Ask yourself this question: Would you rescue a puppy from the gutter, shivering, wet and hungry after being abandoned by a heartless individual; take it into your home to be fed and sheltered and given a taste of a secure life; only to toss it back out into the cold with nowhere to go?

Of course, you wouldn’t. Even if you were unable to keep the pup as your own, you would try to find it a happy home, or at least take it to a shelter where it would be cared for and placed for adoption by a loving family. It’s the only decent thing to do . . . isn’t it?

How, then, can the occupant of America’s White House be thinking about revoking the legal status granted by former President Biden to 240,000 Ukrainian refugees left homeless by the relentless Russian assault on their country?

People we invited here, took into our homes and our hearts, and offered a measure of relief and sanity and hope.

People with no homes to return to — just bombed-out shells of buildings in cities still under siege from the daily attacks by Vladimir Putin’s missiles, drones, and marauding military troops.

Most of these people hope to return home someday. They’re not immigrants seeking citizenship. They love their country; they don’t want to stay here, or to be a burden. But the war and the destruction at home have continued far longer than anyone expected. The time to return has not yet come.

But Donald Trump wants them sent back . . . now.

It is nothing short of a betrayal of trust — the sort of action he would not tolerate from another person if it were directed at him. But loyalty, to him, is uni-directional. And in this case, it is unabashedly inhumane; and it is unforgivable.

*. *. *

And it is not only the Ukrainians who are being affected by Trump’s savagery. Remember the refugees who were rescued from Afghanistan when the U.S. left their country defenseless against the returning Taliban? We welcomed them here, granting them temporary humanitarian parole status. And now they too are in danger of being sent back . . . not just to homes that no longer exist, but to certain death by a regime that will arrest them as traitors because they helped the Americans. Many of them were members of the resistance who opposed the Taliban, and volunteered — at great risk — to work with the U.S. military because we offered them hope of a better life.

And are we now to turn our backs on them? To ship them off to be tortured and slaughtered?

That would be beyond inhumane, beyond unforgivable; it would be murder. And need I say, that would be the ultimate betrayal.

I remember when America was better than that.

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
3/7/25