However, there are others who are opposed to fighting the war for other reasons. Rod Dreher at The American Conservative writes on this today. He begins by reminding us that "Unpatriotic Conservatives" was also a line used to oppose those, like Pat Buchanan, who opposed the Iraq war. [There is a lot of cursing in this post, which normally we don't do at the Hall, but it's an emotional moment and topic.]
[T]he world is full of evil bastards, not all of whom can or should be fought by American soldiers. War is a great clarifier. As I type this, I’m thinking of the gentle kid from my summer baseball league in the 1970s, who grew up to be sent to Iraq with the Louisiana National Guard, and who came home traumatized and unable to set foot inside his family’s church, because he said God could never forgive him for what he did over there. To my knowledge, he has never told a soul what it was (I heard about it from his anguished wife....The people who need to hear it most are utterly incapable of listening. So I’m going to say it both to lay down a marker for the future (for when the talking heads puzzle over how things got to this disastrous point) and to encourage fellow conservatives who are thinking these thoughts, but are confused by them, because they’re new, and feel strange and even kind of dirty.To repeat myself: I am opposed to Russia’s actions in Ukraine. I think Russia should leave Ukraine alone, but whatever happens, I am adamantly against following the US leadership into hawkish actions against the Russians. It’s not at all because I support Russia or in any way approve of what it’s doing. (I hope Russian families and Russian soldiers stop to think about what exorbitant cost is extracted from them so that Putin can restore Greater Russia.) It’s rather that I am sick to the point of puking of these people — the American elites — sh*tting all over so many of us, yet expecting us to send our sons (and daughters) to fight its damn wars.
I would definitely not send my son to fight in a war that cannot be won. I might go myself, although Aquinas reminds us that wars are only justifiable if they have a hope of victory -- otherwise there is no potential good to balance against the certain evil that results from war. It may be, though, that Dreher and Reaboi and others he cites are correct about where our real struggles properly lie.
4 comments:
I have not known what to think, and so far can only settle on advocating the delivery of the "ammunition" Zelensky is asking for (broadly, any weapons or materiel), plus economic sanctions including the SWIFT system, plus rationalizing our energy policy, including federal O&G leases, cutting out the anti-carbon nonsense, approving pipelines, i.e. our own Keystone and the Israeli gas pipeline we helped crater. Anything we can do to starve Putin of O&G and other revenues will help, not to mention removing a temptation for either the U.S. or Europe to kowtow to Putin for fear of precipitating an energy crisis.
I did read an interesting suggestion at Instapundit, forwarded from a Russian immigrant to the U.S., to offer all Russian soldiers immediate European citizenship upon defection.
Much of the soldiers in the invading army are conscripts. My thought would be to repatriate all surrendering soldiers below the rank of NCO, after a hot meal and a good night's sleep, letting them keep sidearms (but not necessarily their rifles).
Eric Hines
I thought even the NCO’s were conscripts, who just went through Instant Sergeant School, meaning that a lot of responsibility falls on the junior officers.
Post a Comment