Last Updated on April 6, 2022 by David Vause
Photo credits from left:
Mariupol children’s hospital after Russian airstrike
Ukrainian civilians and soldiers take shelter under a bridge in Kyiv
Refugee children and babies in a basement in Kiev
Bucha massacre civilians executed
all downloaded 4/6/2022 from Wikipedia.
No one would have anticipated the startling stubborn resistance the Ukrainians put up to defend their country, belaying any argument that they are historically Russian. Equally stunning is the incompetence of the Russian military. I suspect the performance of their vaunted armed forces is the result of the decades of corruption that pervades the Russian power establishment leaching money for the basics of training, personnel care, and military equipment from the readiness of their army. This is a cautionary tale for America. Now, in the wake of their retreat, reports of crimes against humanity are bubbling up everywhere in the devastation revealing the true nature of the invaders.
The performance of the cadre of newcomers to the Republican Party defies historical common sense as well as basic decency. That child of privilege graduate of an expensive East Coast liberal arts college reporter on Fox is blind to Twentieth Century history. When he argues that we should not care about events in Europe, his B.A. in history should remind him that Neville Chamberlain-style appeasement never satisfies despots bent on reducing the West. Putin gambled that the two stooges that he helped install in the United States and the United Kingdom, Trump and Johnson, had sufficiently weakened their countries, Nato, and the European Union, that he could seize a free, functioning democracy in Ukraine with impunity. Yet, to America’s disgrace, Putin now has overt advocates in the Republican Party who admire his fascist totalitarianism. These views are entirely antithetical to the very basis of the U.S. Constitution and the definition of what it is to be American. This sedition is a much more significant threat to America than any Green New Deal advocated by America’s own Democratic Socialists. There is nothing democratic in Putin’s world-view.
America elected a reality show host to its Presidency who now sits off in the wings of politics, poisoning the country with traitorous musings. Ukraine elected a stand-up comic who became the first true hero in the Twentyfirst Century when he stood by his country in its greatest need and directed its defense from the underground. It now appears that he may have won.