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Zelenskyy – A President Who Loves His Country! And Would Die For It.
“It was a privilege to see a leader in whom honor is personified.”
I write to urge every single American who has not seen the indescribably moving speech of President Zelenskyy and the heart-rending video which accompanied it to please, please watch it, as “those who watched Mr. Zelensky’s address to the joint congressional session won’t soon forget it.”, as stated in an op-ed in this morning’s Wall Street Journal. Here is the full video, with apologies for the nanny-warning of our betters, but this was the best one I could find.
It defied belief, living as we do in the cowardly world of pusillanimous Pajama Boys/Girls like Biden, Harris, Blinkin, Milley, Buttigieg, et al., to see such a leader, again as the WSJ piece referred to, “a leader in whom honor is personified.” As the author went on to say, “the least we can do is have his back.”, a sentiment with which I wholeheartedly agree, noting that one can agree with that term without beating the drums of war as so many wildly irresponsible “elites” are doing in Washington right now (referring, obviously, to hawks like Lindsey Graham, and others like him who are ready to send others’ sons and daughters into what is likely to become a slaughter, considering the lunatic cruelty being shown by Putin).
While I urge a full reading of Karl Rove’s piece in the WSJ, linked above, probably the best summary I have seen of the current situation after the speech is found in Powerline, by Scott Johnson, and I am taking the liberty of copying it out here for your convenience; I especially note the links in this article to the two pieces by Victor Davis Hanson which are, as usual, some of the best you will find on the subject anywhere. Here is the link. Here is the column:
POSTED ON MARCH 17, 2022 BY SCOTT JOHNSON IN BIDEN FOREIGN POLICY, RUSSIA, UKRAINE
Z
Z was the 1969 political thriller that won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film. Referring to the political assassination with which the film begins, “Z” stood for “he lives.” I hope that when the Russia’s war on Ukraine comes to an end, “Z” can stand for Zelenksy and his survival will be literal rather than metaphorical.
Zelensky’s appearance before Congress yesterday prompts these obvious thoughts.
• Ukraine is an independent and sovereign country. I support its persistence as such.
• Victor Davis Hanson presents the excruciating choices available to it under present circumstances in the American Greatness column “Zelensky’s classical choices.” He sketches four choices: Salamis, Thebes, Thermopylae, or Melos.
• If I were Ukrainian, I don’t know for which I would opt. What about Victor? He suggests it is too soon to tell (“These four choices depend not just on reason, morality, and emotion, but on the pulse of the battlefield in the next few days”).
• I support the choice of Ukrainians as represented by President Zelensky. If he choose to fight, we should support his desire to fight so long as it is consistent with the interests of the United States.
• Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is unprovoked aggression. Putin himself has been unable to state a reason that can be taken at face value.
• David Goldman invokes the specter of World War I in his Asia Times/PJ Media column “Reliving the nightmare of 1914.” Goldman cites Christopher Clark’s 2013 book The Sleepwalkers. I’m sure the thought is on the mind of many others.
• American interests limit what we can prudently do to support Ukraine’s resistance. How far can we go without provoking Russia into expanding the war or going to war with Russia ourselves?
• The Biden administration’s alleged efforts to “deter” Russia’s aggression were a complete and utter failure. The administration’s denial that it intended to “deter” Russia is pitiful.
• VDH’s “classical choices” column is somewhat clinical in nature. His own judgment is explicit here: “So far Zelenskyy has been brilliant as he expresses his appreciation for Western sanctions and arms. His insight seems to balance his otherwise unhinged demand for far more dangerous escalations—specifically to establish a no-fly zone and thus in World War III style confront, in the air above Ukraine, a bellicose Russia with the world’s largest nuclear arsenal.”
• He provides additional observations in today’s column “10 realities of Ukraine.” His tenth “reality” observes:
It is not “un-American” to point out that prior American appeasement under the Obama and the Biden Administrations explains not why Putin wished to go into Ukraine, but why he felt he could. It is not “treasonous” to say Ukraine and the United States previously should have stayed out of each other’s domestic affairs and politics — but still do not excuse Putin’s savage aggression. It is not traitorous to admit that Russia for centuries relied on buffer states between Europe — lost when its Warsaw Pact satellite members joined NATO after its defeat in the Cold War. But that reality also does not justify Putin’s savage attack.
That still leaves us with the question: What is to be done? I.e., what more is to be done, if anything?
It is, most decidedly, not my usual style to push any particular cause, loath as I am to be seen as one of the virtue signalers so thick on the ground these days, but I am making an exception in this case by urging everyone to help, to the extent they are able, by sending contributions to trustworthy charities who will actually use the money to help the pathetically besieged people of Ukraine survive. Our choice has been Franklin Graham’s Samaritan Purse which has set up a temporary hospital in Lviv, as shown on Tucker Carlson last night. The link for donations is here.
May God please deliver the people of Ukraine from their current nightmare of cruelty and May He punish mightily the savage Butcher of the Kremlin for his war crimes.
Published in General
James, here is my pure, unadulterated mea culpa: I am unable to approach this entire savage, brutal, cruel and unprovoked invasion of another sovereign nation with anything but the very opposite of “cold logic”– rage. I say that with apologies to our friend @susanquinn who just wrote a fine piece entitled ” A Misplaced Rage”, excellent as usual, about how so many of us are seeing emotions ramp up and seeing others (and often our own good selves, to be fair) lashing out at those with whom they disagree. That said, I must also note it is a tribute to the voluntary compliance so many Ricochetti demonstrate to the Code of Conduct that while there have been disagreements about this post (always welcome) if there has been any “lashing out” I have missed it. Thank you for your typically sage and sharp comment, Jim.
Okay. Who will do that? The UN? The FBI? Zelensky basically told Trump to **** off. That’s who’s pleading for the world to keep him in power, the guy who holds the fort where the swamp keeps its booty.
I think neither one is applicable.
It’s tempting to say “Madman!” because that negates any suggestion that he can be brought to the table to negotiate a cease-fire, and it then absolves us from whatever extreme action we might take. “Well, we had to drop a nuke on Moscow because he was a madman who couldn’t be reasoned with.” “Did you try?” “No point. Madman, remember?”
Drew, based on the videos I’ve been seeing, perhaps in this war we should refer not to the Pont d’Or but to the Pont d’Boue, n’est-ce pas?
I don’t have an answer as to how to construct the courts that are needed. But I do know that justice is not served by punishing innocent people. The three million people driven from their homes by Putin had nothing to do with whatever corruption the Putin, U.S., and Ukrainian governments were doing.
Queen Elizabeth I advanced the cause of justice by allowing the commoners to plead their cases to her royal court. That was when right makes might became a principle to aspire to. Many historians believe it was a significant turning point for all of us.
This is what is at stake here. Putin is slaughtering people who have never harmed him or Russia, and never would.
We have to keep striving for justice. We can build the courtrooms we need.
I definitely did not state that as clearly as I should have– what I was saying there was the polar opposite from the way you-understandably, now that I’ve gone back and looked at it– read it. Please consider it corrected to reflect the real barbarian madman and war criminal is Putin. Thank you for your comment, Jim
How about another alternative: the other world leaders (minus Biden who I think is just as irrational and mean-spirited as Putin) simply gang up on Putin? Pay him a visit? Duct tape his mouth for just a few minutes so has to listen to their side of these issues?
Putin strikes me as angry right now and he doesn’t seem to care who he hurts. He’s lashing out.
The world leaders need to do an intervention. Offer him a nice retirement somewhere.
I’m not sure I catch your reference. However, Sun Tzu wrote “A surrounded army must be given a way out. The ancient rule of the charioteers says, ‘Surround them on three sides, leaving one side open, to show them a way to life.'”
Which is to say, give the guy an escape hatch. Otherwise he’s going get increasingly desperate and irrational, and I really don’t want desperate irrational people with their fingers on the nuke button. Deescalate. Assume he can be reasoned with. The more we treat him like a madman, the more he’ll act like one. Give him a way out that helps him save face, even if you think that face should be punched a thousand times. Because at this point getting him to stop his attacks comes first. Pushing him with escalation will just increase the chances that this all blows up into World War III.
Now, that Sun Tzu quote isn’t completely finished, because right after that he writes: “Show them a way to life so that they will not be in the mood to fight to the death, and then you can take advantage of this to strike them.”
Which could be interpreted as taking them out while they’re retreating.
Either way, we have to give him an off-ramp to bring about a cease-fire. Otherwise if we escalate, it’s bad not just for Ukraine, but for everybody.
“Boue” is French for mud.
Yeah, but . . . uh . . . I thought maybe there was some famous battle at Boué I couldn’t quite place.
Don’t know- but there have been plenty in Boué!
Zelensky is a Biden/Clinton creature? Not everything out there is about US domestic politics-that is important to realize when looking at events.
This is almost as nonsensical as the post claiming we should prefer Putin b/c he is closer to our side in the culture wars…..Putin is always on Putin side he could care less about morality etc
Well said; he has proven his amorality the first moment of the invasion.
The sheeple love their TV personalities, especially if they have a catch phrase. Maybe Zelinsky will tell Putin “You’re fired!”
We’ll never know, because they’ll never say – and in any case it’s far fewer than the mainstream leftists who admire Castro or insist we evaluate Lenin and Stalin in context. What may look like “support” are expressions of admiration, and explanations for his rationales that strike some as charitable, and others as credulous. In some cases they may not support Putin, exactly, but they wish this Uke thing was over so we can enlist Putin in a common front against China.
At which point they would support him, but for the right reasons.
I find the arguments that it is okay for Russia to invade Ukraine because it is a corrupt country to be utterly amoral and senseless. I saw a list of the most corrupt countries in the world and in the top 90 or so were Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Cambodia, Tajikistan, Lebanon, Iran, Uzbekistan, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Laos, Azerbaijan, Pakistan,and Kyrgyzstan. All these countries were ranked worse in corruption than Ukraine, which itself was ranked only a little below the middle of the world. Russia was ranked more corrupt than all those countries except Azerbaijan, Pakistan, and Kyrgyzstan.
Does this mean that it would be okay for Russia to invade any of these nearby countries? I find this preposterous. Since when did low government corruption become become the benchmark for whether or not a country deserved to let it’s people not be killed by an invading army? In the “old days” we used to consider the only countries deserving of an invasion were the ones who needlessly invaded other countries themselves, like Russia for instance. The ones who didn’t bother other people were not deemed worthy of annihilation. This is a no-brainer.
So when did this happen and what did he actually do or say? I don’t find this credible but I will acknowledge it if you provide some evidence.
I actually asked a guy on Ricochet if he thought it was okay for Russia to crush Ukraine, and he declined to answer, twice. So yes, their are Putin (or Russia) supporters among a small minority of conservatives.
Plenty, right here on Ricochet. If they make excuses for the Russian invasion, they are supporting Putin.
This looks like a typical American family. I feel for the wife, knowing her husband will almost certainly be killed . . .
Thank you for this excellent comment which sums up perfectly the way we feel here. I keep seeing all kinds of generalizations and descriptions of the apparently well-known deep corruption of Ukraine and its people and I have asked for further evidence of that corruption but, to the best of my knowledge, none has been forthcoming. As I said in a previous comment, it seems to me that the major corruption news I have seen coming out of Ukraine has involved the Biden Crime Family Syndicate raking in what appears to be millions through the machinations of the absolutely corrupt Hunter and “The Big Guy.” If the measure of a country which should be invaded by a foreign power is how corrupt it is, or, more accurately, its leadership is, maybe that explains the “invasion” at our Southern Border (for that’s exactly what it is) and I assume we can expect a visit from the Canadian Armed Forces any day now. There seems to me to be such a wide disconnect between all this talk about how corrupt a nation is which has just been invaded by another nation while seemingly disregarding the deep, deep, deep corruption of, as just a few examples, Hunter, Joe and Jim Biden, Pelosi, “Heels Up” Kamala, all the inside traders in Congress, Barak Obama, Comey, McCabe, Clapper, Brennan, most everyone at CNN, Andrew Cuomo, Gretchen Whitmer, et al. The list goes on and on, but some of our citizens spend a lot of time talking about the corruption in a nation where women, children, babies and the elderly are being slaughtered for no reason whatsoever by the Russians. “And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?” Thanks again , Jim
What counts as an excuse? If I say that Joe Biden and his puppeteers gave Putin a green light to invade Ukraine with his “minor incursion” comments, is that an excuse, or it is simply pointing out the state of play right now?
This isn’t in dispute. Here’s an account from the horse’s mouth, Slate. Hero to the left for telling Trump to shove it. https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/03/volodymyr-zelensky-trump-putin-ukraine-resistance.html
Time loved him too, for all the same reasons: https://time.com/5744403/zelensky-impeachment-trump/
The guy is a Deep Stage stooge. No wonder all of the liars and swamp creatures love him, but Trump warned us about him.
Have you gotten rid of that mask yet?
That article that you linked gives a case that is almost backwards of what you are saying. They tag Trump as the “Blackmailer” and Vladimir Zelensky as trying to appease Trump while trying not to rile up partisan fights in the U.S. Zelensky even backed up Trump by saying publicly that he had not been pressured by Trump during the infamous phone call. A quote from the article:
“Zelensky played dumb and fudged the truth, but also gave Trump what he wanted this time. “You heard that we had, I think, good phone call. It was normal. We spoke about many things and I—so I think, and you read it, that nobody push it, pushed me.” Trump translated that as “no pressure” and said straight to Zelensky’s face, “I appreciate the answer.”
Worse-die fighting for a bad cause. One of the worst facets of war is there are men who fight honorably for a dishonorable cause-in this case that of Russia.
For every civilian death in the puppet breakaway statelets there will be 10 in the nonbreakaway (puppet states) Ukraine. All caused by Russian aggression. The irony is that the 2014 Russian aggression has caused the formation of a genuine Ukrainian national consciousness thereby enabling the fierce resistance we see today.