Opinion: US and NATO must stand with Ukraine – The Cincinnati Enquirer

Matt Lehman| Opinion contributor

Americans, for good reason, have become wary of international military intervention, engaging in state building exercises that have shown little success. But it is too easy for us to think of Ukraine as another Iraq or Afghanistan to avoid.The current Ukrainian situation is not the same.

The United States has a duty to help Ukraine.We promised to guarantee the security of Ukraine in 1994 when its leaders gave up the worlds third-largest nuclear arsenal.Imagine for a moment how much risk they took in the name of a safer world. Americans should be proud of our military when it upholds our promises.

Ukraine is a democracy and Ukrainians are a free people.While the country is still a developing post-communist state with its own challenges, we are not imposing a foreign value system in a culture we dont understand.Since its independence in 1991, Ukraine has threatened no one. Ukraine does not harbor terrorists, nor does it cause security issues for its neighbors.Ukraines success, and its increasingly Western orientation, are exactly why Vladimir Putin sees it as a threat.

Putins regime is nothing more than a mafia gang pretending to be a legitimate government. He cynically deploys xenophobic tropes against "Ukrainians, Tatarsand Jews" to prop up his regime. He has destroyed any semblance of what we would understand as a free press or free practice of religion. His thugs poison and kill his enemies anywhere in the world. He will shoot down passenger airlines full of civilians if it serves his needs. He dabbles in anti-feminism and homophobia to distract his people from his own crimes. The truth is that Putin rules over a declining and aging population with limited economic opportunities as he and his cronieshoard billions of dollars. Destabilizing Ukraine is a useful prop in advancing his antidemocratic USSR delusion.

If our moral obligation to honor our promise to support free people is not enough, let us not forget that Putin controls the worlds second-largest nuclear arsenal. One day, Putin will die without having established any plan for a peaceful transfer of power.For our own safety, the U.S., with its NATO allies, must prepare for the near certain bloody struggle for power that will engulf Russia.

Ukrainians are not asking for U.S. boots on the ground. They are asking for our moral support and weapons to help them protect their homes and communities from unjust invasion. A recent poll has confirmed that only 3.7% of Ukrainians would flee in the event of war.They will stand and fight for their own independence.

There are moments in history when fundamental human values embodied by the United States and other Western democracies must take precedence over narrow and short-term economic issues. We have a clear choice: arm the Ukrainians and prepare severe sanctions on Russian oligarchs; or just give into Putins reality distorting propaganda and watch thousands lose their life fighting for the freedom we take for granted in the U.S.

Tragically, U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie seems to be siding with the Russian tyrant against our ally in tweets and statements that point toward the economic costs of supporting our ally and make false equivalencies between free Ukraine and the Russian dictatorship.

I support the Biden administration and the sensible Republican coalition working with him to ensure Americas leadership position in this crisis.I call on my fellow Americans to do the same.

Matt Lehman and his family live in Newport, Ky. They lived in Kyiv, Ukraine for five years. He is a candidate for Congress to represent Kentuckys 4th District.

Read more from the original source:
Opinion: US and NATO must stand with Ukraine - The Cincinnati Enquirer