Keyboard Cowboys or Cowards?

To say that social media – and the internet in general – is a mixed bag of blessings and curses would be a gross understatement.

Whereas the internet enables us to access information in seconds that used to require a trip to the library, it also opens a veritable Pandora’s Box of potential problems, especially for young people who are naïve and seniors who are sometimes even more vulnerable. Predators and scammers seemingly lurk around every corner (or link) and so, Caveat emptor… buyer/user beware.

As for social media, one of its charms is that it permits people to keep in touch with friends and relatives at the stroke of a key. We can follow their milestones in life such as marriages, births, new jobs, and new homes. Traveling abroad or hiking in Yellowstone? Just post your pics and the rest of your social media universe can enjoy the same experiences albeit vicariously.

However, social media comes with a decided downside (or two) and the one I want to focus on today is that it emboldens and empowers people to say things that they would never dare utter in public let alone face-to-face. These same “keyboard cowboys” are prone to make some outlandish claims about their political positions with little or no factual information to back them up.

Take Ukraine, for example.

I will readily admit that when Russia first invaded Ukraine, I was 100% in favor of rushing to Kyiv’s defense. After all, Russia and the Soviet Union have been bullying and bludgeoning neighboring countries – as well as dissidents in their own homeland – for more than 100 years.

However, that was three years ago, during which time the United States has sent an estimated $183 billion in military and humanitarian aid to war-torn Ukraine. That figure was provided by the U.S. Department of Defense while the Kiel Institute, a German think-tank, reports a much lower number of $120 billion. More importantly, 46,000 Ukrainian soldiers and 12,340 Ukrainian civilians have died in the interim with an additional 390,000 soldiers and 28,000 civilians wounded.

These estimated figures were supplied by the Ukrainian government, but independent news organizations including the Wall Street Journal and The Economist have reported more than 80,000 military deaths and suggest that roughly one in 20 fighting-age men in Ukraine have been killed or injured in the war.

How long can this kind of carnage continue? And how long will Ukraine’s allies continue to subsidize this military stalemate with bombs and bullets – not to mention tanks, missiles, drones, and aircraft – while their own economies suffer back home?

President Trump ran on a foreign policy platform of putting a stop to endless wars (or at least America’s involvement in them) and he seems to be doing everything in his power to bring this current conflict to a close. And yet, he is receiving serious pushback from the neocons in his own party and the hawks on the other side of the aisle who have yet to meet a foreign war that they didn’t want the United States to become entangled in… despite George Washington’s wise and explicit warnings to the contrary.

Which brings me back to the aforementioned keyboard cowboys and what they have in common with so many elected officials on Capitol Hill. It is one thing to post “I stand with Ukraine” on your Facebook page or to wear a blue and yellow scarf or tie during President Trump’s recent address to the joint houses of congress, but it is another thing entirely to book a flight to Kharkiv and march on down to the nearest military recruitment office. Since there are reports of Ukrainian teenagers being kidnapped off the streets and transported directly to the battlefront, I can’t imagine that a middle-aged American would be turned down if he or she really wanted to enlist.

The same goes for financing this war with no end in sight. Congress is all too happy to keep writing check after check, backed by taxpayers’ dollars, but how many of them have dug deep into their own pockets to help subsidize the Ukrainian war effort? And how many keyboard cowards have done likewise?

I am reminded of the Enrollment Act of 1863, which authorized four different drafts between July 1863 and April 1865. However, of the 776,829 men who were drafted, only 46,347 actually served in the Union Army because 160,000 refused to report to their draft boards and the rest availed themselves of three legal loopholes. The most common was disability, but even if you were healthy, you still had two other options to avoid serving. One was substitution, which literally meant finding someone (or paying someone) to take your place. The other was commutation, which allowed you to dodge the draft by paying a one-time fee of $300.

I wonder which of those options today’s legislators and social media saber-rattlers would choose?

Let me close with some sage words from two Civil War generals who saw more than their fair share of bloodshed…

“I am tired and sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, for vengeance, for desolation. War is hell.” – Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman

“It is well that war is so terrible, or we should grow too fond of it.” – Gen. Robert E. Lee