War Kills Civilians (Duh)!

The media, in these days of early April, 2022, are filled with horrific images broadcast from devastated cities in Ukraine--entire communities bombarded, occupied, pillaged and, finally, abandoned by Russian troops.

Yes, let us direct our anger (this time) against Russia and the Russian soldiers who committed such gruesome killings of civilians in Ukraine. But in our outrage, let us never forget that the REAL enemy is war itself—war which has so long preoccupied our species’ collective thinking that all major countries devote entire universities to its study—as an academic discipline—a science!

War is the enemy! War, which in its irrationality, “excuses” and legitimizes atrocities by releasing angry, bitter, fearful, zealous, stupid human beings from the legal and moral restraints imposed by reason and ideals of brotherhood.

War “crimes” are certainly not new. In Delacroix’s painting below, we see Catholic Christian crusaders nonchalantly slaughtering Orthodox Christian civilians during the Sack of Constantinople (Fourth Crusade, 1204.) It was a three-day bloodbath, for which, to be fair, in 2004, Pope John Paul II voiced a tepid apology—800 years after the event. In return, the Pope’s “cordiality” was then tepidly acknowledged by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, who opined with typical religious hokum that “the spirit of reconciliation is stronger than hatred.” One must be very patient, of course, mustn’t one?

Obviously, my pessimistic whataboutism in no way absolves the Russians in Ukraine (or the Germans in Poland, or the French in Algeria, or the Americans in Vietnam). As Dorothy Parker observed (about heterosexuality), the frequency of a phenomenon does not make it “normal”—merely common. But the undisputedly “common” appeal of wartime lawlessness certainly lends a sad perspective to the tendency of humans—of ALL humans, regardless of nationality or culture—to resort to “crimes against humanity” for resolving, ur, very “human” differences. 

So perhaps we should focus our anger and energy on the enormous (perhaps insurmountable) task of somehow eradicating war itself, not just from the policies of nation-states, but from ALL acceptable (and thinkable) “possibilities” available to ALL of human beings. I confess, I do not entertain much hope for the success of such an enterprise. But perhaps the commitment itself constitutes a sort of salvation, at least for individuals, if not for entire societies—hopeful evidence that our species, though instinctively inclined to hate, is in extremis capable of a measure of that high-minded transcendance we sometimes label “humanity.”