This commentary is by Ron Jacobs, a Winooski resident who is a writer and a longtime antiwar activist.
War is an appalling human activity. Wars rarely turn out the way those who plan them say they will. War kills, maims and otherwise destroys the lives of millions of human beings.
In my lifetime, there have been very few moments of peace in the world. Many of the wars I have observed were intentionally begun by the world’s most powerful nation — the United States. The target nation or nations were ones that opposed the designs that rich and powerful people in Washington had made for their land and the people living there.
When I was younger I lived in Peshawar, Pakistan, on a small U.S. military base. The base existed to spy on China and the Soviet Union. In the summer of 1965, a war broke out between India and Pakistan over the nation of Kashmir.
For those who don’t know, Kashmir is a region on the subcontinent that is claimed by both India and Pakistan. It is also the home of a longtime independence movement. On my 10th birthday, the Indian Air Force bombed military and civilian areas near the U.S. base where my family lived with a couple of hundred other US citizens.
The next day, U.S. troops dug deep, long trenches in the yards of the Americans, placed sheets of plywood over them and covered the plywood with dirt. These would be our bomb shelters. They also painted every window on base black and began enforcing a curfew that required us to turn off all electric lights at dusk.
For the next week, the bombers came every night. We spent most nights in the trenches in our backyards. Antiaircraft guns fired all around us and we heard the bombs whistle as they fell, then explode. It was both scary and adventuresome.
After a week of bombing, the Pentagon evacuated the women and children from the base. After an overland journey to Kabul, Afghanistan, and then a flight on a C-130 outfitted for troop transport, we ended up living in military barracks in Karamursel, Turkey. We stayed there for three months. The nations supplying weapons to each side halted their shipments and a truce was negotiated at peace talks in Tashkent.
I tell this story because even that little brush with war convinced me war is a human endeavor that should never be applauded. Indeed, it should be avoided at all cost.
The invasion of Ukraine by Moscow is both tragic and wrong. Kyiv misread Moscow and trusted Washington. Washington considers Ukraine’s land and people expendable in its never-ending push for hegemony. Consequently, the people of Ukraine — especially those who are not oligarchs or politicians — are paying the highest price for Moscow’s aggression.
As economic sanctions take effect, Russian workers and farmers will also pay their own price. So will the rest of the world, as those sanctions ripple through the global economy.
Still, those who are calling for a no-fly zone and/or deeper involvement in the war by NATO should be ignored. The peace they seek can be found in Tacitus’ history of the Roman wars: “They make a desert and call it peace.”
