Try to imagine walking across a big field with rough ground and tall grass and all the types of biting insects that today we purchase repellent spray for. You are barefoot, and you haven't bathed in weeks. For the past three days, you’ve been marching with a heavy pack on your back and a 10-pound rifle on your shoulder. It’s very hot and humid, and the sunlight is making the sky so shiny it almost hurts.
Suddenly, a burst of air pulses uncomfortably through you and the ground shudders and your ears are filled with a deafening dull thud of cannon fire. Before you can absorb what is happening, five of your fellow soldiers literally explode into several parts along with rocks and grass and dirt. To the left is a severed leg with a huge bloody bone protruding, the disgustingly dirty bare foot is the only recognizable feature to help you decipher what it is. To the right is a friend of yours who has been completely cut in half, both halves shaking furiously, blood gurgling and spurting out of his mouth.
Then another blast, and another, and another, and another, and another. Someone yells “take cover!!” as loud as they can but before they can shout it again they vanish into a cloud of smoke and a rush of powerful wind that is filled with mud.
You run in any direction, and see others rushing toward a grove of trees, so you sprint as fast as you can while holding your rifle with a death grip. While running, you slip on a sharp rock and cut open the sole of your foot, but you keep moving because you feel death and its cold icy grip shivering up your spine as fiery hot iron balls are exploding all around you over and over and over again.
The bursts of air continue, and your hearing is lost from the thunderous noise, but you somehow manage to reach the trees.
You hide and duck desperately into the dirt behind a big oak and cover your head with your hands, almost burying your face into the ground.
Your entire body trembles as the shooting continues all around you.
Shouting. Screaming. Men calling for medics. Men calling for their mothers. Men praying to god to help them or save them, or just take them.
Then it stops.
The shouting persists for some time, but the shooting dissipates almost as quickly as it started. You peer up, cautiously, and then slowly stand.
The field that you were walking through moments ago is littered with dozens of mangled bodies. You see a dying horse screaming in sick horror as it tries desperately to crawl to safety; both its back legs have been blown off and its dead rider is strapped into the saddle that has slid to the side of the doomed animal, his head bobbing lifelessly to each excruciating motion of his blood-soaked steed.
You feel moisture in your groin and look down at your legs to find that you’ve pissed yourself.
Parts of the field are on fire; all of it is blanketed in acrid smoke that is both bitter and metallic — the pungent smell of spent gun smoke, hot iron from cannons and boiled blood, and fresh feces from the wounded and dead who no longer have any control of their bowels.
Another man then rushes up to you, snot and blood stuck on his bushy mustache. He tells you to get back into formation and make sure your gun is primed and ready to shoot. You do as you’re told.
Welcome to the American Civil War.
War is horrible
The statement “war is hell” is a gross understatement — hell must be better than war. The scene I just described is what war actually is like, and has always been like for as long as war has been a thing.
Despite that, there is a strong tendency to glamorize it, venerate it, and treat it like it is the ultimate heroism. We sanitize war to protect and validate the experiences of those who have survived it.
This is wrong.
In America, we are taught that veterans are the reason we have freedom.
When we see an active duty soldier, we say “thank you for your service” and buy them a drink.
In schools we are taught that the men who fought for the North in the civil war fought for the most honorable cause of all; free the slaves.
Hollywood treats WWII like it was America's greatest gift. Every single movie makes the soldiers look strong and heroic, and on a quest to do something greater than themselves. WWII especially is considered to be the greatest of them all, the great war against good and evil…
Well, it’s all bullshit.
War is always bad, and the Ukraine war is no better.
The American Civil War could have and should have been avoided. The North was just as much to blame for instigating it as the South was for devouring misinformation and choosing to believe their pastors and preachers over newspapers.
WWI was a horror show that had basically no legitimate cause, and no legitimate end, except that people didn’t want to keep being butchered and tortured.
WWII also could have and should have been avoided, but power-hungry madmen were allowed to lead certain nations, while inept imbeciles led others.
But the truth about all of these wars is that they were caused by misinformation and wild conspiracy theories.
Ukraine is no different.
What’s Next
I am in the process of writing a novel about this topic. A fiction. It’s a book that focuses on the American Civil War and describes the horrors of lawlessness. I focus on the horrible things that happened to children, the elderly, and people who escaped one prison just to find themselves in a worse one.
My purpose in writing it is to portray war as a terrible awful and dishonorable thing that must be cast into the worst wastebins of history.
Every war should be remembered as a mistake.
Ukraine is no different.
All war is bad.
I'm trying to get rid of books before I move and was just flipping through William Vollmann's "Rising Up and Rising Down: Some Thoughts on Violence, Freedom, and Urgent Means." He developed a moral calculus for when violence is justified, it's very interesting. I can't say I know the answer; I wonder all the time when a lesser violence is justified to prevent a greater violence. In any case, I agree that war is an abomination that should never be glorified.