This coming week observes the third anniversary of Russia’s full scale invasion of Ukraine which has wrought a litany of death, destruction, rape and torture upon a people who simply refuse to be like their invaders, and our Administration is marking this catastrophe with an even bigger one by announcing their Peace Plan which–over a phone call or two–would hand Putin the victory which he has been unable to win on the battlefield. I have never been more ashamed of my country. Ukraine has been fighting alone for the values we hold dear. Their victory and Russia’s defeat is core to both our national interests–the ones which make us truly great–and those of the world’s democracies who will once again be facing the task of stopping the world’s dictatorships from destroying the rules based order which has brought peace, prosperity, and stability to much of the world. It is this and not just Ukraine’s borders which would be sacrificed by Trump’s Peace Plan. But we have an administration which does not believe in borders whether this is the asinine renaming of the Gulf of Mexico to the destabilizing plays for Greenland, Panama, and Canada. Stalin renamed places.
In the last decade, we have largely bade farewell to the WWII generation whose banners hang from every utility pole in our communities. They knew that ‘Never Again’ should have meant ‘Never Again.’ When they walked across Europe, or hopped across the islands in the Pacific, they did not change the names of the places they liberated. They restored peace and freedom in the places they reached. My family comes from Estonia. From Eastern Europe. From the lands the Russians liberated with rape, torture, and the renaming of places. They fled to escape what Ukraine has the courage to fight against. Estonia and its Baltic neighbors Latvia and Lithuania, along with Poland, The Czech Republic, Finland, Romania all know the inhumanity which comes with Russian liberation. And here as well, with the stories of The Greatest Generation, we too should know better. But America has been failed by our leaders, by our institutions–including the Free Press, and even by our collective common sense.
The media would have us believe that Ukraine cannot win, that the acquisition of an American Empire is a reasonable proposition, and that the wholesale gutting of our Federal government by a cadre of oligarchs is somehow a normal restructuring. We have been abandoned, leaving it up to each of us to use our god-given common sense and ability to think rationally to say that this does not make sense. We are better than this. Most of us grew up saying the words of the Pledge of Allegiance: ‘I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands…’ To the Republic. Not just the Flag itself, nor to The Man who hugs it, but to our Republic. It’s time we remember our pledges to our dear Republic and raise our voices in its defense. Perhaps we do not yet need to storm the barricades, but we do need to let our leaders know that we demand their action on our behalf to defend what has made America the envy of the World; to defend that which Makes America Truly Great.
It’s time we act to repudiate the shame heaped upon us.
Squandered Inheritance
We have bade farewell
To the generation whose banners
Hang from every utility pole
In every town
Who knew that ‘Never Again’
Should have meant ‘Never Again’
Whether at home or abroad,
Who simply did that
Which had to be done,
And for whom this shit
Too closely resembles that shit
They fought against.
They have moved on taking
Their knowledge with them leaving
In charge generations too weak and careless
To save themselves let alone the world.
Edvard Aunapuu