Ukraine — Our Time is Now

 

Many decades ago, I was sitting in my family room, listening to mom and dad talk on the war — World War II — for that was their time to shine. Yes, this was the 60s, almost two decades away from that bloody conflict, but to my parents’ generation, the wounds were still very fresh.

I looked up from playing with my Barbies, astonished, when I heard my mom say, “If I could have, I would have joined up.” My mom was only 13 when Hitler invaded Poland. My little girl ears took her statement as literally taking up arms and dying for the cause to restore freedom in Europe.

Mom was confused at the horrific look on my face. She never saw into my mind’s eye. And I never explained myself, only begging her to never “help.” I had no idea what she actually meant — women becoming volunteer nurses or joining the Red Cross or the military as a secretary or administrative clerk. All I knew what that her calm demeanor to join and fight the Axis foe scared me to death, and didn’t make any sense. Why would someone, who was safe, put themselves at risk for people so far away? Thankfully by then, Hitler was dust to the ages, and the idea of a world war only existed to me as flickering images on our tiny black and white TV screen, in films like, “A Bridge Too Far,” “The Longest Day,” “The Young Lions,” and in, “Where Eagles Dare.”

Zoom forward some 50 odd years. My parents have long since passed. And now it’s me sitting in an easy chair with an adult’s mind, my Barbies long since lovingly stored in a trunk along with those childlike memories.

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A week ago today, Putin invaded Ukraine. It’s 2022, and the threat of all-out war has again reared its ugly head. Poland, 1939, version 2.0. Sadly, humankind can’t even seem to go a century without replaying the horrors of a world war, putting us all on the precipice of destruction.

As with Poland 83 years ago, so goes Ukraine. Then as now, freedom-loving countries could not, cannot, allow a dictator to wreak havoc, cause untold destruction, and attempt to rule the world with an iron fist.

The Cold Hard Fact: Dictators never stop, until they are forcibly stopped. Their warped mind, their psychopathy, it doesn’t allow them to stop. Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, then, Trump and Putin, now, they all must be stopped, at any cost, for to look the other way, and appease…well, that was tried before with Neville Chamberlain and a piece of paper signed by dear, old Adolf. Do you remember the outcome of that war as we initially turned our cheek? 50 million dead.

The Bright Side (if there is one): If Russia’s invasion of Ukraine gets the extremist Right Wing world to remember why their aberrant ideology was and is so devastating to mankind, and moves them back on a more humanitarian, moderate track, backing freedom and individuality over hate and fear, then maybe the destruction and the lives already lost will not have been in vain. Maybe this is the wake-up call we in the west need to remind us of what happens when you back autocrats purely out of hate and fear.

Yes, today, the roles are reversed. Russia and their oppressive Communism are the invading force, while Germany and their robust democracy are offering up arms to stop yet another insane dictator banging on Europe’s door.

No matter the country.

No matter the time.

No matter the people.

Against such hate and fear, appeasement or isolation is never the answer.

Western countries must look outward, and not in. Free people must sacrifice for the oppressed, every time, anytime, and no matter whose door is being broken down.

Our world, thanks to the Internet, exists more now as a village than a faraway land. What affects one, affects us all, whether we choose to open our eyes and see the horror, or skulk away and turn our heads, pretending such atrocities affect only the Other, and never Us.

It’s time to eliminate the leadership dregs of the Cold War, those Stalinist, Hitlerian hangers-on who still believe that ruling by one through communism or fascism, void of individual voice and personal freedom, is the only way.

As you read this, Ukrainians, our fellow human beings, are suffering and dying in unimaginable ways, under an egomaniac who will never stop, who will never back down, who is hell-bent on destruction, solely for his own aggrandizement and power, unto his own death. Nothing less.

~~~

 

My parents did their duty to defeat Hitler.

· My mom helped gather old cooking pots and scrap parts for her town’s metal drive to help Canadian factories churn out more military weapons.

· She accepted getting married in a blue suit dress to save white satin material for the making of parachutes.

· My father, already long with the RCMP and too old at the time to enlist (he tried, and was turned down), gave blood countless times and guarded the home front as a constable, always on the lookout for infiltrating spies, thwarting their covert operations.

· Both lived on food rations, behind blackout drapes, and lived without, for many years.

· And both sat glued to radios in the evening, listening to the blow-by-blow of Hitler’s devastating blitzkrieg on lands and peoples so needing our Allied help.

~~~

That WWII generation is all but gone. They sacrificed and worked and did their duty for their country and the Allied effort, and those nerve-racking times rightfully colored how they lived and worked for the rest of their lives.

· No living above one’s means.

· No accepting credit when you could pay by cash.

· No taking anything or anyone for granted ever again.

· And where one saw hurt or need in another, one unquestionably helped.

As the children and grandchildren of that generation, our time is now.

It’s our turn to stamp out autocrats wherever we find them, be it Trump in the States or Putin in Russia, wherever a messianic leader comes to the fore. Whenever their evil tongue and greedy ways suppress mankind. We must stand up to these bullies as we would in a school yard, to call their bluff, to be at the ready to fight, willing and able to say NO to all their pathetic games.

Today, economic defiance will do more to defeat this kind of foe, like Putin, than all the tanks rumbling east. But by whatever means necessary, we in the west must commit to the fight, no matter how the slap-back lands on Putin’s door. We must refuse to invest or consume or communicate with those who are hell-bent on decimating others.

The Cold War is heating up, and it’s now The Great Cash War, where civilized western countries WILL monetarily freeze out Putin and his oligarchs, or anyone who wantonly does harm to another. And time is on our generation’s side.

· We will also give blood.

· We will back Biden and Trudeau and all western leaders in sending arms and matériel.

· We will donate to the Red Cross, Save the Children, and all other humanitarian efforts to assist the Ukrainians in their time of need.

· We will swallow higher gas prices, and not swallow Russian vodka.

· We will support a faster track to immigration, offering Ukrainians resettlement in the western world.

In this, our time, we will sacrifice and supply and offer emotional support, for only by the grace of God, go us. Poland, 1939, is happening all over again, and could happen at any border, at any time, in this, our ever turbulent world.

For our deceased loved ones of The Greatest Generation, who spent their young lives fighting an evil foe, we will make them proud by not shying away from this, our moment to shine, by gladly doing our part, as they so valiantly did.

~~~

Decades on, my little girl fear has ebbed away. I now know what my mother meant when she said she would have gladly joined the fight.

For what I can do, for what I can offer, now is my time, and I will gladly stand up, and fight the good fight.

If not our forefathers, then who?

If not our foremothers, then who?