Fate always gives a certain individual or a certain state a chance to make headway. If this chance is missed, the individual as well as the whole nation will eke out a long miserable existence.
The Madrid blasts of March 11, 2004 caused quite a ripple in all capitals of the world and made one ponder over what the so-called antiterrorist coalition rests on. If it is the question of a certain states’ global ambitions or purely material interest, this will signal the end of it. For you cannot possibly provide genuine security for yourself and your people if you are so muddle-headed. No geopolitical or material interests are worth even a tear of one child! Terrorism is totalitarian by nature and is therefore ubiquitous and not confined to a certain place or time. It never spares or values humans. So it must be fought out of fundamental and ideological considerations and be based on the love of such values as freedom and human life. This love either exists and thus continues to unite people or it does not exist and thus cannot be adequately replaced with anything at all. Moreover, only then can this struggle be successful when it is not imposed from outside but is an inner and well-considered requirement of the people themselves.
With this in view, Western Europe turned out to be totally unprepared for a true all-out war against terrorism. Trying to make themselves safe and keep up their high living standards, one Western country after another strive to get locked within heir own borders. It is quite clear: they have something to lose and they are loath to lose it. Conversely, Eastern European states, the new EU members, are now too much absorbed in the problems of EU membership and self-determination to think seriously about what is going on in the world.
In this connection, Ukraine stands a fair chance to be the most consistent and dependable member of an antiterrorist and antitotalitarian coalition. For the Ukrainian people have never parted with the love of freedom. This love has always accompanied our (as well as, incidentally, American) people in the course of time. Although this love never resulted in any specific domestic material gains, it was still preserved as a motive force. But for this factor, the Soviet Union would have never collapsed. It is a force indeed! This means our people did, does, and will always have something which is a motive and active force of history itself! So this force can now compensate for its failures in the domestic sphere with gains in the foreign-relations sphere. Ukraine can and must become one of the chief motive forces of an antiterrorist and antitotalitarian coalition. Ukraine has nothing to lose in this battle, for it is the only country (besides the US) that has enormous experience of this struggle at a genetic level. Active and willing participation in the antiterrorist coalition will give Ukraine a chance to become a civilized state, which may, incidentally, make some other countries cease to be one. It is not tragic at all. Being civilized is not a perpetual or losable model but an active stand. Not an easy thing to do, it will have to be constantly confirmed in our so difficult, so mindless, and so interconnected world!
P.S. Incidentally, the current government and opposition could well join forces in their pursuit and bring Ukrainian statehood up to a qualitatively new level, thus throwing communist-socialist stupidity into eternal oblivion. A chance for Ukraine is a chance for all. A chance to have a true civilized state, a true well-respected government, and a true self-respecting opposition. A chance for us to become true patriots. For our boys in Iraq, it is, after all, a chance to make full assessment of their life, that is, a chance to survive.
