THE FOOLISH BUSINESS OF WAR.

• Author: Boddiger, David
• Position: EDITOR'S NOTE

Six months after the city of Izium, in northeastern Ukraine, was liberated from Russian invaders, life remains a living hell for those who survived. "Behind closed doors, survivors wait in agony for the bodies of loved ones to be identified," writes the Associated Press's Samya Kullab. It was here that one of several mass graves was discovered during the war, which has entered its second year, in a pine forest near a town now known as the "city of the dead."

After Izium was liberated by Ukrainian forces last September, 447 bodies were discovered there, most of them civilians, some of them children, and dozens with signs of torture. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy likened the grisly discovery to other mass killings committed by Russian troops, such as those in the cities of Bucha and Mariupol.

Today, with more than 100 bodies still unidentified, and an estimated 80 percent of residential buildings destroyed in Izium, the survivors must carefully navigate terrain that is still riddled with land mines. "Everyone has a mine story," Kullab writes. "Either they stepped on one and lost a limb or know someone who did." She adds: "Izium is a gruesome reminder of the human cost of the war."

U.S. President Joe Biden has called for Russian President Vladimir Putin to be tried for war crimes. It's hard to argue with that point, just as it's impossible not to feel pain and empathy for the Ukrainian people. It reminds me of a comment published several years ago in The Progressive: "No one wants to be occupied; no one wants to be colonized; no one wants to see foreign troops patrolling their streets. What most people want, around the world, is to rule themselves and to have enough food and water for their families."

That comment, from June 2003, was written about another war whose architects never faced consequences for their illegal and immoral actions. In this issue of The Progressive, we look at both the one-year anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and the twenty-year anniversary of George W. Bush's war in Iraq. Both are despicable and were based on lies. Just as Putin lies about ridding Ukraine of Nazis, Bush, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, John Bolton, and others gaslighted the world about the need to invade Iraq under the Orwellian justification of a "preemptive military intervention."

When the bombing started on March 19, 2003, Kathy Kelly was on the ground with a group of international...