1775 in Ukraine

Our television sets, cables, cell phones, and computers/iPads are filled with images of Ukrainian families saying goodbye to each other. Women and children are loaded into trains and cars heading for safety. Their husbands and sons remain behind, armed with rifles and Molotov cocktails to fight against the invading Russian Army. We are saddened by these images and the news commentators talk at length about the tragedy unfolding in Ukraine. Some even dare to lay responsibility squarely at the feet of the Biden Administration as well as many European Union nations. Thus far, however, Ratcatcher has not heard a single commentator draw the obvious and clear parallel between the attack on Ukraine by the Russians and the attack by Great Britain on the American colonies beginning in 1775. The nearest anyone has come were Stuart Varney and Secretary William Bennett who speculated this morning as to whether American college students might do as the Ukrainian students, and fill bottles for Molotov cocktails if America were under an attack similar to Ukraine. Ratcatcher acknowledges the terrible failure of the American education system to inform our children about the founding of this nation, including the Revolution. But even the most “woke” and anti-American (here read 1619 embracing “scholars”) must recognize that, when the British came to Concord Bridge, New York, and throughout the colonies, wives and children were left behind, hidden, or sent away to relatives while their husbands and sons took to the fields with their blunderbuss guns and whatever other weapons they could assemble. The image of the over-matched Ukrainians surely evokes remembrance of American colonists fighting against the largest army and the most powerful navy in the world. What were the American colonists fighting for? Freedom! And the same word rings out constantly from the Ukrainians who merely want to be left alone by Russia.

General William Tecumseh Sherman had it right when he said, “War is hell. You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will. War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it. Those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out.”

War is hell and Vladimir Putin has brought war to Ukraine. He has unleashed terror and destruction on innocent civilians who simply happen to live in the land he has coveted. As Sherman said, Putin deserves all the curses and maledictions that we can pour out on him. A few days ago Ratcatcher pointed out that the US Air Force was mothballing over 200 war planes, all of which could have been leased to Ukraine to enable that government to defend itself. Maybe some of the curses and malediction should be reserved for the people in Washington, D. C. who have mouthed pretty words of sympathy while doing next to nothing to help the Ukrainians.

We are told that, upon his inauguration, President Biden hoped to make his mark on American history as a second Franklin Roosevelt. Ironically, he may actually achieve part of that wish. Roosevelt, under the guidance of his State Department, waited nearly two fully years, and deferred coming to the aid of Great Britain against Nazi Germany during which time Europe and Britain suffered significant loss at the hands of the Wehrmacht. Biden’s failure to provide large military aid to Ukraine [without American boots on the ground] and failure to return America to energy independence with the concomitant damage to the Russian oil industry will go down in history as a monumental failure similar to Roosevelt’s dilly dallying from 1939 to 1941. In the meantime, the Ukrainian freedom fighters will continue to fight. One wonders whether Longfellow has a descendant who can write a new poem honoring and memorializing their battle.

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