Thug Army.
War is brutality wrapped in honor. Each effort of existential or nation-saving heroism is stained by an image of a young girl running from Napalm, or a hooded man in a military prison, connected by wires, balancing on a wooden box.
The Red Army has had a troubled history. Despite being considered a legitimate military force, they savaged Poland and brutalized the women of Germany, to the apocryphal Stalin quote of “All is permitted.”
Now, we have the Russian army: the one that fought in Chechnya and Syria.
While the US winds down in the Middle East, and grouses about Edward Snowden and Julian Assange, the Russians have been waging war.
Does this mean they have the right to define the rules as they see fit, no matter how barbaric their actions? When the rules are never followed, who are we to say that rules exist?
It’s all a matter of proportion. If either side fails to kill enough individual civilians or execute enough prisoners of war, then we all agree that virtue prevailed.
This allows us to massacre hundreds of thousands through mechanized means, or excuse a “few” extrajudicial civilian killings.
However, when the pendulum of individual carnage swings the other way, we scream that the perpetrators are barbarians.
With this in mind, what do we make of the Russian Army in the Ukraine?
Psychologists will tell you of the madness of war, and the effects on the minds of individual soldiers.
Behaviorists will explain the pressures of group behavior and the chain of command.
Emotions, which run high in any war, are exponential in guerrilla warfare and urban battle. That woman carrying water, that child in the shadows: “Did they not just shoot Vasily? Was not Vasily my closest friend? Do I expose myself to further threat and try to manage the logistics of capturing them…or do I just shoot them?”
For centuries, soldiers have been feared because they kill people. They take things and they destroy, all in the name of their given purpose.
Modern armies, especially Western armies, are supposedly beyond that, but are they truly?
What does Russia tell us?
As opposed to the West, East and Near East, who kill untold thousands through the sale of arms and technology to proxies, they prefer to kill people up close and personal.
No dispassionate drones for the Syrians: They get carpet bombing.
No negotiated settlements for the Chechans: They get their apartments razed.
No mercy for the citizens of Bucha: They get a bullet to the skull.
You have to ask why the facade of honor has fallen so quickly in this latest war.
Perhaps it’s because this war was never honorable, but that fails to excuse the current level of overt brutality—unless that is now the current definition.
A definition, should it persist, for which we all must pay.
Illustration by Paul Antoniades
