[NOTE — Please remember Gonzalo Lira in his moment of need. I pray he is intact and that he is allowed to leave Ukraine. He is divorced from a Ukrainian citizen and has a daughter aged 10 and a son aged 7, both were born in Chile. Gonzalo has dual citizenship, USA and Chilean. He needs all the support possible from all sources in order to be released and not be judged by a “kangaroo court”. ]
That aphorism that’s the title of this text — extensively credited to George Santayana — ought to have been an ubiquitous tag on all Western media at the moment, Could 9, to mark the 78th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany. But it surely was not and just about nobody west of the Elbe River took time to mirror on the horrors of the Second World Conflict and the defeat of the Third Reich.
Individuals don’t care as a result of they didn’t pay a steep value in serving to deliver down Hitler. Simply the other. America prospered and have become the Supreme International energy because of the decimation visited on Europe. When Senators Bob Dole and Daniel Inouye had been nonetheless within the land of the residing, their bodily scars from preventing in Italy supplied a putting, visible reminder of how horrible battle may very well be. However the reality was that only a few households in America skilled the lack of a beloved one who fought in both the European, North African or Pacific theaters. America obtained again to enterprise and the reminiscence of World Conflict II fades into oblivion because the few surviving troopers, sailors, marines and air males succumb to the ravages of time.
Who remembers? The nations and peoples who paid essentially the most blood and who endured essentially the most ache, that’s who. Between China and Russia, as many as 56 million of their troopers and civilians perished in that battle. A minimum of 26 million Russians by the hands of the Nazis whereas as many as 30 million Chinese language had been exterminated by Japanese troopers. These are staggering numbers and Individuals merely don’t have anything of their expertise to have the ability to grasp the magnitude of such losses. That’s the reason Russia remembers and the grand kids and nice grandchildren of Soviet troopers nonetheless march every year carrying placard with the photographs of their brave ancestor. Conflict on the dimensions skilled by Russia between 1941 and 1945 made an indelible tattoo, carved with blood on the soul of all Russians.
The failure of American politicians and the common citizen to grasp this profound reality helped create the battle in Ukraine. From the U.S. standpoint increasing NATO to the borders of Russia was simply an administrative transfer. However Russia, who has expertise a number of invasions from the West over the past 230 years, sees such selections as an existential menace.
Not one of the World Conflict II allies, apart from Russia, commemorate the victory over Hitler with any comparable spectacle. The Russian “March of the Immortals” is with out precedent. Nearly the entire women and men pictured within the photographs carried by fashionable Russians are lifeless, however the Russian persons are ensuring their reminiscence lives on. Therefore the idea of being “immortal.”
Right here is one lesson of Historical past price remembering — when confronted with an existential menace from a overseas energy, Russia all the time prevails. Napoleon and Hitler realized the laborious approach. It seems that Biden and most different leaders in NATO member international locations are intransigent in the case of remembering that lesson from Russia and are once more marching on a path to battle with Russia that, if not halted, will compel them to find the cruel reality belatedly realized by Napoleon and Hitler — don’t go to battle with Russia.