The Pity of War

 In his classic essay, "Notes on Nationalism," George Orwell writes that it is a hallmark of the nationalist mindset that one always condemns the atrocities of the other side of a conflict—while managing not even to hear about the atrocities committed by one's own side. 

Crucially, Orwell's concept of nationalism extended far beyond simple jingoistic patriotism or blinkered devotion to one's own country. One can also be a "nationalist," in Orwell's sense, on behalf of an ideology, or of a party to a conflict with whom one feels some other kind of moral affinity. 

We in the Western liberal democracies have all become Ukrainian nationalists, in Orwell's sense, over the last two-and-a-half years. You can see it in the Ukrainian flags we post on social media, or in our chanting of nationalist slogans. And the predictable consequences of this nationalism have followed. 

To be sure, if we mostly only hear about the atrocities of the Russian party, it is because the guilt in this war is genuinely lopsided. Putin is the aggressor in this invasion; and, since the conflict has been fought mostly on Ukrainian soil (until the recent Kursk incursion), that is where most of the crimes have been committed. 

Yet, we are nonetheless still proving the validity of Orwell's rule. On the rare occasions when there have in fact been war crimes arguably attributable to Ukrainian forces, we are very unlikely even to hear about them—much less to go out of our way to condemn them.

In Robert Graves's classic memoir of World War I, he talks about how he entered the war still believing perhaps a little too uncritically all the atrocity stories he heard about the "other side." He also writes honestly about the war crimes he then observed on his own "side"—including the murder of surrendered German POWs. 

That episode in his book came back to mind for me because this is precisely one of the crimes that has been attributed to some Ukrainian units. The New York Times, to their credit, ran a story recently citing foreign volunteers who described Ukrainian forces in some cases killing Russian soldiers after they had surrendered. 

This is, to state the obvious, a war crime and a violation of the Geneva Conventions. It also—to state the equally obvious—does not in some way mean there is now a moral equivalency between the Ukrainian and Russian causes in this war. Putin is still the disproportionately guilty party here. 

But what makes the killing of surrendering Russian soldiers all the more despicable is that they too are victims of Putin's regime. Putin has been sacrificing a generation of his own people to feed his mad imperial ambitions. His soldiers are as innocently butchered as the Ukrainians. 

Moreover, by trying to surrender, Putin's troops are plainly seeking an escape hatch. They are voluntarily depleting his forces. Ukrainian units—if only for the sake of self-interest—should try to facilitate their surrender. They should be trying to create as many off-ramps from Putin's army as possible—instead of leaving Russian troops with no choice but to keep fighting. 

What is so sad about the spectacle of this atrocity, then—which, like so many atrocities committed by our own preferred "side," is likely to go largely unnoticed and un-discussed in Western politics—is that the Ukrainian forces committing it have more in common with the Russian soldiers than they realize. 

Both are victims of Putin's imperial aggression and megalomania. Both have been taken far from their homes and cast into the brutal juggernaut of a war they did not choose. This is the "pity that war distilled," as Wilfred Owen once wrote—it pits two groups of involuntary victims against each other. 

Owen wrote this line while imagining a posthumous encounter between a soldier and the "enemy" who was struck down by his bullet. Thomas Hardy, writing at the time of the Second Boer War, offered a similar insight in "The Man He Killed." As he put it—writing years before the First World War, but seeming to foresee it: 

'Yes; quaint and curious war is!

You shoot a fellow down

You'd treat if met where any bar is,

Or help to half-a-crown.'

Just so. Two groups of people, both victims of the catastrophic forces Putin unleashed, meet on the field of battle. They ought to lay down their weapons and shake hands. They ought to realize they have far more interests in common they have reason to hate each other. Instead, the encounter ends with one or the other "shooting a fellow down." 

Quaint and curious a thing war is, indeed.