Can’t Men Give It A Break?

W.J. Astore

Can’t men give it a break? That’s what my wife asked me this morning. She was talking about the Russia-Ukraine war, and she has a point. Whether in the USA, Russia, or Ukraine, you get a lot of men posing as tough, cheering on the war while putting on their big boy pants. Joe Biden appears to relish denouncing Putin as a “war criminal” who’s committing “genocide.” Western media has seemingly fallen in love with Zelensky, a political novice, a former actor and comedian, who’s now being lionized as a hero and statesman, mentioned in the same breath as Winston Churchill. For his part, Putin’s hardline stance and his pursuit of war seems to be winning him more support among the Russian people. War is good for all these men — until it isn’t.

As my wife said this AM, what about the impact of war on animals? The environment? We know that war kills people, often enough innocents caught in the crossfire and shellfire. But what about the impact of all these weapons on the flora and fauna, the environment around us, the soil and the water, the very air that we breathe?

Especially in military circles, it’s very easy to talk about war in the abstract, about ships and tanks and planes, about no-fly zones and cauldrons and moving units around on a map. Far tougher it is to see war in all its enormity, in all its chaos, in all its destructiveness. What’s it all for? What justifies the destruction of Ukraine, or any other country for that matter? What is the point of it all?

A solution to this war seems readily at hand. Ukraine should agree to being a neutral country that won’t join NATO. Eastern areas of Ukraine that are predominately Russian could be autonomous states. Russia should remove all troops and help in the rebuilding of Ukraine. Instead of sending billions in weaponry, the U.S. should send billions in aid to help rebuild Ukraine after hostilities cease.

End the war. End the killing. Be real men.

End the war. End the killing. Be real men. (Photo by ANGELA WEISS,ALEXEY DRUZHININ,VALENTYN OGIRENKO/AFP via Getty Images)

16 thoughts on “Can’t Men Give It A Break?”

  1. Bill, it appears that there might be one woman who is against ending the war and the killing. She is currently serving as Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs for the USA. Posing as tough, cheering on the war and regime change, while putting on her boy pants.

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    1. It turns my stomach to watch Nora, a beautiful talking head, using her momentarily “serious” voice to tell us of pumping up the killing. This feeding of weaponry is a standard thing for the big powers, send in the stuff and be well away from the results. The Russians and Chinese did it to the US in Vietnam. Then we did it when the Russians were in Afghanistan. Now we are at it again. Looking back, nothing to show for it as far as the countries where the wars were fought except death and destruction. Vietnam is a unified communist country and Afghanistan is run by the Taliban. However, a significant amount of money was made.

      A technical thought on the Javelin. The missile is no small object and must weigh quite a bit. Clearly one man could not field the weapon with more than one round on him and hauling around several would be a challenge even for several men. The launcher is bulky as well. Surely a supply of these missiles would require a vehicle that would not be easy to hide. It appears to be a “one shot and run” thing.

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  3. American Foreign Policy right there. Fight fire with fire, or until the Morons 90% percent of them anyways learn how to deal in a more civilized way…”Lawyers, Guns & Money” What more do you need in American Society circa. 2022?

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    1. Good ideas, but Putin’s actions have given the Pentagon (and related industries) whole new potential markets for their weapons of mass destruction.

      They’re not going to want to miss out on a whole series of mega pay-days, and if Biden insisted they did, would they even listen?

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  4. You realize Dave that there may come a day when the American taxpayer cannot afford any more mega pay days for the Pentagon. Due to the years of Soviet military buildup at the expense of domestic development, and complex systemic problems in the economy, Soviet output stagnated, and the Soviet Union went bankrupt. The same path the US is currently on.

    “The demise of the American empire will be no more regretted than the demise of the Soviet empire.”
    Chalmers Johnson

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    1. Ther American taxpayer hasn’t paid for those mega paydays at the Pentagon since the Forever War got launched on September 14, 2001, the day the AUMF was passed and the so-called “Global” so-called “War On” so-called “Terrorism” [GWOT] got launched. How much has America’s national, sovereign Debt increased over the last 22 years?

      And the US government has much more actual, real Wealth at its disposal than the USSR ever had. But if the time comes, the US government will not fail to treat its taxpayers and citizens as the old USSR did. On that i think we all can rely.

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    2. Don’t forget the huge difference between the US and any other country…we can print all the money we want since the dollar is the international unit of exchange and is the standard by which other currencies are valued, ever since Nixon took the dollar off the gold standard. The Saudi ocean of oil can only be sold for dollars. There will have to be a move to another currency by the world in order to dethrone us financially and there are indications of a move toward that.

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  5. Excellent suggested solution, WJA! It’s simple and humanitarian, with no real major concessions required of any country, other than Ukraine couldn’t join NATO, which is where they were before anyway. All the horrible casualties of war would end. The US, NATO, Ukraine, & Russia would save money NOT spent on short-life’s armaments but spending it on reconstruction and re-homing of the refugees. The only major problem I can see is that it’s probably culturally impossible in this current environment, especially with both sides now heavily ‘invested’ in this war, and the primary instigator (ie; the US) actually satisfied with the state of affairs, in spite of their theatrics and faux outrage. Plus there’s some 40+ years of militarism in the US that’s not going to be overcome by logical, humanitarian reasoning unfortunately — if that was the case, we wouldn’t even be discussing this since it never would’ve occurred.

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  7. Why in the world, Colonel, would anybody who COULD end that War want to do that?

    What would Biden, Putin, and Xi possibly gain? A Nobel Peace Prize like Begin and Sadat got in 1978 [and Carter belatedly in 2002]? Well, we see how that all turned out, don’t we?

    If either Putin or Xi determined that they could gain what they want by ending that War, it would end tomorrow. And until that happens, the only thing that i can even imagine that Biden would gain by ending the War is the eternal enmity of his owners, operators, and script writers in the MICC and all the other component elements of our so-called “Deep State.”

    This War is the best thing to happen to those MICC folks and their cohorts ~ and particularly the Secrecy-Surveillance-Security Panopticon [SSSP] ~ since September 11 and the start of America’s “Forever War.”

    And i am sure that the vast majority of Americans ~ dealing as they are with inflation approaching the hyper- type, with a new variant of COVID emerging, with food shortages and supply point choke points increasing, with the nation’s infrastructures further disintegrating in the face of long-term neglect coupled with cultural foment, social unrest, weather- and climate-related disasters, and with the openly obvious failures of America’s Ruling Political Class [RPC] to do anything about any of this ~ the vast majority of Americans have much more pressing matters on their minds.

    i’m sure that most Americans have long forgotten last August’s repeat of Americans getting choppered off their Embassy rooftop in Kabul; or how our OPERATION IRAQI LIBERATION [OIL; later less blatantly rechristened “OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM” or OIF] ended with Iraq and Syria in complete and total chaos. Just the latest in “the greatest military on Earth’s” 76-year losing streak since the end of “The Good War” way back when.

    And as long as taxes don’t go up to pay for America’s War against Russia in Ukraine ~ and there’s no Draft ~ the RPC has nothing to worry about from the American people. After all, it’s just another Credit Card War and we have that “All Volunteer Force.” At least for now.

    Having said all that, i would say that it is safe to say that all that is lacking at this point is another 9/11 Event, and Oceania will have its Big Brother to go along with Eurasia’s Putin and Eastasia’s Xi. And that would not be hard to make happen at all. As was amply demonstrated by the First 9/11 Event.

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  8. Thanks, we do need to end this, but apparently the US doesn’t want to or Zelensky would have ended it weeks ago. Now the US has NATO bringing ships into the Baltic sea to play war games to build up “trust” (LOL) between NATO countries So it’s pretty clear that the US has no intention of ending this. Our government is playing a dangerous game, inching toward WWIII and nuclear war. I hope you’ll have something strong to say about that (please).

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  9. Ranney, here is what Professor John Mearsheimer thinks about this.
    He has been right predicting all the events in the conflict so far. I hope he is wrong here for our sake.

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