I am just old enough to remember the news coverage of the 1990-91 Gulf War, which was one of the first times that people sitting in the comfort of their own homes were shown military videos of missiles striking their targets. Since then we civilians have grown very used to such footage. Thirty years ago it was grainy, black and white, and unsteady, but each successive war – Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria – has seen improvements to the technology. Now, with the war in Ukraine, the internet is awash with videos providing an unflinching high-resolution bird’s eye view of the horrors of modern warfare.
A few days ago one such video was doing the rounds on Twitter. Filmed by a Ukrainian army drone, it was said to portray a Russian infantryman running in panic back to his unit’s position, inadvertently revealing that position to the Ukrainians and enabling them to destroy it with a direct hit. Presumably the man was killed.
Many people who shared the clip took a certain glee in the events portrayed. This was understandable, to some extent, after the recent revelations of Russian atrocities in the occupied areas of Ukraine. It is natural for us to want see payback for the perpetrators of such monstrous crimes, and there is something satisfying about invaders getting a bloody nose from the people they are attempting to subjugate. This feeling must be particularly intense for Ukrainians.
However, there is a spiritual peril in such voyeurism, particularly for those of us who are not Ukrainian, and do not have a personal stake in the war as such, but experience it as spectacle – as an event, an opportunity for moral investment in a grand cause without physical or social danger. We should not let ourselves become too enthusiastic about violence or death, however fitting it may be or appear.
This is summed up rather well in the film version of Tolkien’s The Fellowship Of The Ring, when Gandalf the wise wizard chides Frodo Baggins for his bloodthirstiness in wishing death on the tragic character Gollum. “Many that live deserve death. Some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them, Frodo? Do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment.” Only a week ago the Gospel reading at Mass was the famous story from John’s Gospel of the woman caught in adultery. “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone” is a warning that has echoed down the ages.
I am not saying that the perpetrators of war crimes do not deserve the very harshest of punishments, or that all sins are equally bad. But when we see a Russian soldier being killed, we know nothing about that specific man or his circumstances. When we cheer as a British missile destroys a Russian tank, we prefer not to think about what is actually happening in that moment. The risk is that our moral thinking becomes cartoonish, where the individual men making up the Russian army – mostly young men with parents, wives, children, siblings – merge into one great mass of irredeemable evil. No doubt many members of that army are committing horrendous acts, and are fully deserving of the punishment they will face in this world or the next. But equally, justice is detail. True justice cannot be done at the level of the group.
Nothing here should be taken as an argument that we cannot support Ukraine, or wish for their victory. However, war is always terrible, even when it is just, and we must not let the desire for right to prevail to become a celebration of the sufferings of others, even those who may deserve it. At the core of our faith is mercy: the mercy shown to us and the mercy we are commanded to show to others.
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