No one has ever won a war.
All countries recruit young men and women to go to war. They die and their families hope against hope that they died for a higher purpose.
So many do not die for a higher cause but just for some egotistical narcissist, megalomaniac with greedy fantasies of the possibilities of gaining power, money and delusions of grandeur and glory.
The blood, sweat and tears that come from the injured and dead bodies of that country’s future generation lie in fields in a foreign land for the follies and fantasies of men like Putin.
Russians are dying for that old man’s folly and delusions of grandeur in both Ukraine and Russia.
Ukrainians are dying for a higher purpose. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness fuels the Ukrainian people with the will and determination to fight for the hope of breathing the free air of a democracy.
That is reminiscent of the essence of the American experience from the Revolutionary War until today.
The families of the Ukrainians will cry, but when the crying stops, will raise their heads and be more determined that their sons and daughters will not have died in vain.
“That we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” — Abraham Lincoln Gettysburg Address.
The Russian families will also cry and lift their heads and look at the cruel face of Putin who sent their sons and daughters to their deaths for his vanities and vices.
They will find over time that their sons and daughters died in vain for the delusions of grandeur and visions of Putin’s belief that his manifest destiny is to restore the Russian empire.
It is an old story that the people of so many countries die for a man or small group of men in power, who use their own population’s lives, blood, sweat and tears to fuel their egomania, narcissism and megalomania.
WILLIAM JACKSON
Stuarts Draft
This article originally appeared on Staunton News Leader: Russia-Ukraine war: Many will die in vain because of Putin’s delusions
