Three years ago today, February 24, 2022, Russia without provocation invaded Ukraine. I know it – you know it. On March 16, 2022, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy addressed a joint session of the United States Congress to ask for America’s help, and I published this piece on that day.
In listening to an emotional virtual appeal by Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy to the Congress of the United States this morning, I felt the despair of this leader who had watched his beautiful country together with many numbers of its men, women and children obliterated by an evil neighbor for reasons known only to that neighboring country’s president and his supporters.
If President Zelenskyy could sing, and I don’t know whether he can, he could have closed with some of the words and music of “I Look to You,” singing along with the American gospel group Selah from their album Hope of the Broken World:
“As I lay me down, heaven hear me now. Winter storms have come and darkened my sun. After all that I’ve been through, who on earth can I turn to? I look to you, I look to you. After all my strength is gone, in you I can be strong. I look to you.
And when melodies are gone, in you I hear a song. I look to you.
I don’t know if I’m gonna make it. Nothing to do but lift my head. My levees are broken, my walls have come crumbling down on me. The rain is falling, defeat is calling, I need you to set me free. Take me far away from the battle – I need you to shine on me.”
The people of Ukraine are looking to us and our Allies around the globe for help to stop not only the physical crumbling walls but also the assault on our vision of freedom and our democratic way of life. Make no mistake, as President Zelenskyy has consistently reminded us, the destruction of Ukraine is but the beginning of a world war against securing the blessings of individual liberty for all people and for their posterity.
I have a dream, Zelenskyy said to the Congress today, but I also have a need to reclaim the skies over Ukraine, to stop the senseless bombing of my citizens and our homes. The Ukrainian President is looking to us.
Yes. We see you, we hear you, we feel your pain. We will respond with gratitude for your fight against a common enemy to serve a greater good.
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We Americans suffer from long term memory loss – the lessons we painfully absorbed about world wars, global conflicts, political corruption, identifying our enemies, supporting our friends – all 20th. century instructional tools we have conveniently forgotten in this 21st. century have now come home to roost in a new administration that seeks to say No to the needs of our Allies and Yes to the demands of our enemies. Shame on our leaders, shame on us for electing them.
Slava Ukraini. For the children.
I'll Call It Like I See It 
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