#4: "Collect and Care for the Wounded, whether Friend or Foe"
- From the United States Marine Corps Common Skills Handbook, Core Principles of the Law of War
Early January, 2022
Grey clouds threaten to deliver a rare winter snow to my Western US mountain home. I hasten to relieve the springs of my old prius from their burden of medical supplies boxes- freshly donated by a local nonprofit partner. The collection of just-expired dressings, sutures, syringes, and IV sets are sure to save a few lives in West Africa over the coming year.
One by one, I lug the boxes in, adding them to the growing stack of supplies in the corner of my living room. Mission accomplished, I sprawl onto the couch to endulge my news-junkie compulsions. It's early January 2022. The US legal system continues to weigh in on vaccine mandates, and our societal pandemic response settles ever more firmly into dysfunction, setting the stage for future airborne disasters. But that's no surprise; the same thing happened after the Spanish Flu. As far as mainstream media goes, Trump has been tucked gratifyingly out of sight, as social media platforms and news outlets explore ways to navigate tech-revolution misinformation. Income-inequality fuels populism, while changing population dynamics fuel political extremism. All of these things together are making it feel a little bit like the 1920's and 30's. I turn on some Louis Armstrong and imagine I'm living in Huey Long's Louisiana.
Putin continues to insist that his military buildup along the borders of Ukraine is a mere exercise. Everyone else continues to do the convenient thing, which is to take him at his word. I listen to NY Times interviews, where dismissive Ukrainians refuse to be cowed by these latest Russian antics. Their tendency to replace hard 'Gs" with a soft "H" reminds me of the southern Russian accent I acquired, living near Sochi as a teenage exchange student. My time there was punctuated by the "Chechen" apartment bombings. Rumor has it, these were actually an FSB plot, orchestrated by then-Prime Minister Putin, in a bid to coalesce ordinary Russians behind him. Russian officials who raised the issue of a possible FSB plot? They developed a habit of dying under suspicious circumstances, and nothing was ever proven. The ensuing Chechen war cemented Putin's popularity, and made the new Chechen leadership into his puppets. Through lies, support of opposing fringe movements, and engineered political theater, Putin progressively undermined Russian society's ability (and will) to tell truth from fiction. Russia is the world's leader in government-by-disinformation. Since the 2016 debut of the Trump campaign, I have been hearing American echoes of Russian propaganda techniques every day.
Outside, the snow has started. Curled around a cup of Earl Grey, thousands of miles from European troubles, I mull over what the future may hold. I compare Putin's antics- his increasingly bold meanderings, first into Georgia, then Crimea- with the expansionist European strongmen of the 1930s. I don't dismiss the military buildup around Ukraine. Not at all.
That night, in my dreams, I shelter from bombs in the basement of a Ukrainian hospital. A chimeral Russian army sweeps, inevitable as gravity, through my Ukrainian dreamscape. They are certainly nothing like the real Russian army will turn out to be, because they mostly follow the Law of War. They fight only enemy combatants; they don't target civilians. Under a stern-but-fair Russian occupation, my dream-self works as a doctor-POW in the hospital, treating Russian soldiers and Ukrainians injured and taken prisoner in the fighting. Through this work, I gather intel and supplies for the Ukrainian resistance. The isolated case of true villainy is a Russian officer who attempts a rape; the hero is a second Russian officer who covers for me after I confront the villain and shoot him in a struggle over his firearm. Physically, the hero quite resembles Liev Schieber's Defiance character, Zus Belski, and it's all very romantic. In the end, I convince the Russian officer to join the Ukrainian resistance, the Russians are forced out by a NATO contingent, and all ends well for the Ukrainians. It's a very vivid dream, and I wake in the morning with Ukraine stuck indelibly into my subconscious.
