“Solidarity With Ukraine” Plus “World Peace” Means No Turkey in Kyiv

There is a charming neighborhood in southern Oakland County where the trees are towering and everybody seems to die of old age. A place where wealth makes it easy to spout political liberalisms.

A forest of Kamala Harris lawn signs sprouted up so quickly in the neighborhood the night President Joe Biden was knifed in the back, you’d think the homeowners were in on the conspiracy.

Then the morning after the election, the carpet of Kamala signs were gone—just like that—like a strange lover who’d slipped out the backdoor, high heels in hand.

There is one peculiar homeowner still flying political lawn signs. One sign reads: “Solidarity with Ukraine.” The other: “World Peace.”

The incongruity of these dueling ideas confounds me whenever I drive past. I’ve been to Ukraine, and I know they don’t celebrate Thanksgiving. But they might as well this year because people across the state of Michigan delivered the votes to negate this contrived worldview.

Consider that Biden—who in just two months will be relegated to the ashbin of history—inexplicably greenlighted Ukrainian forces to attack Russia using American made long-range missiles guided by American-operated satellites.

In response, the Russians unleashed a terrifying doomsday device that flies at hypersonic speed and can be fitted with nuclear warheads. No technology exists to defend against these missiles, and so the ding dong of doom clangs across the world.

We’ve been promised that a negotiated peace will be America’s priority in Ukraine if the world can make it to January 20, 2025. All wars eventually come to an end when the slaughter and destruction become unbearable. How much death and destitution is the Democratic Party willing to endure?

I look at those platitudes printed on the lawn placards and marvel how the Democrats, once the party of free speech and peace, are now led by wolves of perpetual war who’ve convinced a naïve flock to follow.

Vladimir Putin is a murderer, there is no doubt. And Ukraine has the right to peacefully exist; it cannot be argued. But I wonder if the citizens of this cloistered confine know much about world history or political realities. After all, the voters of Michigan have more say about the war in Ukraine than the Ukrainians themselves, whose elections have been suspended.

Does the homeowner with the manicured lawn know about NATO’s encroachment upon Russia, the missiles in Poland, and the years of America’s broken promises to the contrary? Or the American reaction during the Cuban Missile crisis of 1962, nearly leading to nuclear Armageddon after the Soviet Union placed nuclear weapons 90 miles from Miami? Or that Ukraine had never been a country until the fall of the Russian empire in 1917? Or that Ukraine was an original signatory of the Soviet Union exactly 100 years before Putin’s brutal invasion? Or the proposal of Ukrainian neutrality in 2022?

Dnipro is 5,119 miles from the cozy suburban Detroit cottage with the simple-minded yard signs. The people of eastern Ukraine will be cold and half-starved this Thanksgiving. The people here will have a turkey on the table, a log on the fire, and the Lions on the television.

No yard sign is going to change that.

Charlie LeDuff is a reporter educated in public schools.