Tucked in amid the coverage of the invasion of Ukraine is the question of whether Russia is committing war crimes.
You think?
What part of Mad Vlad’s three-week-old assault on his “brother Slavs” isn’t a war crime? What part of any military aggression isn’t a crime against humanity?
Watching the carnage in Ukraine has me thinking it might be time to broaden the definition of war crimes. According to standard formulations, the unprovoked invasion of another country is not a war crime. Ordering uniformed young men and women to shoot at other uniformed young men and women is not a war crime. Destroying property, as long as it isn’t a residence, a hospital, a church or a school, isn’t a war crime.
Insanity.
Definitions of war crimes seem to hark back to an age when wars were regarded as group duels, essentially, governed by a set of rules and rituals that fooled young men into believing they were embarking on a noble, gentlemanly, heroic and glorious adventure.
That’s what the old guys who moved game pieces around on a flat map with a little stick wanted their recruits to believe.
The reality – the blood, the screams of the wounded, the stench of death — is far grimmer, as General Eisenhower acknowledged: “I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.”
Here’s what Muhammad Ali said when he refused to go to Vietnam to “drop bombs and bullets” on people who had done him no harm:
“Shoot them for what? How can I shoot them poor people? Just take me to jail.”
How I wish Russia’s soldiers would ask the same questions and lay down their arms. Or that members of Putin’s inner circle, aware, surely, that hurting Ukraine is also hurting Russia, would pry Putin’s fingers from the levers of power.
In the meantime, we’re getting to see for ourselves, more than ever before, how destructive, disruptive and indiscriminate war really is. Maybe because I’m old, because I have grandchildren, because I’ve been in the train stations of Kyiv and Lviv, the images of old folks, kids and moms camping in these places, or trying to board the trains that will take them to safety in Eastern Europe, or hiking to the border, fill me with impotent rage.
Isn’t any infliction of suffering by an invader a war crime in itself?
Maj. Claude Eatherly knew the answer to that question. Eatherly flew the weather plane that reported good bombing weather over Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945. More than 100,000 civilians died in the blast and aftermath. Nine days later, after a second bomb exploded over Nagasaki, Japan surrendered.
A hero’s welcome awaited Eatherly and the other pilots and crewmen in his squadron. He wanted no part of it. For the rest of his life he was tormented by guilt over his role in the bombing.
Believing he deserved to be punished, Eatherly robbed a post office and was disappointed when a judge declined to send him to prison. Eventually, he became an anti-nuke activist, and asked the people of Hiroshima to forgive him.
I mention Eatherly’s story because my friend and neighbor, the indefatigable Mary Gage, has written a play about him that is going to be performed in State College at the end of this month. (Local theater goers might recall seeing Gage’s play “My Name Is Pablo Picasso” in 2011.)
Gage heard Eatherly’s story in 2018 and wrote “Fallout” in part to express her dismay at the way congressional Democrats and Republicans come together only when it’s time to vote on the latest gargantuan defense spending bill, which they routinely pass after minimal debate.
Production of “Fallout” was twice postponed because of COVID. Now, the playwright says, with Putin rattling his nuclear sabers in response to NATO interference with his plans to absorb Ukraine, a play reminding us that we still live with the threat of nuclear annihilation is even more timely.
“Fallout” is being directed by local theater stalwart and Webster’s owner Elaine Meder-Wilgus. Performances are at 2:30 and 7:30 on March 30-31 at The State Theatre. Tickets are $15 for students, $28 for everyone else.
Maj. Eatherly knew that if he had declined to fly the weather plane that day, he would have been punished and someone else would have taken his place. That doesn’t entirely let him off the moral hook, but the real blame for Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 and for Ukraine now, doesn’t lie with the U.S. airmen or the Russian soldiers, but with their commanders.
I love seeing old ladies wag their fingers in the faces of Russian soldiers and tell them they ought to be ashamed. They ought to be. But I also feel sorry for the poor saps — though not nearly as sorry as I feel for the men, women and children of Ukraine.
