Sunday, Feb. 27, 2022 | 2 a.m.
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It is time to get a grip.
When Russia’s Vladimir Putin gave the order this past week to overwhelmingly, mercilessly and wantonly attack his democratic neighbor, Ukraine, it opened up the history books to a time in recent memory that threatened decency around the globe and ended with a new world order that gave the promise of peace.
Democracies have flourished since the end of World War ll, people have learned to dream about better lives and many millions of global inhabitants have pursued those dreams for themselves and their children.
No, it hasn’t been all peaches and cream but it would have been far worse had it not been for the Greatest Generation of the United States of America.
We didn’t come to the side of the Allies against Germany’s Adolf Hitler and his plans for world domination easily. Like so many other countries who “weren’t in the fight,” we were content to let Hitler pursue his goal one piece of the map at a time.
We didn’t care when Kristallnacht shattered lives. It wasn’t us. Nor did we or much of the world care when Hitler absorbed Austria — just like that! Again, it wasn’t us or ours. Same was true for the Third Reich’s plans for Czechoslovakia.
When Great Britain’s Neville Chamberlain hailed ”peace in our time” as he returned from Munich, where Germany was allowed to swallow the Sudetenland, it was obvious that Hitler would not be satisfied with just a piece of the pie. He wanted the rest of Europe and no one wanted to stand in his way.
The irony of the 1938 Munich Agreement should not be lost today as we think about the Munich Security Conference held last weekend to figure out how to stop Putin from pursuing his megalomaniacal dream of putting the Soviet Union back together again — starting with Ukraine.
The players are a little different in 2022 but the prize is the same.
Even the United States — which was torn from within about getting involved on the side of our Allies and against Hitler, who a large and vocal number of Americans thought was a good guy ( not unlike some Americans today who praise the murderous Putin as a “genius”) — was only brought into the war after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and left us no choice.
What happened then is what must happen now.
The Greatest Generation stood up, signed up and held up through the very difficult years of World War ll. They fought, they died, and they came home badly injured.
They did without. Without butter, without silk stockings and without goods and services that defined the American way of life to that point. Without the comfort of home and with the discomfort of battlefields far from home.
But they did it for a reason. It was good versus evil. It was our way of life being threatened by those who would subjugate us, take away our freedom and destroy our dreams.
We didn’t have a choice.
Today, Ukraine is under the gun. Putin wants it and he will have it no matter how long it takes. And whether he takes more — yes, he clearly wants more — will be up to many of the same countries that said ”nein” to Hitler. All of them, led by the United States of America.
President Joe Biden made a choice. Since Ukraine isn’t a NATO country, there was no obligation to send American troops into battle. But the next country on Putin’s list may belong to the mutual defense organization, an organization designed after the Second World War to maintain European freedom against would-be despots.
So Biden decided to make a different stand — now. Ukraine may be lost for a good while to Putin’s ambitions, but with an overwhelming European buy-in and American leadership, Putin will pay a heavy price before he takes another step toward domination.
Economic sanctions aren’t as effective as a military response because they take longer to catch hold. But, given the short distance between a Putin order to attack with troops and tanks or the push of a button on a nuclear weapon, sanctions provide a less risky approach to the problem at hand.
The challenge with sanctions is that they may not affect Putin the way we want them to — power trumps money in his world — and they will affect Americans in ways we do not want. Everything will get more expensive and more difficult while we face down the Russian bear.
But that’s the price of keeping the world safe. And we must, all of us, be willing to pay it.
It was a price proudly and painfully paid by the Greatest Generation. And it must be the price this generation of Americans is willing to pay today.
We either pay it now or pay so much more later.
Brian Greenspun is editor, publisher and owner of the Sun
