There is a video out there showing a Ukrainian drone slamming into a Russian high rise – and it does evoke memories of 9/11…and everyone is jumping on the Ukrainians for doing it, whether deliberately or accidentally. I am very much “meh” about it. Russia started this war without any justifiable cause. And this incident has been tossed into the War Crimes pile…that is where everyone involved in a conflict accuses the other of being war criminals.
And that is why I have dispensed with the whole concept of war crimes: there is just no point in it.
To this day, there is still argument going on about what the Germans did in Belgium during World War One – both in the immediate invasion of August, 1914 and throughout the war. That Germans did rape, murder and loot from Day One on is not in dispute…but there are still people trying to argue that this or that particular incident didn’t happen or was itself justified. It is all such a drivel argument – the war crime, if such exists, was the German invasion. The Germans had no cause to attack Belgium – a small, weak and entirely inoffensive nation which would never have dreamed of challenging German power. If not a single Belgian had been killed, it still would have been a crime. So, people trying to twist themselves into knots saying, “well, when this village was burned and inhabitants massacred, it might well have been in response to a Belgian taking a pot-shot with the farm’s shotgun”. As if that mattered – there wasn’t supposed to be a German to take a pot-shot at.
This is why I’m only interested in who fires the first shot or who sets conditions upon which firing must commence. That is, who started it? After that, all wrong is the fault of the person who started it – nothing the aggressor does can possibly make it better or worse, and nothing the victim does in response is wrong. You open fire, you take your chances…and as far as I’m concerned, if you’re the aggressor and end up losing, count yourself lucky if every last one of you isn’t killed by the victor. What any nation should do in war – and especially my nation – is based entirely upon expediency…what will bring us victory the quickest and at least cost? This is moral because the faster you end a war the less costly it is going to be – and the force used to end a war is always morally proportionate to need, proof being that it ended the war (lots of theological people try to tie themselves in knots over this as part of the Just War Doctrine…mostly so they can hate on the USA for using atomic bombs…but the bottom line is that as long as the force is proportionate to needs, it is legitimate…and that means whatever force you can bring is legitimate).
Sure, I’d prefer a world where there were fully established rules for war and everyone tried to adhere to them. But it isn’t going to happen. It can’t happen when, in modern times, the combatants don’t even agree on what is right and wrong. That’s the real failure of all the peace and arms-control treaties…they have words on them and the contracting parties don’t even agree on the meanings of words. Back when it was two deeply Christian powers in conflict you could make rules…because both sides were working off the same ultimate rule book. But between, say, Catholic me and Communist enemy, where is there any meeting of mind? When I say “justice” is means just about the opposite of what the Communist means. I can’t make a deal with him – can’t have agreed upon rules of conflict. I can only, when pressed to it, fight him with every available means lest he kill me and all I hold dear.
Just my two cents on that particular modern debate. Fight if you want. You’d better win if you decide to fight. If you decide to fight and lose, I don’t care what happens to you.
Blogs For Victory 
Although I spent 24 years in the Navy and Naval Reserve, I’ve never been to war. I enlisted in 1965 and served during the entirety of the Vietnam War in which two of my best friends lost their lives, but I never saw combat myself. I don’t feel like I missed anything, and I don’t feel like my friends died for some noble cause. When I visited the “Wall” in 2010, I found both of their names, and then sat down on the grass and wept uncontrollably for several minutes. What a waste!
When I was about 20 I dated a Green Beret. He would catch random military flights out of Fort Bragg to come see me in Denver, and often bring his best friend with him. They were happy just hanging out with me and my family, sometimes sleeping on the sofas in our living room, and he would talk to me about the future he saw for us when the war was over. When he just disappeared I knew the worst, and when I was finally able to track down what had happened, though I never knew any details, it was clear that both of them had died in the same firefight. And my reaction was the same as yours.
My best friend in high school was engaged to a Marine corpsman, who was killed carrying a wounded man away from battle.
As awful as that war was, the descendants of those who suffered, on both sides, have for the most part put it behind them. A few years ago a cousin married a girl from Viet Nam, and he is welcomed by her family. When I compare that to the carefully nourished resentment of slavery here in the United States I am saddened by the loss these people impose on themselves by isolating themselves in history, which cannot be changed but merely accepted.
I am sometimes moved to tears when I think about those who go to war and don’t come back. And then we see our leaders so entirely incompetent and they seem to not care if some of ours die…just burns me up. War is an inexorable human thing…but we seem to treat it like its trivial and if we just raise a monument we’ve done all we can do.
War is hell even when you know what you’re doing. War with a DEI military is a whole different kind of hell,
OT, but funny:
I just got the most recent issue of Hillsdale College’s Imprimis, in the mail yesterday. It’s worth sharing as we (hopefully) turn the corner on the path that America is on.
We can’t know the future but I do believe we just proved that America is still alive. Still huge problems. The Left still very much wants to kill it. Youth is very much propagandized…but the hopeful part here is that the youngsters, a lot of them, seem to be instinctively rejecting the lies…much, I think, like eastern Europe’s youth started to reject the lies in the last twenty years of the Cold War…the lies were all they really knew, but they could also see through them as they became ever more ridiculous. I have hope!
From the linked article:
In 1930, government consumed twelve percent of the gross domestic product of the nation. That was about how it had been from the beginning. Today, government handles a little over 50 percent of the nation’s wealth. This is a gigantic transfer of resources from the private to the public sector, which defies the meaning of a free society.
Of course, there is some slight-of-hand going on here. The author switches from the government’s consumption of the GDP to the government “handling” a percentage of the nation’s wealth, whatever that means. Dishonest.
whatever that means. ? Quibblers gotta quibble, but this is a little much. No dishonesty here. And it’s “sleight” of hand.
worth visiting more Sherman.
“War is cruelty. There is no use trying to reform it.The crueler it is, the sooner it will be over.”
“Humanize war? That is like trying to humanize hell!” – Jackie Fisher.
I have to hand it to B4V … while the country is just now learning about the Cloward-Piven strategy, we here have been discussing that for years … 20 years in fact. There truly is an awakening in America and I for one, could not be happier. On that note, I wish everyone a very Merry Christmas. It’s always a pleasure discussing current events with y’all and I look forward to more in 2025.
https://x.com/creasonjana/status/1871185845379580083?s=61
I wonder if there are any other forums where a handful of people have conversed with each other for as long as we have. I have always enjoyed the give and take, and, while we don’t always agree on the minutiae, we do agree that the end goal is that America be free, prosperous, and at peace, and governed by the rule of law that treats everyone equally.
I agree. We have been together since W was running for the presidency. Others have dropped in and out, some have dropped in and been kicked out, but the core has remained and you are right, Cluster, we have talked a lot about things few people knew about, that are now coming to the forefront of public discourse.