Putin bombs a maternity and children's hospital in Mariupol, Ukraine
The horrific move has long been a part of Putin and other terrorists’ playbooks.
Only a terrorist would knowingly bomb a hospital, right? I’d argue it the other way. Knowingly bombing a hospital is diagnostic of being a terrorist.
Multiple media outlets reported that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s forces bombed a maternity and pediatric hospital in Mariupol, Ukraine yesterday. Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy tweeted about the atrocity. The footage is simply nauseating.
This wouldn’t be the first time, you may be surprised to learn. Putin has overseen the same tactic, and indeed it is a tactic meant to terrorize and “punish” the enemy, many times in the past. The Geneva Conventions are merely aspirational, it turns out.
When I first heard that hospitals were getting bombed in places around the world, my medical podcast covered that despicable fact. For many years, there have been activist groups raising awareness about this issue.
What you’ll now learn is that this move is not solely the purview of non-state terrorist actors like ISIS—though ISIS certainly did a lot of this, as this interactive map of hospital bombing in Syria shows. According to a 2017 essay in the British Medical Journal, Dr. Kathleen Thomas, who survived such an attack in 2015 while working in Northern Afghanistan, a majority of hospital bombings worldwide are carried out by “not by rebel groups or non-state actors, but by Nation States who have signed the Geneva Conventions, all of whom are using aerial bombardment to deliberately and systematically target hospitals.”
The destruction can be easy to shrug off from afar, and sanitized by the distance. There are no loud deafening noises. No smell of burning flesh. No screaming victims. But look at these images, and these, and these. The last link goes to coverage of a recent hospital bombing in Ukraine that I hadn’t heard about, but which was apparently an amuse-bouche for Putin’s lust for the blood of the most vulnerable people, hospitalized patients, and healthcare heroes who can’t abandon them.
We tend to think of war as something fought by soldiers in far off lands, and on battlefields that are somehow remote from civilian areas. How lucky we are. But in reality, urban warfare is common and even suburban warfare can and has reached civilians. Yes, military experts tell me that “surgical operations” and “surgical strikes” are possible. American Navy Seals killed Osama Bin Laden and there were no deaths to the women and children noncombatants in his compound. So, even in the heat of all-out war, militaries can minimize civilian casualties, though they cannot always eliminate them.
But bombing hospitals intentionally is an act of war against all humanity, not just the proximate victims. I’m no expert on foreign affairs or wars, but this much I know: We must do everything we can to protect the innocent, both in Ukraine and in all violent conflicts. Hospitals, and anywhere that houses the vulnerable, must be kept safe at all costs.
As a mere observer of all of this, I’m beginning to wonder—what costs are we willing to pay to stop Putin? Higher gas prices? Sure, maybe, for a while. But I wonder whether we are willing to sacrifice more, and what that sacrifice would look like. What would make things better, and not worse? What would address the problems and end the misery, and not just be reckless action that reflects our fury and anger—likely the very reactions Putin was hoped for.
Don’t ask me for answers. I’ll be busy working in hospital that isn’t being bombed—for now.
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