Walter Ruby: Keeping Hope Alive
Thoughts for a Vibrant Future
Thursday, December 22, 2022
Ruminations on Zelensky and Churchill
As listening to the two speeches makes evidently clear, these are two utterly unlike--and unlikely--avatars improbably linked across the decades. Churchill, then in his late 60's, was an aristocratic Englishman raised in great wealth in Blenheim Palace, whereas Zelensky, a generation younger at 44 when he addressed Congress, is a salt of the earth Ukrainian Jew raised in near poverty in hardscrabble Kryvyi Rih (Broken Horn), in the last chaotic years of the Soviet Union, who went on to become comic actor of renown in newly indepedent Ukraine. Churchill, a native English speaker dazzled American audiences with his Shakespearian elocution; Zelensky, a native Russian (not Ukrainian) speaker made a magnificent effort to address the Congress in English; which limited his ability to be as eloquent and witty as he would have been in either Ukrainian or Russian; though he won many hearts as he struggled but largely succeeded to powerfully distill his message in a foreign tongue.
Yet the essence of their commonality is certainly that these two men, 80 years apart, became the incarnation of the struggle of their respective countries--and ultimately of the larger world--to resist authoritarian-fascist invasion and brutality. Both stood up in the face of cynicism and defeatism to fight back against enormous odds and stun the world by inspiring their respective peoples to fight like hell and hold back the aggressors. Both speakers also resisted the temptation to sugarcoat the dire situations their countries found themselves in at the time of their speeches. Battered London at the end of 1941 was still enduring the Nazi blitz after 18 months of bombardment, and the British Army had been pushed out of western and southern Europe by the German Wehrmacht and out of Malaya and Singapore only days earlier by the Japanese. For its part, Kyiv--and all of Ukraine--remains under relentless and remorseless Russian bombardment to knock out critical electricity, heat and water supplies amidst sub-zero temperatures, even as the Russians launch wave after meat-griding wave of forces against Bakhmut and threaten to launch another military assault on Kyiv through Belarus.
To their immense credit, both Chruchill and Zelensky have consistently told their people the bitter truth and both populations rose resolutely to the occasion because their leaders helped them to grasp that the alternative to steely resistance; namely defeat and subjugation to totalitarian evil, was both unbexarable and unthinkable..
The difference between the two situations is that we know what happened after Churchill's speech and we don't yet know what will happen after Zelensky's. On December 26, 1941, the US was already in the war three weeks after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor--an event that totally discredited the America First isolationist-proto-fascist movement of that time.
Much to Churchill's relief, Roosevelt and Marshall had already made clear to him during White House meetings the previous days that they would not prioritize fighting the Japanese in the Pacific to the exclusioin of the war in Europe; but were all in on preparing to bring the American industrial and military colossus against the Nazis as well. As Churchill memorably says in the speech; the combination of the UK, US and Soviet Union were bound to overwhelm Nazi Germany and Japan; the question was whether deliverance would come in 1942, 1943 or 1944.
In the case of Zelensky and Ukraine, we don't know the answer yet. Clearly, Zelensky chose this moment to give this speech to Congress because the Republicans are about to take over the House, with an empowered band of modern-day Trump-inspired America First isolationists and proto-fascists determined to sharply limit US aid to Ukraine. It is critical that the Biden Administration do whatever is necessary to push through the Omnibus bill in the next few days to ensure Ukraine the promised and desperately needed $45 billion, but even assuming that happens, Mc Carthy, Greene, Jordan and the rest of that noxious crowd, pushed forward by the sneering likes of Tucker Carlson, will pose great challenges ahead.
In our own time, unfortuately, the second coming of America First remains very much alive and active in the political arena, and as long as that is the case, Putin retains hope of ultimately realizing his evil designs. One prays that Zelensky's brilliant speech makes that form of treason against democracy and humanity too repulsive even for the likes of Kevin McCarthy to speak out loud in the Halls of Congress; or for the likes of Trump and DeSantis to whip up anti-democratic sentiment on the hustings in Red America, but we don't know yet if that will be the case.
I love Volodymr Zelensky and devoutly pray he will inspire his own generation and generations to come around the world to stand up, flight back and ultimately prevail against hatred, bigotry and totalitarianism; and to take on the existential climate crisis with similar clear-eyed sense of purpose. If anyone can inspire us to fight for and secure a livable, democratic and humane world for our children and grandchildren, it is Volodymyr Zelensky. But nothing is preordained. How the history of the 21st Century gets written literally depends on all of us.
Friday, August 5, 2022
You Can Go Home Again
Monday, April 18, 2022
Apotheosis In Dublin
The administrator of the Jeanie Johnston refugee ship from the potato famine era welcomes Bohdan, a 13-year-old Ukrainian refugee, to Ireland |
Wednesday, April 6, 2022
Friday, February 11, 2022
In Solidarity With Ukraine and Defense of Democracy
I am sitting in front of my computer at home in Frederick tonight scared and disheartened by the horror that may be about to envelop the beautiful city of Kyiv and its three million plus people, including dear family members. The sheer insanity and malevolence of what may be about to happen feels impossible to absorb. I pray Biden’s presumed laying down the law tomorrow on the phone to Putin on the sweep of planned sanctions that effectively shut down Russia’s oil and gas exports and cut it off from the international banking system may still deter Putin from moving forward with a merciless invasion that would likely kill and wound tens of thousands and traumatize tens of millions.
Sunday, August 15, 2021
Saigon 1975, Kabul 2021 and Me
Watching the shocking entrance of the Taliban into
Kabul today, as Afghan president Ashraf Ghani fled the country and chaos reigned
in the city, takes me vividly back to April 30, 1975, the day that Saigon fell to
the North Vietnamese Army and Viet Cong. Then too we witnessed chaotic scenes—encapsulated
in the image of U.S. Embassy personal contractors
and desperate Vietnamese allies climbing a perilous ladder onto the roof and
then scrambling onto helicopters for the flight out.
I must acknowledge that I—then a 25-year-old self-described radical who had been involved in anti-Vietnam protests for ten years---cried tears of joy as I walked the streets of Madison, Wisconsin that day; elated by the military victory of the National Liberation Front and North Vietnamese army which had fought with tremendous steadfastness and courage for over a decade against the world’s strongest military power to liberate their country. Looking back, I have ambivalent feelings about my ecstatic response to the humiliation of my own country, which was reeling in the realization that it had lost a war for the first time in its history. (Afghanistan is clearly the second). In fact, I still believe, as I did then, that the U.S. war effort in Vietnam was immoral and destructive of both that country and our own. Yet a lot went down in the ensuing months and years that nowadays causes me to recoil whenever I look back on my ‘tears of joy’ moment.
First, I was shaken when reading accounts of the crackdown on free expression
by the ‘liberators’ of Vietnam, who dispatched hundreds of thousands of their
fellow countrymen sent to ‘re-education’ camps. Still, I noted that the U.S.-backed
South Vietnamese regime had also been dictatorial—and deeply corrupt to boot. Then came the horror of the Khmer Rouge genocide in Cambodia, a grotesque outbreak
of murderous savagery which, like the Cultural Revolution in China in the 1960s
and Stalin’s massive purges in the 1930s, showed vividly that absolute power,
even when clad in Marxian garb, indeed corrupts absolutely. I shudder that I had once lionized brutal killers.
During the 1980’s. I made four trips to the Soviet Union
as a journalist to visit with and report on Jewish refuseniks persecuted for
speaking out against an anti-Semitic regime that denied them the right
to emigrate. During the first decade of the 21st Century, while
working as an advocate for strengthening Muslim-Jewish relations, I came to belatedly
understand that America, a multi-racial and multi-religious country where immigrants
from anywhere have the opportunity to feel become fully American and realize the
American dream; operates a model intrinsically superior to that of Europe, where
it is infinitely more difficult for immigrants, including Muslims, Black Africans
and Asians, to achieve full acceptance simply because they aren’t
ethnically French, Italian, German or Swedish.
Having buttressed myself in a newfound appreciation for
America and its founding vision, I was horrified by the rise of Trump and white
ethno-nationalism. Yet the emergence and still-extant peril of American fascism
led me to the determination to fight to preserve America’s promise, rather than
reverting to my youthful anti-Americanism. Nowadays, I affirm that America, warts
and all, is a force for good in the world, an indispensable player in the
struggle to averting a grim, authoritarian future for humanity,
So today, I am decidedly not crying tears of joy over
the fall of Kabul. On the contrary, I am repulsed by the triumph of the Taliban
and their sinister ideology, and fearful that Afghanistan will now revert to a
deranged medievalist vision of an Islamic emirate with women reduced to the
level of chattel; light years from the liberating version of Islam that I have
absorbed from many Muslim friends with whom I have worked. Tragically, it now
appears the retrograde jihadi vision will be energized around the world by its victory
in Afghanistan; just as happened with the rise of ISIS in 2014. I fear for the
fates of westernized Afghans of both sexes who believed they could build a progressive
and humanistic Afghanistan, America nurtured these beautiful souls and then abruptly
abandoned them to their fates.
Still, it is unlikely that things would have ended any
differently if the U.S. had postponed its withdrawal one year or five years, Despite
the myriad differences between Vietnam and Afghanistan and between the
ideologies of communism and jihadism, the falls of Saigon and Kabul 46 years
apart vividly show the folly of the US seeking to impose our will through puppet
regimes in countries hostile to our values and determined to achieve
self-determination. As one observer noted today, the Taliban fighters fought out
of deep and abiding belief, while the Afghan army recruits fought for money. In
both Vietnam and Afghanistan, a huge part of that belief was about driving out foreign—i.e.
American—invaders, just as the rag tag Afghans also improbably accomplished against
the British in the 19th Century and the Soviets in the 1980’s.
On the other hand, all may not be lost in Afghanistan.
It is hard to see how a Taliban-run Afghanistan can survive outside the international
system. All of Afghanistan’s neighbors, including Pakistan, India, Russia,
China and even Iran, look with trepidation at the emergence of a proselytizing
jihadist regime near their borders. The empowerment of a generation of Afghan
women is an established fact that will be hard to turn back completely.
History shows us that over time revolutionary fervor
fades and once-radicalized nations join the international system, as Vietnam
did in the 1980’s and 1990’s. My own evolution, like so many of my contemporaries,
from an anti-American radical to a liberal who believes in harnessing American
power to achieve a democratic world order, is a piece of that same process. There
will continue to be major bumps and setbacks along the way, but I continue to
believe with Martin Luther King that the arc of history ultimately bends toward
justice. While mourning today’s tragic events in Afghanistan, all of us must recommit
to buttressing freedom, building a more just societal order and to saving our shared
planet.
Wednesday, July 28, 2021
Ben and Jerry's Positive Step and Israel's Over-the_Top Response
Stuff and nonsense! That's my response to
Israeli President Isaac Herzog's overheated claim that Ben and Jerry's decision
not to distribute its ice cream in the occupied Palestinian territories amounts
to "a new form of terrorism." The announced decision by the ice cream
firm from Vermont to discontinue distributing its product in areas that Israel
has illegally occupied for 54 years and filled with settlers, even while making
clear that it intends to continue its operations inside Israel proper, is not,
as Herzog claims "economic terrorism that tries to harm Israeli citizens
and the Israeli economy" but is rather a principled stand in support of
the right to self-determination by Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem and
the West Bank who are harmed daily by living under occupation.
To be clear, I myself am opposed to BDS calls
for a total economic boycott of Israel until it agrees to conditions that would
amount to its undoing like the the Right of Return of 1948 refugees and their
descendants to all of Israel. However, I support an economic boycott of the
settlements as something long overdue. If there is something we have learned
clearly over the past half century, unless there are costs--political and
economic-- exacted for the settlement enterprise it will continue and expand.
As Meretz MK Yair Golan, a former IDF chief of staff, put it: “As someone who
knows terrorism and has been fighting terrorism all his life, what is happening
in the international arena is not terrorism. We must fight against the boycott
with one hand, and for a two-state solution with the other....An ice cream
boycott is not terrorism,” Golan added.
Even more disturbing than Herzog's rhetorical
excess is the call by Foreign Minister Yair Lapid for 33 US states that have
passed anti-BDS legislation to now come after Ben and Jerry's in their own
jurisdictions, even though, as pointed out, Ben and Jerry's stand is very
different from BDS. In other words, a private U.S.-based company that decides
not to distribute its product in areas under Israeli control that are not
recognized as part of the Israel by the U.S. government) should now by punished
by US states? Since when did it become illegal an American business to decide
not to do business in certain territories abroad?
I repeat that I am not
for BDS, but I strongly oppose its criminalization. Since the Tea Party (the
18th Century version), organizing economic boycotts of governments and companies
involved in wrongful actions has been a part of the American scene. Are we
going to say its OK to boycott California grapes as so many of us did in the
1970's to protest the treatment of farm workers, but not OK for a company like
Ben and Jerry's to specify that they don't want their ice cream sold in Israeli
settlements set up illegally in occupied Palestinian land? That's completely
mishugah, crazy!.