War Crimes

Dear fellow Americans:

Do yourself a favor and go to the nearest city.

I'd suggest a place with a lot of towers, a mix of apartments and condos, a decent mix of residential housing and business places. If you're like me living in Florida, downtown Orlando would be an appropriate place, maybe Ft. Lauderdale along all those beach condos.

Take some time and just sit there, in the middle of the day, a busy day, maybe a Saturday with some planned activity taking place like a street fair or a party.

Take some time and look at all the people, the families, the crowds, the bustling humanity that makes up our communities, our cities, our states, our nation.

Once you've taken that all in, take another minute or two to picture that entire scene around you turned into a hellish warscape.

Think about what it would be like to have Putin's Russian armies roll up in their tanks and artillery and rocket launchers. Think about all the shelling and missiles blasting into the condo towers and the office spaces full of people. Think about the families on the streets around you, fleeing for shelter that they can't find because the debris is everywhere and there's no safe places left.

Think about a month of that hell, running out of food by the first week, fresh water all gone due to busted water pipes, sewage backing up, no electricity, no heat for the cold nights no air for the hot smoke-filled days.

Think about what it would be like living in an occupied city, even in the suburbs where all the homes and grocery stores are. About Russian checkpoints every other street intersection, where the troops can pull you to one side and shoot you if you're on their blacklists, or worse, if they just want to make an example out of you.

Think about what's happening to Ukrainian women getting targeted for rapes. Think about the children huddling in bombed-out buildings without any parents to watch over them or find food and water, all because the parents died first from starvation. Think about the sick and the aged who couldn't flee in time and are suffering to death because hospitals were targeted under Russia's inhumane refusal to respect such places as safe zones.

We can't comprehend just how hellish a world it could be, all safe and cozy here in the United States, so far away from war zones like Syria or Yemen or Libya or hell half of Africa... and now Ukraine.

And yet, war zones they are. The cities in Ukraine may not compare by population to the likes of Orlando or Chicago or San Antonio or Seattle, they were centers of life, large communities of families who never asked for their homes to be bombed out and never asked for their loved ones killed.

And as we get into one full month of Putin's bloody decision to launch a full invasion of Ukraine, we are starting to get reports of how violent and vile the Russian invaders are handling their victims. Adam L. Silverman's oft-updated reports at Balloon Juice provides links to all these other documenting the atrocities:

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Maria Genkin:
Pictures of some villages freed in Kyiv region, specifically Bucha, are devastating. Dead people lying outside of their houses, in what can only have been a “zachistka” - systemic execution of the men of each house. One body in front of every house. pic.twitter.com/6dQmp849tc

— Stanislav Aseyev (@AseyevStanislav) April 2, 2022

Silverman provides a definition of "zachistka":

The word “zachistka”, which literally means to sweep, is the term applied to Russian cleansing operations...

The zachistka embodied more than a military practice, however. It was a mind-set. And this was exemplified in the proliferation of the word itself. In the same way that the term ethnic cleansing (etnicko ciscenje’) was coined in the former Yugoslavia in the early 1990s, the term zachistka found a distinct voice in the Russian popular vocabulary and in the official addresses and speeches of military and government personnel. By late 1999, the use of zachistka in the press and everyday speech had reached an infectious and alarming level. From September 1999 to 2005, zachistka appeared 787 times in the headlines of Moscow’s central newspapers in relation to the second war in Chechnya...

This is what Putin wanted. Ownership of Ukraine, and a cleansing of any Ukrainian who interfered with his dreams of a great Russian empire.

Everything Putin and his armies are doing in Ukraine are honest-to-God war crimes.

Can we Americans think of anything - outside of issuing our own declaration of war, of sending our armies in Ukraine to fight back - to force Putin to stop?

There still haven't been enough economic sanctions, for one. Putin/Russia is still making money off of oil/gas agreements, something the West ought to consider shutting down to take a serious hit at Putin's own wallet.

The international courts are investigating Putin's decisions and his army's actions as war crimes, but as Russia hasn't agreed to many of the treaties that define those courts, Putin would laugh at any attempts to bring him accountable before a court.

To hell with Putin. I would argue to go ahead and file those charges. Put that albatross around Putin's neck. Make Putin in the eyes of the law the war criminal his actions already condemn him as. 

He might laugh it off but the rest of the world - the nations that adhere to the reality that wars are crimes - won't.

Make Putin a global pariah. Make it impossible for him to travel abroad for fear of getting arrested even in a nation he believes is an ally, make him paranoid enough to understand the rest of the world hates him enough to ignore any diplomatic protections he hopes to deploy.

Make it easier for every nation - even China - to ignore any diplomatic offers, any trade deals, any demands that Putin might insist of them.

Force Putin to hide in a fallout shelter for the rest of his miserable life, terrified of his own generals and political lackeys who might turn on him, no matter how cowed and boot-licking they may seem.

Putin and his handlers may try to twist the narrative, gaslight their Russian citizens that it's all Western propaganda, EU envy of their greatness, and assaults on Russian purity. But they won't convince enough of the Russians who are at heart desirous for world peace, and they'll lose more people over time whose BS detectors will get tired of the lies.

People are dying in Ukraine. Families are getting wiped out, entire cities destroyed. All for one man's criminal ego.

Putin has to answer for the crimes he's committed. Sooner or later, that must happen for the sake of our own nation's safety and future.