One shouldn’t let fear dictate policy. Right now the world watches as Ukraine burns because the world is afraid Putin might do something worse. I don’t believe it is right to sit by and watch such immoral behavior.
Think of Adolf Hitler: the world tried to appease him and hoped he would be satisfied with the Ruhr Valley, the Rhineland, and the Sudetenland; that was followed by the Nazi “Anschluss” (union) with Austria and the takeover of the rest of Czechoslovakia.
Appeasement only emboldened Hitler! He moved forward with his genocidal campaign to kill as many Jews as he could, all of them if he could have managed. No one stood up to him during the 1930s.
Some people said: let’s stay out of it, let’s stay neutral, etc. Maybe he’ll stop on his own which was predictably unrealistic. Many of us would not be here if the decision had not been made to go to war against Hitler!
You have to fight fire with fire. The world’s democracies have to fight war-making dictators sooner, not later. Yes, it might lead to a wider war but the alternative, which reeks of cowardice, will prove worse.
I can picture a bully on a school playground, beating up a smaller kid. Other kids stand by and do nothing, hoping that the bully will stop with just one kid. If we let him beat up this one small child, maybe he will spare us! Sure, their hearts are in the right place, or so they tell themselves.
Maybe some of the kid’s friends find the courage to write a note of encouragement to the kid being bullied: “Hang in there, you can do it, keep fighting!” Or maybe they devise a way to freeze the bully’s allowance in the months to come: “take that!”
Yet they lack the courage and insight to take the logical next step; they do not actively take the side of the child by stepping in to fight the bully. In the moment, it’s absolutely immoral not to come to the aid of the hurt child.
The same is true for Ukraine. Sacrificing one kid or one country in the hopes that the foreign aggression will stop is not moral or practical. It’s not sensible because a bully never stops with picking on just one kid. That is why intervention and rescue is demanded.
What did waiting for Hitler to stop his aggression on his own gain the world? He attacked and conquered most of Western Europe, bombed the hell out of London, invaded Russia and killed millions: Jews, Slavs, gypsies, homosexuals, communists, other political enemies, etc.
I get it that we all want to say that war is a bad thing and to be avoided at all costs but that is under normal circumstances and not after an actual attack across national borders has begun, whether Hitler or Putin or some other dictator. The agreements signed at the end of World War II were meant to prevent such aggression; United Nations principles condemn it utterly.
Other countries “feel bad” for Ukraine. Some are active in various ways (supplies, equipment, money, etc.) but not in the one and only way that counts and which Ukraine desperately needs: joining the fight to stop Russian aggression and war crimes.
Could a more pro-active stance to defend Ukraine lead to a wider war? It could and that is something for which nations must prepare.
But to watch Russian soldiers smash Ukraine’s cities and kill civilians and do nothing? That is not a tenable moral position, either! The material aid we offer in the end will not be enough to stop the Russian victory: that is the reality.
Ukraine is fighting bravely and doing better than most people thought possible but all that bravery will go for naught if the Allies do not come to Ukraine’s aid and join the fight, right now, today.
The U.S. and other nations have promised to defend democracy and to oppose fascism and dictatorship. This pledge to defend democracy and freedom now rings hollow and false.
Putin is playing chess and he believes he has made the necessary moves to checkmate Ukraine, and he counts on the fact that other countries won’t intervene.
This will only feed his appetite for geographical expansion and re-incorporating other areas back into Russia. But even if he “stops” for a while after the bloody conquest of Ukraine, is the world really ready to say: it was worth sacrificing Ukraine to keep Putin happy?
A pox on all the cowards and short-sighted leaders of the democracies that learned nothing from World War II or have forgotten what they learned, what they once knew. You don’t stop Hitler or a bully or Putin by remaining on the sidelines.
You’re trading Ukraine lives for a few more months or years of peace; you’ve kicked the can down the road knowing there is a potential greater conflict yet to come between the democracies and emerging authoritarian regimes.
How can the peoples of the western democracies sleep at night knowing their leaders are treating Ukraine like a sacrificial lamb? “Let Putin the Wolf gobble up Ukraine, then things will be okay!” is a horrible position to take, while we cluck our tongues in mournful sympathy.
This is willful blindness amounting to madness, in my opinion.
The time to strike back is now.
