The following comments are personal thoughts on the present threats to world peace. I claim no credentials for writing this opinion. But I want to express my concern, exercising my First Amendment right to do so. In a recent editorial, it was pointed out in this newspaper that totalitarianism is on the march and presently less than 20% of the world’s governments are democracies.
Although the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics collapsed in 1991, men who were involved in that Marxist communist government have remained in control of Russia. As declared by Marx in the Communist Manifesto, "Communism abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes all religion, and all morality." It also calls for global revolution. Vladimir Putin is still a communist at heart.
There is a moral nature to this war between Russia and Ukraine. It has nothing to do with political policy. It does have to do with ancient verities concerning good and evil. Lincoln called America "the last, best hope of earth;" not North America, not the western hemisphere, but earth. I believe that Lincoln literally meant the last, best hope of Earth.
It is immoral for any nation based in western philosophy and Judeo-Christian faith and tradition to stand by while innocent men, women, and children are being slaughtered. Fighting for freedom and their very lives, all Ukraine asks for is military equipment and supplies. They are pleading for our used airplanes, not our irreplaceable sons.
If the Russians are successful, after conquering Ukraine it is almost certain that Putin plans to attack and conquer yet another European country and to rob that country and its peaceful citizens of their freedoms as he has already done in Croatia, Georgia, and Moldova. Similar criminal actions occurred when the Russians, allied with Hitler, invaded Poland in 1939, and on a grosser scale at the end of World War II when they expanded the Soviet Union by forceful occupation.
The Chinese Communists began expansion at the conclusion of that war fought in the Asian Pacific theater. Today it is Russia invading independent, democratic Ukraine and, predicted even now by geopolitical and military experts, China planning to attack independent, democratic Taiwan /Formosa. Russia and China are allies. They won’t stop there.
The great statesman Winston Churchill said that World War II could have been avoided had England and France confronted and not cowered away from Hitler and German Naziism early in the 1930s. History repeats itself. It seems that America and Western Civilization are "in the 1930s" at this moment. Good people who love freedom are again being slaughtered by evil people who would take their freedom, and their wealth. Cowering to Putin’s threat and refusing to fully arm the brave Ukrainians only makes the West’s eventual armed confrontation with 21st century tyrants Russia and China more likely.
What is going on in Ukraine is a battle of right against wrong. The allied West, including the US through NATO, should stand up to Putin now. Aside from limited weaponry and late economic sanctions, which are being undercut by China, the West has been reacting to the invasion as Putin expected. Echoing a NATO diplomat, our country’s president has put a limitation on the aid to Ukraine and openly announced his intention based on Putin’s threat of a third world war. But, God forbid, World War III is a danger that grows every day that criminal gets away with murder. It increases every time the West, led by America, fails to confront tyrants and their totalitarian governments.
"You can always count on Americans to do the right thing – after they have tried everything else." Winston Churchill. It is my belief that the freedom loving world is waiting on America to take the lead and do the right thing, because America is the last, best hope of earth.
Chip Williamson is a Northsider.
