Editor’s note: Express Yourself opinion pieces are the author’s opinion alone.
As a U.S. disabled veteran (10%) and member of American Veterans for Ukraine (AVU), I want to urge the NIU community not to forget Ukraine and what some have called “the fight of our time.”
Why should Ukraine, which has fought so bravely and withstood countless attacks upon its soil and people, show fealty to Putin’s Russia? The Republicans have turned their former right-wing fanaticism on its head, instead becoming Isolationists and embracing appeasement of the Chamberlain variety.
This is the reverse of the Reagan Revolution. They no longer liberate the oppressed, but encourage tyrants around the globe to do what they want with their slave-chattel populations.
Because of Trump’s brand of patriotism, the U.S. is in retreat around the world and could possibly withdraw from NATO and South Korea, if Donald (Trump) gets away with his whims.
When our people were fighting and dying in Vietnam, all he was doing was ‘punching the ticket’ up the ladder. He knows this playbook all too well. If you ever thought South Vietnam was a Domino, how much more so with Ukraine with the Eastern Flank of NATO on its borders.
Perhaps the upper classes in America, many with Russian-born or Slavic wives with Russian sympathies, don’t want to anger poor old Vlady! Now is not the time to cower before tyrants, but to show some ‘true grit’ and stand by a worthy people and ally, that is, Ukraine.
I humbly beseech my countrymen and women not to forget Ukraine.
Brian Paul Kaess
