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War is a bad thing.
Unless you think of it in the twisted terms of ‘a special military operation,’ designed to de-Nazify and liberate Russians suffering under the repressive regime of an open democracy like that of Ukraine, and disarm reckless Ukrainians who apparently don’t know how to handle arms.
And help restore Russia to its former glory in the process.
Then it’s not so bad.
But, as the world is witnessing, it is turning out to be pretty bad.
Fighters on both sides are dying and being maimed.
Millions of Ukrainians have been displaced.
And the war may be just getting started.
No less an authority than William Tecumseh Sherman (1820–1891), who led a Union forces’ march to the sea in 1864, laying waste to Confederate land in Georgia in the process, purportedly opined: “War is hell.”
Civilians are unfortunate collateral damage in the conflict.
As horrible as it is to see images of Ukrainians killed with their hands tied behind their backs, raped, buried in mass graves (or not buried at all but rather left to rot by the roadside as roadkill), it is not surprising.
The line between what is permitted in war — deemed acceptable — and war crimes becomes blurred.
