March 18, 2022
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the raging conflict are infuriatingly bursting the world’s eardrums. But what the true reason for the fury should be is not exactly what is. While it should be that humans are being dislocated, maimed and killed, it’s over who is to blame and who is not.
Surely, this is a demonstration of the despicable depths to which our collective morality has sunk.
What kind have we become that the lives of others no longer matter to us, as long as our own are secure? Why should we be taken up by the reasoning, if not the futile exercise of it, over who is at fault and who is not, instead of being sickened by the suffering and loss of innocent lives?
Here we are, still in the grip of the Covid-19 pandemic that nearly put paid to life as we know it, yet all some people can think of is whose head they are supposed to blast out of existence!
Which, as an aside, reminds one, if they are Rwandan, of the silly conduct of the Kinani government before 1994. As the liberation struggle neared its peak, the government targeted part of its innocent citizenry for extermination, instead of squarely facing its problems; the problems forming the bone of contention with the liberators. Evidently, the government ended up the loser.
This example may be misplaced in time and space, scale and source but the situation is in a way similarly simplistic. You know your adversary, why skirt them and turn innocents into quarry?
It’s not for us to go into the history of the agreements between the NATO states and Russia over the Baltic states but we all must contend that a man’s word should be their bond. In this case, that if the NATO states agreed to the Warsaw Pact even as Russia no longer had the muscle to rope the Baltic states around it, that should have held as it should, for all persons of honour.
NATO states had no right to go for the gates of the Kremlin. But if the NATO states did, then they were the Kremlin’s adversary. Go for your adversary, not any innocent state in between. If any leader of these states goes rogue and opts for NATO membership, he alone should face your wrath.
That, therefore, does not give the Kremlin license to target innocent Ukrainians for slaughter. It should be condemned in the strongest terms by all who care for the sanctity of human life.
If it’s true that Volodymyr Zelenskyy has abandoned his cravings for NATO membership, let’s just hope that the guns will now go silent. NATO leaders also need to stop bandying around “war criminal” tags because who should cast the first stone? Down the long lane of history, methinks the die would seem to favour the East, in that regard!
But we didn’t come here to re-echo the tired palavers of media houses and their handpicked pseudo-analysts. We came to make a pitch for world peace. What on this beautiful and abundantly generous Mother-Nature-given earth can halt all these unnecessarily destructive wars?
When will these little earthlings realise they are here but momentarily and that they, therefore, need to work hand in hand and leave this earth better for posterity? That they need peace, not war?
We’ve talked about the Covid-19 pandemic that can easily turn round and make us history. We have global crises that keep coming back to haunt us after every short reprieve.
Then we have the most gargantuan of all the problems whose most arduous task of containing should be consuming all our time: climate change. These and a big bundle more are enough to show us the futility of our hopeless infightings. If it’s for self-liberation, yes, it’s understandable.
Otherwise, with our advanced technology, we are capable of destroying all weapons of this earth. Small arms, big guns, bombs, artillery, missiles, nuclear weapons, whatever, get rid of them.
Indeed, as someone has said (without taking sides), the United Nations should be shifted and placed in a relatively arms-free Africa – which hardly makes any weapons, being mostly a consumer. Then this UN, give it teeth (alas, from funders!) and the powers to destroy all arms-manufacturing industries. Be they US, Russian, German, French, Chinese, British, all.
Our truly all-encompassing UN without the biased Security Council and its malicious veto powers can work miracles for this, our tortured earth. After destroying arms-manufacturing industries, it can confiscate all arms sales earnings for a year: way over US $50 billion. Then go for the jugular: confiscate all defence budgets for all countries: much in excess of US $2,000 trillion.
With all the funds and the advantages of advanced technology, we can rid the world of abject poverty; hunger, disease, inequity, the like. In short, we can rid the world of all forms of injustice. We’ll say bye to pollution and improve biodiversity to halt the adversity of climate change.
For the terrorists who thrive on terror, more is the pity. Well, may they enjoy their fist-fights, head-butts and mule-kicks!
