LIFE'S OBSERVATIONS

The long and winding road.

By David Mosdal

Guest Columnist

When the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Yesterday, Russian troops announced their uninvited entrance into Ukraine with tanks and missiles. The Ukrainians may have preferred that they take off their muddy boots and leave their guns by the door, but then, the Little Green Men didn't come for

tea. They came to take. Ukraine has long been known as the bread basket of Europe. It has been conquered and colonized, caudled and crucified, coveted and cast off by those who have held temporary domination in their own spheres of influence. Those who have attempted to own the Ukrainian people through the last 13 centuries have been Vikings, Poles, Russians, Germans and Turks. All of these groups tried more than once to subjugate the Ukrainians. Napoleon tried, Hitler tried, Stalin starved 4 million of them to death less than one hundred years ago. Even that could not extinguish these people and their will to survive and find happiness in agriculture and industry. Cossack is derived from the Turkic Kazak which means Free Man. Think about that for a moment. If you remember anything from your history classes, it might be that any invading army of conscripted soldiers who engaged the Cossacks on their home Steppes, much of which is present day Ukraine, did not win and did not fare well in the attempt. Will even the saberrattling specter of nuclear weapons cow them into submission? I think not. After many generations of defending their homeland, they survive, and still have their own language. Chernobyl is the Ukrainian home of the world's worst peacetime nuclear disaster, and they have reasonably contained that calamity. Do the Ukrainians know a little more than the rest of world about dealing with that kind of unthinkable mess? Perhaps. And do you remember Mykola Melnyk, the helicopter pilot who flew mission after mission into a radioactive cloud to seal off that damaged reactor? He was Ukrainian. His life was shortened by years because of his 52 hours of selfless giving to the world. My point is that these people have been on a Long and Winding Road in search of peace and prosperity, as they understand it, for centuries. Their simple twocolored flag symbolizes a blue sky over yellow harvest fields. Why would anyone want to mess that up? By the time this is in print things could be radically different but I hope that goodness and honesty prevail. What do you hope for?