“We don’t want to set a red
line because then we’ll be boxed
into that decision.”
“We don’t want to confront
the world leader killing civilians
because he might get mad and
turn on us.”
“Ukraine is our friend, but since
they are not members of NATO
we’ll fight a proxy war on the
sidelines, issue sanctions…”
“We are standing with Ukraine!”
“We are standing up to Moscow!”
Bombs dropping on hospitals and
schools, apartment buildings and
a Holocaust remembrance museum.
The Russian army surrounding towns,
about to starve out the people, while
they bomb civilians that try to
escape. Frigid. Heat cut. Cold.
Cold to the bone…
We have no backbone.
In America, the government has
appealed to nuclear fear for eighty
years to help keep us out of a
direct confrontation with Russia.
I mean the Soviet Union… I mean the
USSR… They’re the same thing, right?
No, they aren’t. One was a legal member
of the United Nations and its Security
Council. The other is not… “Russia,”
re-established as a Federation in 1991,
did not formally apply and get voted
into the UN, as they should have been.
Give the Devil an inch and he’ll
take a mile.
Allow Russians to form on the Ukrainian
border without a direct response:
an invitation for them to come over
and kill a bunch of Ukrainians.
Where’s your backbone, Joe?
“But we don’t want to…”
Yeah, the spineless always have
an excuse not to confront evil.
Bill Watkins, Traveling Poet 