(Originally appeared on Front Page Magazine on September 15.)
You might have thought that when you hear a newscaster or reporter call a major U.S. city a “war zone” because of the high crime and murders occurring there that it was just an exaggeration. It turns out that it isn’t.
“Per capita murder rates in major U.S. cities such as Chicago, Baltimore and St. Louis are outpacing Ukraine’s recorded civilian death rate from Russia’s invasion,” according to Just The News.
Think about that. Cities that get touted as examples of successful progressive places to live have more people dying, relatively, than a nation at war. Cities that held “most peaceful protests” are less safe than a nation at war.
Now ask yourself this: If we are so upset with what is happening in Ukraine, why aren’t we even more upset with what is happening in our own country?
The website compiled information from the United Nations Human Rights Office, U.S. Census Bureau, and other sources to calculate the murder rates between the Ukraine and U.S. cities.
In Ukraine, 5,401 civilians have been killed in Ukraine since Russia’s attack began in February (this is actually believed to be an underestimate). With a population of about 41,167,300, this makes Ukraine’s civilian death rate 13.12 per 100,000 people using official statistics from the United Nations, according to Just The News.
Sadly, there are American cities where this would be an improvement. Baltimore’s homicide rate is 37.3 so far this year or 215 deaths. If the city had the Ukraine’s war-time death rate, the city would have had only 76 murders.
St. Louis’s murder rate is 38.2 per 100,000 so far in 2022. Chicago’s is 14.8 per 100,000.
“Using pre-pandemic data, 52 U.S. cities had worse homicide rates than Ukraine’s civilian death rate. However, crime in the United States has skyrocketed since then, meaning that there may be more cities that qualify as deadlier than Ukraine under assault by Russian forces,” Just The News reported.
How scary is that?
Maybe an investigative reporter should compare property damage between the Ukraine and these major U.S. cities that suffered, in some cases, billions of dollars of damage. How comparable would those numbers be?
What’s worse is that the Democrat leadership of these U.S. cities has not done anything to make the situation better. Crime is still rising and property damage is often not even prosecuted in some cities. In fact, with defunding the police, bail reform, strict controls of what police can and can’t do, it has actually made things worse in those cities.
The Democrat-controlled Congress has also been largely behind pushing aid for Ukraine to help them because they have been so hard hit in their war. However, perhaps that money might be better spent helping major U.S. cities fight crime and lower their crime rates to a level equal or less than that of war-torn Ukraine.
It turns out that our American cities are war zones, and just like in a declared war, it is often the civilians, the innocent, who suffer the most. That’s the case in Ukraine, and that’s the case in America.
