What Leadership Looks Like

Last year on St. Patrick's Day I posted a post titled The Kiev Address.

Eleven months later a pale shadow of my dream has actually occurred.

But even a pale shadow is a great thing for Ukraine and for the world.

And, after all, although Biden, like me, is Irish, not all of us Irish go overboard on the dramatics.

Maybe I went overboard.

Last St. Patrick's Day.

I had hoped not.

Today's picture should live for all time in glory for all humanity.

 I am re-posting The Kiev Address post here in its entirety.

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Last night I had the strangest dream

I'd ever dreamed before 

I dreamed I saw a mighty room Filled with women and with men 

After some time, I saw that there was a podium with the logo of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization attached to it.

All was silent.

I saw a person walking to the podium.

After he had taken the speaker's position and had begun to speak, I recognized him.

It was Joe Biden.

He spoke briefly.

"Now that this meeting is about to be concluded I need to make an announcement.

"We have filed a flight plan for Kiev.

"Jill and I are going to meet with President Zelensky and the Ukrainian Parliament in special session.

"Since we can't, or won't, stop Putin and his murderous war, the least that the Leader of the Free World, and his wife can do, we believe is to show our faces in the murder zone.

"This is probably foolhardy; for sure it is dangerous; by announcing the visit in advance complete with public flight plan we are making it certain that if some errant surface to air missile or some unknown sniper bullets kill us, they will be instantly identified as having come at the orders of Vladimir the Butcher; and we would expect appropriate action to be taken.

"But we hope and pray for the better angels to prevail.

"We expect to make our visit and to leave at its completion unharmed.

"But we will not be restrained from joining out brothers and sisters in Ukraine. 

I guess a collective gasp would be the best description of the reaction of the room.

The dream wobbled, wiggled, faded and focused as dreams are wont to do.

But things became clear again.

The Bidens were standing with President Zelensky.

Joe was in the middle, Jill was on his right and Zelensky was on his left.

Joe began to speak.

"Thirty One years ago the Ukrainian People revived on this continent, an old and noble nation, newly conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all people are created equal.

"Now you are engaged in a great war of survival, testing whether your nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. You are met on a great battle-field – all of your great land - and survive from day to day, no more, no less. 

"Some day you will come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who already have given their lives that that nation might live. When, in God’s plan for things that happen, this war ends, and you have prevailed, it will be altogether fitting and proper that you – and all of us everywhere - should do this: should so dedicate.

"But, in a larger sense, you will not be able to dedicate – you will not be able to consecrate – you will not be able to hallow -- that ground. 

"The brave men and women, living and dead, who have already struggled there, will have already consecrated it, far above any poor power of the living to add or detract to the achievements of the dead.

"The world will little note, nor long remember what we have said here today, but it will never forget what our brave dead – for we are now, all of us one - did here. 

"It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who are fighting here have thus far so nobly advanced. 

"It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from those honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they have given and are giving the last full measure of their devotion -- that we here resolve that these dead and those that follow shall not have died in vain -- that your nation, under God, shall have a new life born in freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth".

The room was eerily silent.

Then all faded to white.