By Patrick F. Cannon

I am tired and sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have never fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry out for blood,  for vengeance for desolation. War is hell.

                                                William Tecumseh Sherman

Civil War general Sherman, who had personal experience in inflicting the horrors of war, is famous for this simple but true statement. His march to the sea in late 1864 from Atlanta to Savannah was meant not only to destroy crops that might have fed and sustained his Confederate enemy, but to make its citizens directly feel the pain of war; or as he put it, to “make Georgia howl.”. While international conventions might forbid making war on civilians, they have always suffered. While only estimates, approximately 15 million combatants died during World War II; and 45 million civilians.

            The United States and its allies were responsible for some of those deaths. After Hitler began the indiscriminate area bombing of London and other British cities in 1940, the British eventually abandoned the policy of bombing only industrial targets, and simply decided to bomb cities and “unhouse” its residents. While the US persisted in targeted bombing in Europe until nearly the end of the war, it had no compunction in targeting civilians in Japan, culminating in the atomic-bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which finally convinced Japan to end the war.

            With the release of director Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, the decision to use the atomic bombs against Japan is once again being questioned. Without going too deeply into the historical details, let me just say that based upon the Allies experience in fighting the Japanese, it’s perfectly understandable that President Truman chose to do so.

             So, based on the scale of civilian deaths in World War II, which the Soviet Union did more than their share of causing, I find it ironic that Vladimir Putin seems to be accusing Ukraine of war crimes for dropping a few bombs on Moscow and killing a handful of Russians. In his mind, invading a neighbor who used to be part of the former Soviet Union and targeting civilian and cultural targets – and killing more than 9,000 non-combatants so far – is a fair tit for tat for the few dozen Russians who may have been killed by Ukrainian attacks. 

            Of course, Russians have a long history of killing Ukrainians. The forced agricultural collectivization of the 1930s under Stalin killed approximately 4 million Ukrainians by starvation and outright murder. Then in 1941, the Germans invaded and killed another 4 million, including a million Jews, fully 25 percent of the population. So, “war is hell” has true meaning for Putin’s victims.

            Compared to this suffering, the number if Confederate deaths due to Sherman’s march pales. It is estimated that the total civilian deaths in the South during the Civil War was about 50,000, mostly from starvation or disease, although the shelling of cities like Atlanta surely killed some civilians. 

             By the way, many of the folks down yonder call it “The Second War of Independence.” I recall many years ago being told by two southern belles that I should visit a cyclorama in Atlanta portraying the Battle of Atlanta. As they described it, tears come to their eyes. I took a pass. I didn’t shed any tears when they recently decided to rename three Army posts where I had spent some time, all named for traitorous Confederate generals – Benning, Gordon and Hood. 

            But, back to Putin. He was born in 1952, several years after the “Great Patriotic War,” which is what the Russians call World War II. He grew up during the heyday of the Soviet Union, when it was one of the two great world powers. Then, as a KGB officer, he saw it all come tumbling down. To him, Ukraine belongs in a new Soviet Union he’s trying to recreate. Like Stalin before him, human life has no meaning if it stands in the way of his ambitions.   

            No wonder Donald Trump admires him. No pesky legislature or courts to rein him in. Only his neighbors who used to be part of that lamented USSR, and will do anything to avoid being forced back in. Even Sweden has come to its senses. Sweden, which managed to maintain its neutrality even in the face of Hitler!   

Copyright 2023, Patrick F. Cannon