We live in strange times. I need not fly far to witness odd responses to our distressed world. I’m just an Owl, but the people I observe leave me wondering. What’s going on?

A modern Boeing aircraft plunged into the earth carrying some 132 passengers. It is said they all died. We rightly mourn these innocents while we admire the legion of first responders who quickly deployed to the remote impact site. With this relatively rare modern disaster, we see what a civilized society at peace can deploy to care for those in dire need. Some 600 police, rough terrain rescue teams, medical staff and Civil Aviation Administration investigators have been dispatched to the scene. Hotlines have been established for those seeking information about their relatives who may have been on board. Data will be gathered and shared with the aviation specialists of the world, the better to prevent the problems happening again. In short, a modern machine failed. Yet, as this example shows, we as trained, informed, engaged citizens of our world deploy our best efforts in response. Such responses developed over years of hard experience and shared learning have made our world even safer.

In another country, the Ukraine, medieval conditions exist. Russian artillery gunners fire away at civilians in shopping districts, hospitals and kindergartens. Russian fighter aircraft launch giant missiles, miles away from their targets. The Kremlin armies blast away with ballistic missiles, rockets and shells into maternity wards, elementary schools and housing areas. Special targets are food warehouses. The Russian goal is to slaughter Ukrainians like sheep until they surrender. The Russians massacre tiny children in their beds, mothers freezing in subzero temperatures and the elderly, because they can. They kill around the clock. Those they can’t murder, they try to starve.

Consider this reflection, which depicts life in besieged Ukraine today.

Nothing

No kitchen; no food.

No sinks; no water.

No doctors; no medicine.

No walls; no home.

No family, all dead.

Cold. Explosions. No sleep.

Dirt. Rain. Mud. Fire.

No surrender. Never. No surrender.

I try to imagine if this were happening here. Where would we go? How would the world respond to our collective cries, called out in desperation, to come to our rescue? Who would help us? Would we even help one another? Who would watch over our little ones, sent off, to where we know not — perhaps to safety — while we could not accompany them? What would we do? What would you do?

Let’s not delude ourselves that this is somehow not our problem. No man is an island. Refugee Ukrainian children walking across a bridge into Romania find toys, stuffed animals and games left there, so they might smile once on their Calvary trek. Partial families find themselves among strangers, whose language they don’t speak, whose customs they don’t know. And the refugees have nothing. What are we doing to help?

As an Owl, I’ve flown over refugees from many crises. I listen. They cry easily, because they feel helpless. Mothers, and it is usually mothers, do their best to keep the worst of their situation from their children. Where’s daddy? When will daddy come to be with us? I’m hungry mommy.

I remember one Afghani father held in a then-Soviet prison during the Soviet-Afghan war of years past. His captors tortured him. He showed me where they’d stub cigarettes out on his skin. Those Russians even reintroduced savage, brute whipping — just like in ancient times, but in the 20th century. This man’s back looked like a board of slashes. Today’s news brings us a story of a grandmother, who survived the human slaughter of the Nazi siege of Leningrad in World War II. She moved to Ukraine, and today suffers under Putin’s Nazis.

Now the Russians blaspheme even Christianity. The Russian dictator cites scripture to a stadium crowd as his soldiers mock even the dignity due a beaten animal, as they methodically mow down or starve Ukrainians. Our world witnesses those claiming to be Christians who cast artillery shells specifically at civilian targets. Over and over, these killers unleash mammoth rockets into Ukraine, fired from aircraft over safe haven in Russia. And for those Ukrainians who won’t give up, the Russians starve them. The Russian dictator lies to his people, telling them they are fighting “Nazis.” He lies to his own soldiers, some of whom didn’t even know this was not a training exercise. Why did he not read the rest of the scriptural text, “Do unto others, as you would have them do unto you?”

The visceral loathing the Russians have received everywhere in Ukraine reveals that a people, once free, won’t give up. Not ever. They may be killed, but they won’t give up. They will one day be free. Others, who were once under siege during the previous, bitter midcentury, remembered, “These bombs and grenades that incessantly pound us, will never destroy us, will never defeat us.”

It could all be so different. Until February, we were a world largely at peace. We could be working together to better our responses to accidental, mechanical crises or natural disasters. Instead, we now have war. What is it good for?

— John William Davis is a retired U.S. Army counterintelligence officer, civil servant and linguist. He was commissioned from Washington University in St. Louis in 1975. He entered counterintelligence and served some 37 years. A linguist, Davis learned foreign languages in each country in which he served. His published works include “Rainy Street Stories: Reflections on Secret Wars, Terrorism and Espionage” and “Around the Corner: Reflections on American Wars, Violence, Terrorism and Hope.”