Ukraine War

I Don’t Think I’m A Pacifist Anymore

Molotov cocktail, anyone?

I don’t think I’m the only person fantasizing about heaving a few Molotov cocktails at Russian tanks.

This is surprising on one hand because I’ve always considered myself something of a pacifist and I’ve disagreed with every war in my lifetime.

I never understood why so many Americans were hot to go to war after 9–11. We were not attacked by any particular country. The actual terrorists were mostly from Saudi Arabia. But did we attack Saudi Arabia? Hell no. We attacked Afghanistan, and then we made up a story and invaded Iraq just because we wanted to. We spent trillions and achieved nothing and the whole thing disgusts me, because we could have spent that money on education or healthcare or green technology or cutting the national debt. We pissed away a fortune, killed God knows how many people, stirred up a hornet’s nest and are no safer.

So yeah, not a fan of war.

All right then, why did I devour this information written by fellow Medium writer Sam Westreich about making a good Molotov cocktail? What gives?

I’m enraged that Russian President Vladimir Putin has made up a ridiculous story to justify invading a sovereign nation. And I’ve had to do some soul searching to figure out why I’m so furious and so mad and so ready to take up arms.

It’s been said that Americans care more about Ukraine than about any of the other nations at war in recent years because the people of Ukraine are white Westerners. And I don’t think we can completely ignore that. It’s important to say that the death of a child in Ukraine is no more or less tragic than the death of a child in Syria or anywhere else. But there’s another reason it’s so painful to read about these deaths.

Whenever someone dies, we are reminded that we will die someday, too. We like to think it will be a peaceful death at the age of 101, surrounded by loving family members. When someone our own age dies, we like to immediately rationalize that such a death would not happen to us. That person was doomed because he was a smoker or ate lots of processed foods or had a propensity to engage in some unsafe activity. That person’s death certainly doesn’t mean we’re at risk.

Many years ago, the high school in my community had a rash of teen deaths so terrible that it made national news. I was working as the city editor of the newspaper at the time, and I don’t know how many times I walked into the newsroom and was told, “It happened again.” I vividly remember attending my daughter’s swim meet after one of the girls on her swim team died in a crash and hearing some young people behind me talking about that accident and about a subsequent one. They talked and talked until they’d established to their own satisfaction that what had happened to the other young people could not possibly happen to them. They were not in any danger. They could once again soothe themselves into believing in a hypothetical death at age 101.

As an American, I feel sad about the deaths of people in the developing world, in refugee camps and warzones. But I’ve always taken comfort in knowing my children and grandchildren would never lack clean water or food and are very unlikely to be killed by violence — other than possibly in a school shooting, which is a legit terror.

The people dying in Ukraine, however, had every reason to feel just as safe in their homes as I do. They worked the same kinds of office jobs and drove similar vehicles and lived in similar housing. Their daily lives were in most respects not very different from those of an American. It is today all too easy to imagine ourselves in their places.

My basement is a gross old unfinished space where we do laundry and store lots of crap we should throw away. Once in a while there’s a tornado warning and we have to get ourselves and our dogs down there, and it’s unpleasant, but we’re usually only down there for half an hour or so. I can’t imagine having to stay there day and night for fear of bombs, being terrified to run upstairs to get bottled water and crackers and blankets. Would we have to empty a container and improvise a toilet? We are not set up for this. I bet most of the people of Ukraine were not, either … because, again, until less than a month ago they were living lives very much like ours.

We Americans really do like to feel invulnerable. Like those kids at the swim meet, we can tell ourselves stories about how much safer we are than other people. We have the biggest military budget in the world! Nothing can happen to us.

But it can. Putin has plenty of nukes, which could reach the continental U.S. in half an hour. He is a ruthless man who does not care about humanity. Did we not learn from the pandemic that life can change quickly and dramatically in ways we never imagined possible? Unthinkable things happen to people all the time. Sometimes it’s something like 9–11 that affects many and sometimes it’s someone you love dying in a car crash and just their family and friends are affected. At such times, we’re reminded of our mortality and it takes us a little while to learn to live with that uncomfortable knowledge again.

And speaking of uncomfortable knowledge, here is a truth written by someone who had more reason than almost anyone else to understand evil. Elie Wiesel was a Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize winner who wrote Night.

“We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men or women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must — at that moment — become the center of the universe.” (As quoted by Time.)

I’m taking sides. Are you?

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