Realizing What You Don’t Want

 

A lot of politics is taken up with disputes over what people want and how to attain it.  On the lighter side, as an example, while in the state legislature, I recall vehement arguments made between sportsmen about when and how long the deer season should be.   Everyone wanted a healthy and sustainable deer population, but it was sometimes hard to find agreement on how to achieve that.

In a larger and more serious context, we all believe we are patriotic yet we still squabble a lot about how best to achieve that.  Is a Democrat more patriotic than a Republican?  Is our Democracy best protected by increasing voter participation or by suppressing it more to weed out suspected fraud?  Back and forth we go, with both sides saying they are trying to achieve the same patriotic end.

Then, rarely, there can come a moment of national unity, when we stop bickering and people start coming together.  Usually, that happens not when people agree on what they want, but when they “sure as the dickens” realize what they don’t want.

In 1940, the year before the United States entered World War II, there was a lot of bickering and debate in the country over extending the military draft.  An extension of the draft finally passed the House of Representatives but only by one vote.  Then, the following year, we had Pearl Harbor.   After that, there was national unity and extending the draft wasn’t even an issue.   The attack on Pearl Harbor made everyone realize what “we don’t want,” i.e., a foreign power attacking our country.  Our country went to war. (The draft itself lasted up until the end of the Vietnam War.)

I think it was something like a “Pearl Harbor” moment that happened to the collective psyche of the West recently when Russia attacked Ukraine.   Most Americans wouldn’t know the difference between a Russian and a Ukrainian, but when they saw Russians bombing Ukrainian cities and indiscriminately  killing innocent civilians—our national mood changed.   We may not have known much about the old hatreds and fears between these countries, but we realized, and instinctively knew, that this kind of destruction and killing was wrong.   A common vision emerged.  It illustrates my point—often we can’t agree on what the world should be, but we collectively know when we see something that we don’t want it to become.   

Often we can’t agree on what the world should be, but we collectively know when we see something that we don’t want it to become.   

It is a sad commentary, I suppose, that sometimes it takes such horrific events to unify people.  But, to America’s credit, when this has happened to us in the past, we have usually made progress in the end.  World War II ended with our two mortal enemies, Germany and Japan, becoming two of the strongest democracies in the world.  The United Nations, established then and though plagued by lack of enforcement power since, continues as a way for nations to settle disputes short of war.

Maybe, hopefully, when the current darkness ends in Ukraine, democracy can make another step forward.  And, who knows, maybe the brief democratic period that occurred in Russia after the Berlin Wall came down, can be resurrected.   Our hopes for a better world should never be overcome by the travails we face when the dark side of humanity periodically raises its ugly head.  Sometimes realizing what you don’t want can end up being a good thing.

Rolland Kidder

The Russian Invasion Changes Things

Last week, at breakfast, a friend of mine posed this question for our group: “What would you be doing right now if you lived in Ukraine?” After breakfast, with that on my mind, I turned on the car radio to find out the news that the Russians were moving on three fronts–the invasion and subjugation of Ukraine had begun.

Some Americans may say “so what?” Most do not know or haven’t heard much about Ukraine. Yet, Ukraine is a country about the size of Texas with a population of 44 million people. We are not talking about “small peanuts” here. Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade this country is a big deal.

There should be no quarrel now as to what Putin is up to–he wants to cobble back together the old Soviet Union using military force. Despite former President Trump calling him “savvy,” it is clear that he is a tyrant of the first order. We in the West should have seen this coming after his forcible taking of Crimea in 2014.

...wars are very easy to get into but usually very difficult to get out of.

One thing true about tyrants is that they can act quickly and unilaterally. They have no messy democratic process to deal with. However, it is also true that wars are very easy to get into but usually very difficult to get out of. As one columnist put it: Putin may be the main “driver” of the invasion but that does not mean that he will “master” it. Let’s hope that is the case. The Ukrainians are fighting back.

Aside from imposing sanctions against Putin and his regime–NATO, the European Union and the United States must now commit military resources to counter his next move. History shows that dictators are never satisfied and Putin will want more. What will be his next move? We must be ready for it.

The question that my friend asked at breakfast is not easy for an American to answer since we have never been invaded by a foreign power. As I saw videos of clogged highways of people trying to flee Kiev (Kyiv,) it reminded me a bit of people leaving Florida for points north and west when a hurricane is coming–though in the case of Ukraine, many of the refugees of this Russian military “hurricane” may not be going home again soon.

For me, this awful invasion reminded me of the beginnings of World War II. It was disconcerting and depressing. There is a dark side to human kind, and it has again reared its ugly head. In the words of President Roosevelt voiced after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor: the invasion of Ukraine by Putin’s Russia will go down in history as a “day of infamy.”

World order, if it is to be put back together, will fall to the few democratic nations who have the military strength and resolve to defend it.

Just as with every world calamity, cries have gone out of “where is the international community?” The truth of the matter is that the so-called “international community” as an organized fighting force that can quickly put “boots on the ground” really doesn’t much exist. World order, if it is to be put back together, will fall to the few democratic nations who have the military strength and resolve to defend it. The leadership of the United States of America will, as in the past, be needed to stop this current blight of dictatorship and aggression.

Freedom and democracy are not something we can take for granted. We have to be willing to fight to keep them. The clock of history has been turned back, and a new generation of Americans now has the burden of maintaining peace in a fractured world.

Rolland Kidder