The Heroes of Snake Island.

 

The amount of personal fear people are trying to disguise (with what they deem sensible arguments) for us ‘not fighting Vladimir Putin's Barbarians’ is understandable, but it is wrongheaded.

"We are all going to die."

The 'when & what' that kills us does not really matter; all that matters when the time comes, is the 'why and how' we face that moment!

Now some – perhaps many, will dismiss this idea as silly rhetoric, and that's okay, I don’t hold it against you, it's just fear talking.  Fortunately, most of you have never faced imminent violent death, nor willingly and deliberately put yourself on the line for anything, after all - that's what you have us warriors for isn’t it?  But sometimes the choice for war comes to your doorstep, unbidden, forced upon you by madmen and their almost inhuman wickedness.

This is one of those times!

"VLADIMIR PUTIN WILL NOT STOP UNLESS WE STOP HIM."

The sooner we do, the sooner we in the West stand and draw a proverbial line in the sand – and importantly - 'give Putin an out' - the less likely it is he goes nuclear – (or is allowed to by his Generals who remember - all want to survive).

In combat or when facing down evil, you know that not everybody will come out of it unscathed, or even survive.  But you fight anyway and take your chances; not because you want to be a hero, or for some idealised notion of honour - but because to do otherwise invites disaster for your tribe.

The Ukrainian soldiers on Snake Island understood that, and the whole of Ukraine, both civilians and soldiers alike - have learned that!  For them this is a war of survival, a war about their right to exist at all.

Nothing is certain, but our fate is our own, it is not predetermined.  We in the West can choose to run and hide or - like our fathers before us - we can challenge this Fascist who rapes women, who with wonton abandon murders children, destroys cities, who vanishes whole communities to his death camps in Siberia.  A future under the dominion of such a man, under such an empire of evil, is not worth the living.

Our fathers fought Hitler's evil not knowing they would win.  Not knowing they would survive.  How can we ever hope to face their shade if we do not do the same as they, now that it is our time to fight?

This is not rhetoric; it is simple self preservation logic. 

Had Britain and France acted after Guernica in 1937, actively opposed Hitler’s ambitions and stamped down hard on Franco’s cruelty, World War 2, might never have happened.  Our inaction then saw 66 million people die later.  This war in Ukraine is no different. 

Vladimir Putin will not stop unless we stop him, and the longer we wait the more convinced he becomes that we are too weak, too self-indulgent to oppose his villainy.  Already his voice boxes are daily calling for a purging of Europe and a literal destruction of the UK.  How long before our Leaders take his word for it, how long before they believe him?

This war in Ukraine is not some localised conflict which does not, will not affect us here in the West.  Ukraine’s harvest feeds over half of us.  Do you seriously believe Vladimir Putin, whose own people go hungry because of his greed and mismanagement, cares one hoot about ensuring we are fed, when he needs to secure food for his own people before they turn on him en-mass?

This is not a localised war that we are not involved in, the consequence of which will leave us untouched. This is the Anschluss.  This is the annexation of the Sudetenland, the annexation of Bohemia, the annexation of the Czechoslovak Republic all rolled into one.  This is a re-enactment of ‘The Phoney War’ (unless you live in Ukraine where it is all too real), that moment that exists between Peacetime and all out Terror, and we are all of us - LIVING IN THAT MOMENT.

World War 3 has already begun, and too many of our Leaders are making all the same mistakes as Chamberlin.  If we stand by and refuse to fight – to oppose the Fascists with all we have as we did after Guernica, the same outcome will befall the world now as it did then. Not everybody is fated to survive the war –but that is the choice that lays before us - and the Heroes of Snake Island knew that.

"Go tell to Sparta, thou who passest by, that here, obedient to her laws, we lie."