The New York Post has recently posted a series of video recordings, from a suburb of Kiev, showing the aftermath of modern urban combat. It is “graphic content” according to modern standards, so consider yourself warned. It shows dead people littering the streets with their bodies, while nearby living people are going about their business. It shows burned out armored vehicles, ruins of buildings, patrols on foot and mounted, and what is purported to be a mass grave with 280 dead – reportedly civilians.

We must ask, can this happen elsewhere? Here in the Fifty States?

The scenes are mind blowing.

Most of the dead shown are in civilian clothing – and many are video-recorded near bicycles. No weapons are shown. But there is no way to tell if these are actual civilians or are partisans who took up arms with the permission of their Ukrainian government. Permission officially to fight the Russian invaders. And according to some reports, unofficially to threaten, wound, and kill ethnic Russians – domestic enemies of the Ukrainian state. (Unlike the photographs of the War for Southern Independence or of Great War (WW1) trenches, in modern battlefields, the small arms carried by the dead seldom are left to simply lie on the ground or on the body.)

Even the NY Post does not show as graphic photos as can be found of the streets of Berlin in the Spring of 1945. Or the villages of Lebanon and Syria in recent years. Or hundreds of towns and cities across this planet over the 75+ years in between.

And the black and white still photos of the streets of Atlanta or Richmond – or a few other American (Northern and Southern) cities or on their outskirts – back in the 1860s do not bring home to modern eyes the results of urban warfare.

Look at these videos as much as you can tolerate. And remember that similar scenes were present in Asia, and Africa, and South and Central America, in the past few decades. And even in Europe – the Balkans in particular – in the last 20-30 years. And now in a Second World country – even First World, again.

The point? The same governments which caused the war now going on in Ukraine, who caused the wars going on now or recently in Syria, in Mesopotamia, in Sudan and South Sudan and Libya, will continue to cause wars: mostly through their stupid actions. Their lies, their broken promises (whether they truly had the power to MAKE those promises), their decisions and indifference to human lives and suffering and liberty. Ditto for Mexico and Columbia and Venezuela.

This is not going to stop with Chechnya or Ukraine or Syria or Somalia or Yemen. Or the drug-war-torn nations of Latin America. Not unless something drastic is done.

And the blame is NOT just the Syrian or Russian or Ukrainian or Saudi or Mexican governments. The governments of the European Union and the governments in DC and Ottawa and Canberra and Beijing bear responsibility now – and will in the future.

And the locations of the battles – the dying places and the ruins and all of this – will continue to expand. And it is a distinct possibility that some of those battle scenes will be REAL scenes in the Fifty States.

We know of the bloodbath in the United Mexican States over the last several decades with the cartels warring with the government, the people, and each other. Otherwise, North America has been blessedly free of such things for a century. That is, since the War between the States, the early 2oth Century revolutions in Mexico, the end of the Indian wars, and a few isolated and brief incidents. But they HAVE happened, on a very small scale: Kent State, the Ludlow Massacre, the Athens uprising, gang battles in Chicago come to mind. (All of which were far more violent than that business in the Capitol on 06 JAN 2021.)

But we need to recognize that “if this goes on” that the fighting we see now in Ukraine, that we’ve seen in Kosovo and Chechnya, in Yemen and Somalia, WILL happen here in the Fifty States and Canada. Far worse than anything in Ciudad Juarez or Monterey or Nuevo Laredo.

If we don’t learn to reject the evils of government and the goals of the so-called progressives and other enemies of liberty, peace, and prosperity.

Oddly enough, this is less likely to happen in American cities like Denver or Houston or Nashville or Chicago – or even DC or NYC or LA – because Americans are so heavily armed. But even then, there is always that last straw, when people lose their temper (and sometimes their minds) and violence – war – explodes.

Please think about it.