Russian President Vladimir Putin is yet another in a long line of loathsome political leaders who set in motion forces that treat millions of human beings as means to selfish, myopic, and brutal ends. The consequences have been terrible for the Ukrainian people. The result also is harming his own people alongside those he targeted with war.
The Russian military’s evident brutality further discredits Putin’s claimed objectives. Satellite photos reveal the presence of the bodies in Bucha long before Moscow’s withdrawal from that area, precluding any elaborate Ukrainian setup. (Contrast that with Washington’s reliance on false atrocity claims in the first Gulf War and exaggerated accounts in the conflict with Serbia over Kosovo.) The crime should be investigated and those responsible should be held responsible. Although, realistically, that is unlikely in wartime, especially amid a campaign growing only more bitter. Rarely is justice of any sort achieved in war other than the dubious variant imposed by the victor on the vanquished.
However, Putin’s accusers should be careful what they wish for. If Putin is guilty in Bucha, they might be guilty of much more.
Bucha is terrible, a war crime and an atrocity, but not genocide. Ironically, in using a term most identified with the murder of six million Jews by Nazi Germany for political advantage Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky mimicked Putin, who justified his actions against Ukraine by previously claiming that genocide was occurring in the Donbass.
Instead, the Bucha killings look like the sort of war crimes common in conflict, inflicted by angry, undisciplined forces rather than ordered by the political leadership in the distant capital. Including by Western militaries. And even the US armed forces. Indeed, millions of civilians have died in America’s wars. Not all killed by Americans, of course, but Washington cannot escape often shared, and sometimes primary, responsibility for those deaths.
Consider the terrible crime of My Lai in 1968 in Vietnam, in which US troops slaughtered some 500 civilians. The killing was close up and personal. “I saw them shoot an M79 [grenade launcher] into a group of people who were still alive. But it was mostly done with a machine gun. They were shooting women and children just like anybody else,” said Sgt. Michael Bernhardt.
The US Army covered up the crime, which was not publicized until a year later. Nor was My Lai the only such war crime. Observed author Nick Turse: “Far bloodier operations, like one codenamed Speedy Express, should be remembered as well, but thanks to cover-ups at the highest levels of the US military, few are.” These murders were terrible war crimes — but neither constituted genocide nor were ordered by President Lyndon Johnson.
He and his successor, Richard Nixon did, however, direct the sustained bombing of Vietnam, which killed some 65,000 civilians by the estimate of political scientist Guenter Lewy. Of course, American leaders did not order the bombing to kill civilians. But they bombed knowing that civilians, many civilians, would die.
The US also was responsible for the deaths of South Korean civilians, the very people Washington claimed to be saving. Scores if not hundreds were killed near the village of No Gun Ri. This story did not emerge until 1999. Of course, this was not official policy nor was it ordered by President Harry S. Truman. However, it happened, and justice was never done.
More recent US military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq and drone campaigns in Pakistan and elsewhere also killed civilians — routinely, steadily, and coldly. And Washington’s first reaction always was and is denial, as after the deadly Kabul drone strike last August that killed ten, including seven children. Tragically, none of the US military’s assumptions were correct, with murderous consequences.
The impact helps explain why Washington lost its 20-year war in Afghanistan. For America, rural Afghanistan was a battlefield, not a homeland, and civilians paid the ultimate price. A poignant example of the victims of America’s war was 40-ish Shakira, whom journalist Anand Gopal interviewed: