When I first heard the news about the impending Russian invasion of Ukraine, I immediately thought about the day that I heard about the American invasion of Iraq in the march 2003. I remembered the emotions of despair and anxiety and the overwhelming feeling of helplessness that I felt at the time.
I knew that the people who would suffer the most from America’s invasion would be thousands of innocent women children and men who had nothing to do with their governments policy’s. Just as would be the case in Ukraine.
I also reflected on the one million people that would perish in Vietnam, most of whom would be the innocent. I also thought about the US invasion of Panama in 1986, true a smaller invasion yet a devastating one for the black people of Panama City that saw without any warning the American Cobra and Apache attack helicopters that dropped bombs and missiles on the innocent population below. There were 442 explosions in a 12-hour period. Thousands of black Panamanians would be buried in mass graves. I also reflected the bombing of the Gaza strip on the day that President Obama was being inaugurated that led to the deaths of over 1200 innocent Palestinian children. Not to mention the 20-year bombing of Afghanistan and the bombing of Syria and the continuous drone attacks in Yemen and Somalia that has killed thousands of innocent women and children
What bothers me at this moment is it seems that the world body mainly in Europe as well as the media has responded to the attack on Ukraine with an outpouring of support. It seems that more value is put on the lives of white, blond, blue-eyed Europeans rather than brown-eyed people of color.
I feel for the people of Ukraine who have had their lives and their world totally turned upside down, and I pray and hope that peace will come and that soon they will be able to turn to some life of normalcy. At the same time, I am angered that racism still to this very day is so deeply rooted in the American and the European world and the media being the ones that continue to perpetuate this myth of white superiority.
War is the number one evil of this world and no people, no country no community no matter what color of the skin no matter what color of the eyes should never again have to experience the dropping of bombs and the shooting of missiles and the total devastation that follows.
U.S. aggression and the European leaders who have colonized the world are responsible for this attack on Ukraine just as much as Putin.
We as human beings must decide once and for all that no people, no race should ever have to experience the brutality and destruction of war. This means that we cannot leave the decisions to drop bombs and shoot off missiles or go to war to our so-called leaders no matter what party they represent.
If we the people of the world cannot organize across national boundaries to put an end to wars then yes, our world is doomed.