Putin's Turn in Line.

I gather the Russians are preparing war crimes prosecutions against Ukrainian soldiers. Well now, I doubt that anybody in the world apart from a certain type of Russian (hopefully in the minority) will see this as anything other than a weak and transparent deflection device, but the issue needs addressing nonetheless.

As I see it, the fact is this: abuse and murder of civilians and unarmed combatants is most certainly a crime as crime is universally understood, but it’s also a part of war and always has been. Look at Trajan’s column; look at the slaughter ordered by England’s Richard I during the Crusades; look at the firebombing of Dresden in 1945; look at the invasion of Iraq, and the conduct of wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan and just about everywhere else. War crimes happen in war.

Consequently, I’m now coming – albeit reluctantly – to the view that all current war crimes being prepared in relation to Ukraine should be dropped. Except one. The one action which I believe should be pursued with all zeal is the one against the master criminal, the fountainhead of criminality, the warmonger. And that’s Putin.

The population of Russia is currently given as 146,062,924, which means that there are 146,062,923 people who could get together and end the horror at a stroke by handing Putin over to lifelong incarceration and withdrawing all Russian forces from all parts of Ukraine. And then the suffering could stop, humanity could breathe easier, the power and grain could flow again, and the Russian people could rejoin the world community which is what I presume most of them want.

But don’t think I’m being naïve here because I’m not. I know it won’t happen because I know Russia is divided between those the world wants to embrace and those it doesn’t. Such is the human condition everywhere (even in little Myanmar where the wages of dissent are death.) The fact is that simple, sensible, humanitarian solutions never hold sway when the pursuit of power and the predominance of ego are at stake. Putin is just the latest example of that curse.

And I wish I didn’t feel moved to write stuff like this. I want to write about fun and friendship and all the finer qualities which material existence has to offer. But it isn’t easy, which is one reason for my becoming more reclusive. I’m too old and fatigued to make much difference now. Maybe next time.