The Russian invasion of Ukraine has now become ‘old news,’ receiving far fewer headlines these days than the Israeli- Hamas war.
I happened to be working in Kiev in 2001 when the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks occurred. The following day, upon arriving for work most of our Ukrainian staff were in tears and hugged us few Americans in condolence. We went by the U.S. embassy later that day, and Ukrainians were openly crying in the streets and had piled flowers several feet deep around the entire embassy compound. This occurred throughout all of the eastern European countries that had, only a decade earlier, been under the Soviet yoke. By
9/ 11, Ukraine had opened up and westernized to an extent I found truly amazing.
Make no mistake, the war in Ukraine is a war of good vs. evil, much like World War II. Imagine if the Axis powers had won. If Vladimir Putin is allowed to defeat and annex Ukraine, he will continue to other former Soviet states. He’s already done so for parts of Georgia, Joseph Stalin’s home region, and is “nibbling” elsewhere. Donald Trump’s plan to “end this war in one day” consists of selling Ukraine down the river and throwing NATO under the bus as well.
That there is an uber-right wing in Congress that wants this to happen has no understanding of history and lives only in the current moment of political power.
The Levant conflict, sadly, has its modern roots in the simultaneous end of WWII (or in World War I, some would reasonably argue) and the crumbling of colonialism, the British Empire in particular. The “solution” of 1948 made the Jews happy but unleashed a host of other ethno-geographic divisions. There has been fighting there ever since, and outright ethnocentric hatred of ‘the other’ has grown to the point that it may never be possible to arrive at a peaceful solution, two-state agreement or not.
Human suffering as the result of war is horrible wherever it occurs, but Ukraine truly has to have U.S. support to thwart Putin’s ambitions.
— Martin Becker
Fairbanks
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