1 year ago
67
Last night, Washington D.C. witnessed an event so historic, and a contrast so stark, that it’s difficult to say when there might last have been something equal. On the one hand, the Congress welcomed into its chamber a man who is currently leading his nation through a bloody war in which tens of thousands have died and millions have been displaced. Also present—or pointedly absent—were supposed representatives for millions of Americans who showed nothing but disdain for that man, the suffering of his people, or the role they play in saving not just their country, but ours.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy brought with him a flag freshly taken from the front lines of the war, signed by soldiers who wanted to express their gratitude to the United States for the assistance it has provided. Those soldiers, fighting in the ruins if their homes, shadowed by death and threatened by a a seemingly heartless foe, recognize that on their shoulders falls a burden carried only by a few in any century—the decision as to what kind of world goes forward, now, and for decades to come. Zelenskyy came to the House chamber as an emissary of those women and men, seeking to show their appreciation for aid already rendered, as well as their desperate need for the tools that will allow the fight to be prosecuted to conclusion.
That Zelenskyy was in Washington, and not in London, or Paris, or anywhere else, shows just how central the United States still remains, even at this late date, in spite of everything, to the enterprise of freedom. We are still the arsenal of democracy, with all the responsibility that brings.
But even as Vice President Kamala Harris and Speaker Nancy Pelosi were raising that Ukrainian battle flag at the front of the chamber, there were in the same room representatives of the very threat Ukraine is fighting. Their actions and words were not just a despicable shadow across a historic evening, but a sign of how close that enterprise stands to failure in the United States, as well as Ukraine.
