sight of his myopic visage on the screen. He is a crazed psychopath with a finger on a nuclear arsenal, so we rattle our feeble sabers and dangle whatever carrot we can find. The carnage in Ukraine is a distressing show, but there is no blood on our screens, no marrow spilled at our footsteps, and no conviction in our eulogies for the innocents killed in a land so far away. We wait for the next chapter to be written for us, not by us. I count myself among this enfeebled slice of humanity, and it shames me. It shames me that I simply want this war to end. It shames me that my only palpable response is this stream of righteous drivel. It shames me to sit in this chair and sip my coffee and contemplate raking the yard. My cowardice bleats softly: “I just don’t want and cannot fathom a World War III. Please stop.”
But it is World War III, and we are about to lose the first battle.
