For those who don\u2019t know my story<\/a>, I hope you\u2019ll understand why I\u2019m willing to give the common (often conscripted) soldier the benefit of the doubt until faced with irrefutable evidence of his guilt.\u00a0 As someone who got suckered into serving as an officer in the Confederate Army based on the illusion of fame and glory, I not only fought for one of the worst causes that ever was, but I led a lot of poor, non-slaveholding men (mostly boys) to their death. Most of those boys honestly thought they were fighting to for their country, but in truth they were just fodder for the greedy lords of the \u201cCotton Kingdom,\u201d who were defending their slave empire.<\/a> Sadly, if Vladimir Putin\u2019s soldiers think they\u2019re fighting to defend \u201cmother Russia\u201d from the Nazis, they\u2019re just fodder for their autocratic leader\u2019s megalomania<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This humble spirit previously suggested that Vladimir Putin should be held responsible for the invasion of Ukraine, not<\/strong> the Russian people or his (mostly conscripted) soldiers in the field. While I continue to sympathize with the Russian people, when it comes to the soldiers, not so much. The Russian people, who are already feeling the impacts of sanctions against their country, are barraged by an avalanche of state-generated propaganda, including Putin\u2019s ridiculous claims of \u201cdenazification\u201d in the name of protecting \u201cmother \u201cRussia.\u201d Now they\u2019re being told that the atrocities their soldiers are committing against Ukrainian civilians are actually being staged by the Ukrainians to influence world opinion against Russia. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But when it comes to Russian soldiers committing atrocities against the Ukrainian people, their actions are inexcusable. What we\u2019re seeing on the part of the Russian military is barbaric, sadistic cruelty, behavior that\u2019s a disgrace to anyone who\u2019s ever put on a soldier\u2019s uniform and taken up arms. Their behavior is all too similar to that perpetrated by the Nazis who invaded Russia during the Second World War, as well as Russian soldiers who, upon pushing the Nazis all the way back to Germany, committed unspeakable acts, including gang-raping German girls to death, seemingly in the name of revenge. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But today there is nothing to avenge. The Ukrainians did not invade Russia, and the Russians\u2014discounting Putin\u2019s insane propaganda\u2014have no reason to bear them any malice. I would still contend that Russia\u2019s soldiers don\u2019t deserve to die likes flies because they are poorly trained and equipped, but that doesn\u2019t mean their atrocities can be forgiven. Putin is most certainly a war criminal and his soldiers committing barbarous acts on his behalf are no less guilty\u2014and should also be held to account when the time comes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n Congratulations to Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first African American woman to be confirmed as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States! During these difficult times such events help us believe that, indeed, \u201cthe arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.\u201d <\/p><\/blockquote><\/div>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Russia is committing crimes against humanity in Ukraine, striking civilian targets and killing innocent people for no purpose but to disrupt any semblance of civilized society and instill terror. The Russians are losing the war against the Ukrainian military, so they\u2019re seeking to destroy the populous and reduce a once thriving, democratic country to rubble. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":217198,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","pgc_sgb_lightbox_settings":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-217196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog-posts"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegallantpelham.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegallantpelham.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegallantpelham.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegallantpelham.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegallantpelham.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=217196"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thegallantpelham.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217196\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":217203,"href":"https:\/\/thegallantpelham.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217196\/revisions\/217203"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegallantpelham.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/217198"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegallantpelham.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=217196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegallantpelham.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=217196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegallantpelham.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=217196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/thegallantpelham.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/shutterstock_2119209599.jpg\")
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\nThe Russians Aren\u2019t Fighting Nazis in Ukraine; They\u2019re Behaving Like Nazis!<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n