Editor:
A current article in the New York times reads that ‘The coffins are already coming’ home to Russia as a result of its war with Ukraine where Russia is sending reported ill-trained and ill-equipped draftees to fight.
When will nations leaders and their armies ever stop pushing their draft-age men and women to the front lines of unnecessary and unpopular wars rather than avoid such conflicts by any and all other means as a rule and not the exception?
As winter closes in that region of the world there is ample examples in history to predict the amount of misery and suffering that lies ahead for both sides of the conflict regardless of any potential outcome of the fighting and expenditure of blood and treasure.
But the tumult, suffering, angst and misery is not confined to the combatants in this war it has spilled over international boundaries affecting not just the neighborhood of nations but the world as well when one stops to account for the interruption of food and raw materials produced by Ukraine and Russia who reportedly now turns to China and North Korea and Iran for weapons, munitions and pricey high tech instruments of destruction in response to the logistical support that the Ukrainian armed forces have been the beneficiaries of as the United Nations and NATO keep a wary eye on Russia’s most recent bellicose and belligerent threats to escalate the war that puts the whole world at risk.
And for what, another border dispute in another time and place, where nothing is ever settled again?
While stupid is as stupid does might be a tagline spoken by a fictional character in a fictional movie? In real life, the deadly consequences of the stupidity of this war doesn’t need to be explained in terms of Bonhoeffer’s theory of stupidity it is self-evident and on full display.
Stewart Resmer, Vietnam Veteran
