I always thought there should be "Cold War" war crimes trials. The U.S. The former Soviet Union, and China were all complicit in the deaths of millions as they fought proxy wars all over the world. This from roughly 1945 through 1993.
As it is at the end they all shrugged, and just walked away leaving chaos, and ruin behind them. I think we're still too close to the Cold War to make sense of it. We're only just now getting a handle on World War one a hundred years on.
When the old Soviet Union fell there was some media talk of trials. This quickly vanished. The very world order they gave us this nightmare was still in charge.
They were not likely to turn themselves in.
As a kid I just accepted as 'normal' that some maniac somewhere could start an international chain reaction that could lead to my being a charcoal shadow on a wall.
Also I accepted as the way of the world that I my brother, and cousins would be drafted to fight some apparently pointless war in far off steamy shit-hole.
That was what the cold war was.
It was just what the world was. We for a long time couldn't imagine anything different. That's what I hate most about that time. Everything every outlet told us this was the way it was, and would stay.
For that alone they should hang.
For stealing our birthright to peace, and sanity. For crushing the Hope, and Spirits of millions. For making us think that the extinction of our species was a viable choice. They should be judged.
The major players in this drama are as I say still in power so it's unlikely they they'll turn over the assorted heads of state, and generals for any judgment at the Hague.
If I were a zillionaire I'd make a film about "what if" this happened. I'd have actors play all the guilty parties. Western industrialists, and Soviet Politburo hacks hand cuffed together doing perp walks for the world's press.
Warsaw Pact generals chained to their NATO opposite numbers. They'd be dragged before the world their uniforms stripped of all rank, and insignia. They just be old men in ragged suits with oceans of blood on their hands.
All of the insane presidents for life colonels generals field marshals, and violent madmen that were propped up by both sides for the duration are cuffed chained, and led by blue helmeted U.N. guards to their time in the glass booth.
I imagine at their trials some would argue that those very proxy wars are what saved humanity from nuclear death. A big war was averted by reliving pressure with many small ones.
They'd have a point.
However not one good enough to save them from the gallows if it came to that.
What does one do with people that were all too ready to burn the world down. Killing them is too easy in bad taste, and beside enough are dead already.
Perhaps a zoo.
A place where the guilty would be on display to their victims 24/7 365. Ironically this is what Stalin had in mind for Hitler if he had caught him alive.
There they'd be well cared for, and open for view at any time. We'd watch them these strange beings living out the lives in glass houses where no stones will even be thrown.
So the Cold War the last act of the second100 years war is long over. However some of the same players have given us what is shaping up to be the Third Hundreds Years War.
I remember back in the early 1990's saying on the air that we'd better take the cold warriors out of circulation because they're addicted to war, and will likely get us into another long cycle of them.
Looks like I was right.
