Cluster Munitions? Are you kidding me?

Russian and Ukraine mothers have to see images of their dead children plastered all over social media and the propaganda networks formerly known as news. Because enough people just haven’t died, the United States wants to give Ukraine cluster munitions banned in over 120 countries, to take out their target, and everything else in the vicinity. Civilian lives be damned. It will never be the Putin, Zelenskyy, or Biden whose blood soaks the war-torn streets.

It’s a potential war crime when Russia uses cluster munitions, but it’s okay if the United States sends them to Ukraine. It’s astounding that one leader can be responsible for the death of between 35,000 and 43,000 men and still be left in charge. His mercenary team attempted a coup because the death count experienced by the hired guns was higher than they were willing to accept. At least those men and women knew what they were signing up for. Ukraine lost approximately 9,000 civilians in addition to their military casualties which range between 15,500 and 17,500.

For what reason did tens of thousands of people die? Because one man wanted some land, and another said no.

If you asked the mothers of those dead sons and daughters which they would prefer, their child’s life back or to be the moral winner of a land dispute, the mothers will always pick their children. Unfortunately, we live in a world where young men and women are sacrificed at the altar of greed. As a species, we went from sacrificing our daughters to gods to sacrificing our sons to commerce. If the United States is willing to sacrifice the sons and daughters of others for a war that has nothing to do with us by ensuring mass casualties which will include civilians, we are showing the world how little we value life as a country.

My son-in-law is in the United States Army. If we’re willing to send cluster munitions to Ukraine, are boots on the ground next? Does the father of my grandchildren have to die to settle a land dispute between two men? The men and women in our military, and I imagine in Russia and Ukraine, are made up of the children we cherish. They are not pawns to be used and leveraged at the whim of political favor.

We’ve been in wars for as long as our country has existed. Morals are easy to have in an office in Washington D.C. when the piper is paid by eighteen-year-olds who wanted a way to go to college without crippling debt.

At what point in the evolution of man will we stop using our children as cannon fodder for our inability to communicate effectively? Let that day be today before we cull our species of the best and the brightest when Russia one-ups the United States with a nuclear warhead.

Kristy D. Bock