Kevin Williamson of National Review Online delivers a message to the Russian people.
“We are all Ukrainians now,” says the headline over a Wall Street Journal column. The sentiment is a humane one. But it is a lie. We are not all Ukrainians. Most of us are far removed from anything like that kind of danger or that kind of suffering. The worst we have felt is higher gasoline prices and more expensive groceries. These matter, of course, and they matter a great deal to the poor, for whom these additional financial burdens are very heavy. But that is not the same. …
… No, we are not all Ukrainians now. Not by a damned sight.
We are not all Russians either. I do not flatter myself that the Russian people have been waiting for my advice, but I will offer it, anyway: You have to act. You must. This is your country, your army, your government, your tax dollars, your flag, your name. Vladimir Putin is not a superman, and he cannot act alone. What is being done by your government is not going to be forgiven. You, and your children, and your grandchildren will bear the shame of this. Things are never going to go back to normal for you. I don’t know if you have noticed, but, to put it in popular terms, the civilized world has got together, and we have voted you off the island. The ties between you and the civilized world that have been cut in recent weeks are not going to be restored quickly, and many of them will never be restored at all. You are not part of the civilized world anymore. We are not going to forget what you have been party to, what so many of you have stood by and accepted.
What makes it worse, if that is possible, and certainly more asinine: You have already lost, in that what your government had hoped to achieve will not be achieved.
