If War Crimes Weren’t Enough…

I woke this morning kind of grumbly because my sleep was interrupted 3 times during the night. Don’t know why, but could be due to Jen being in California for a week to attend one baby shower and co-sponsor another one for our, soon to be eighth grandbaby. This one is a girl, and if you’re counting, it makes six girls. So, I had this fact on my mind as I heard the very disturbing news of what refugee young Ukrainian women and children are having to deal with. Trek hours, if not days, for the hope of safety only to deal with predators on the borders of Poland and Romania. Can you believe the evil it must take to attempt and be successful at human trafficking in the moment of weakness of these poor ladies that only want a clean place to lie their head and for many to take care of their children? It takes a special kind of sick.

A man says goodbye to his wife and child and has to stay and fight the evil that is orchestrating his personal war and committing multiple war crime violations in the process. I hope that the officials at The Haig, very clearly decide that is what Putin has committed and then puts out a world-wide warrant for his arrest. Anyway, the poor wife and child get on a bus with nothing but what they can carry and head for presumed safety. Then they are met by, in most cases, a young woman saying that she can promise safety for them. Being exhausted, her defensive nature is weak and she just wants a little comfort and soon she realizes that she is captive, her child has been taken and sold, and the promise of a happy ending gone in an instant. Her husband, if he survives the fighting, will spend the next couple of years trying to locate her and his child. Like looking for a needle in a haystack.

I am often inspired and heartened to see that people can be so giving with acts of kindness. But the flipside is that I’m horrified at the evil mankind can be and the emotionless void that people can exist in for only one thing, to make money. The amount of de-humanizing that has to take place is unbelievable. I really have a hard time getting my head around the very nature of this crime and I think should be handled the same as capital murder. In fact, capital murder might not be as bad. Murder is horrible, and if you were a family member, you would focus on the person committing the crime, you can go through your grief and loss as you already know the outcome. But, in human trafficking, you have no way of knowing anything. Alive or dead, the imagination of what they are having to endure, and maybe never getting closure. Human trafficking crimes should be an automatic death sentence. No right to appeal, and until the day of their death, to experience pain daily for their crimes.

I understand they are arresting many of these sick fucks and I hope they are successful at shutting this crap down. But the helpless feeling in me says this crap will continue. They call it human atrocities. I find myself at a loss for words now and perhaps that is appropriate. I don’t expect evil and the evil that men do to be totally gone, but I do hope that we are able to rid this planet of such things. One can hope.

I’ve had most of the day to think about this and usually that is enough for me to find a compartment in my mind to deal with such things, but being the father of three daughters and six granddaughters, I would like to have my moment with these assholes. I know that vengeance can be evil too, especially if there is considerable passion in that vigilant pursuit. I also don’t want to bury my head in the sand, but what can I do? Should I support the stupid GOP and back the bills they create for human trafficking? I know that whatever bill they would pass into law, would be convoluted into something not resembling what I would want. Do I just consider it a small win and feel success or get on the bandwagon and out of my personal comfort zone to lobby against the do nothingness? We are so good at refocusing to something more plausible to our liking than we are at finding the energy to make significant change. I ponder myself, I ponder the situation, and try to find a place in my life that it all fits. And like so many things we don’t want to do, I probably will do nothing more than write down my frustration and hope someone else grabs the baton in the race to the fight. My opinion seems so small and I surely am mumbling along here. My prayers are with Ukrainians and so much more for these poor women falling victim to these predators. It is all I can muster to keep the hatred for this crime alive in my heart, I hope I can sleep better tonight, but do I deserve too when someone out there doesn’t have the luxury?