A Time for Weeping

 by Charlotte Hinger

The Hamas/Israel War has displaced all of my thoughts about this week's post. What a tragic event. There are so many possible repercussions that I can't bear to ponder any of them. 

Right now, my heart goes out to the victims of this war. 

Donis's post last week was superb. Titled "Where is  Cincinnatus?" she revives an old quote “Comes the hour, comes the man.” She lamented the state of our broken nation and added:

"The saying keeps running through my head and makes me wonder – where’s the (wo)man who can turn this mess around? Where’s our Cincinnatus, who was granted supreme power by the Roman Senate when the Republic was on the brink of disaster, then gave it up the instant the crisis was averted and retired to his plow."

Who indeed? I admire our president and was so happy to hear his unwavering support for Israel. Yet, I kept in mind the hatred toward Abraham Lincoln when he was thrust into a war that he desperately wanted to avoid. Not everyone is going to agree with our President's policy.

I think one of the hardest realizations for me when I became a historian was that there is no way to avoid war when another county is determined to do you in. Absolutely no way! 

I know the history of the Palestine/Israel conflict is complex and I really don't know a thing. Nevertheless, I cannot understand Arafat rejected a two-state solution in 2000.

Why are the citizens of so many nations paralyzed by leaders who court disaster?

 

Making the same mistakes, and new ones.

 Every war is a rehearsal for the next one.

For my post this month I was going to write about La Malinche and me. Maybe in March. Hopefully.

But with what's going on in Ukraine I feel that I have to share my thoughts. At least to relieve the pressure building in my head. What upset me most were those photos and videos of ordinary people caught in the middle of this catastrophe. I don't understand the sense of this ruin and conquest. Who will be better off? The defense contractors are cheering, perhaps.

For the last few months I've been following a YouTube channel about World War Two. Lately they've been discussing February 1943, the surrender of the German Sixth Army at Stalingrad and the Soviet offensive into Ukraine. What a tragic coincidence to the present moment. We're familiar with the black & white images of civilian refugees trudging along, fleeing with what little they could carry. Now we're seeing the latest incarnation, moms and children, dressed like they've shopped at Kohl's, dragging roller carry-ons stuffed with the last of their possessions. People lined up at ATMs withdrawing cash to grease the escape route. SUVs on fire. Uploading TikToks of the carnage. Vignettes of industrialized murder. It's truly disturbing to see so much mayhem and terror amid the trappings of modern life. The war-ravaged locations seem as if they're on the outskirts of the Denver metroplex. 

This brings a sense of déjà vu from my military service in Desert Storm. When we drove through Kuwait City, I had a hard time wrapping my mind around the contradiction of so much destruction against the backdrop of a contemporary suburban landscape.

Then again, such devastation has been raging for years in the Middle East, Africa, Myanmar, Afghanistan. Not too long ago, Sarajevo, the site of the Winter Olympics, was under siege and artillery bombardment. 

In response to the Ukraine invasion, there's been a lot of the expected political bloviating, meant more to placate constituents on this side of the battle line than to intimidate Putin. Recent promotional videos of NATO aren't very reassuring, stressing diversity and inclusion over combat prowess. Meanwhile in Kyiv, the government is handing out guns, not equity pamphlets. 

If you're at most a casual student of history, you know things can spin out of control very fast and in a very bad way. Every war begins with a grand miscalculation of events and a disregard for unintended consequences. For now, let's stay upbeat and expect that next month, my post will be about La Malinche.