“The World Turned Upside down”

Polish anti-Communist hero Lech Walesa reminds Americans what made the US great – since Trump seems to have forgotten it (or else he never knew)

Anti-Soviet freedom fighter Lech Walesa addressing a Joint Meeting of the US Congress, Nov. 15, 1989

Dear DemocracySOS readers,

I’m holding in my hands a book called The Reunification of Europe: Anti-Totalitarian Courage and Political Renewal. It is signed and was given to me by an extraordinarily virtuous gentleman by the name of Tunne Kelam. Mr Kelam was an Estonian anti-Soviet resistance fighter who later led the formation of the first post-Soviet government in Estonia, and then was elected to its first Parliament and also as a representative to the European Parliament. I met Tunne in September 2011 at a conference in Bucharest, Romania, organized by the European People’s Party, the largest center-right party of the European Union.

A number of the conference delegates were former anti-Soviet resistors, representing previously Iron Curtain countries like Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, Lithuania and more. As an American, I was treated with the utmost respect and dignity. The amount of warmth, respect and gratitude extended to Americans for our nation’s role during the Cold War in supporting these countries and their people – including some of the very individuals in the conference room – against Soviet tyranny was something I had never personally experienced before. It left me with a renewed appreciation for some of the finer qualities of the United States.

This memory is what I flashed back on when I watched the preposterous performance by President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance in their sad attempts to humiliate President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine in the hallowed forum of the Oval Office. There are ways to send a strong message to Europe that it needs to pay more for its own defense, particularly with the hot breath of the Russian bear bearing down – once again – on Eastern Europe. But that’s not what Trump did.

Instead, he disgraced himself, the presidency and our nation in the eyes of those freedom fighters and resistors. As a leader, its always incumbent upon your mandate to decide whose side are you on, who do you admire and want to impress and join with. The history of US militarism around the world – from Latin America to Vietnam to Indonesia and more – does not always show America in the best or most noble light. But in the support we provided to eastern and central Europeans during their decades-long battle against Soviet occupation, Uncle Sam was at its best.

Now as Trump and Vance, along with their reckless clown of a South African sidekick Elon Musk, align themselves with other authoritarians like Vladimir Putin, Argentina’s Javier Gerardo Milei, Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, Germany’s far right extremist political party Alternatives for Deutschland and others, the shock and sense of betrayal by those Eastern Europeans who gave their “lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor,” and who have long revered America for its steadfast leadership against tyranny, is profound. It should be a wake-up call to any American with a remaining drip of virtue and dignity, not to mention common sense.

Indeed, the world has been turned upside down. Apparently the US is embarking on a new chapter in which America will no longer be the “indispensable nation” it once was to those battling Russian despotism. Some Americans might think “good riddance” to that role, but they will discover soon enough that a number of good things came along with that preeminence. As Voltaire once said, “Every man is guilty of the good he did not do.”

There is perhaps no figure more qualified to communicate this failure of American character, not to mention this enormous foreign policy blunder, than Lech Walesa, the Polish shipyard electrician who became the leader of the Solidarity trade union and pro-democratic forces in 1989, that ended Poland’s Communist rule and hastened the end of the Cold War. Walesa was an American hero, invited to the rare privilege, extended to few foreign dignitaries, of addressing the Joint Houses of the US Congress. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, and in 1990 he was elected Poland’s first president of the post-Soviet era. He looked steadfastly into the eyes of Soviet oppression and refused to be cowed or to look away, drawing enormous support from his American allies.

Below, Mr. Walesa and more than 30 former Polish political detainees and anti-Soviet dissidents have signed a short but stinging letter of rebuke to the “agent of chaos” currently occupying the Oval Office. This letter was posted on Mr. Walesa’s Facebook page.

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Your Excellency Mr. President,

We watched the report of your conversation with the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenski with fear and distaste. We consider your expectations to show respect and gratitude for the material help provided by the United States fighting Russia to Ukraine insulting. Gratitude is due to the heroic Ukrainian soldiers who shed their blood in defense of the values of the free world. They have been dying on the frontline for more than 11 years in the name of these values and independence of their Homeland, which was attacked by Putin's Russia.

We do not understand how the leader of a country that is the symbol of the free world cannot see it.

Our panic was also caused by the fact that the atmosphere in the Oval Office during this conversation reminded us of one we remember well from Security Service interrogations and from the debate rooms in Communist courts. Prosecutors and judges at the behest of the all-powerful communist political police also explained to us that they hold all the cards and we hold none. They demanded us to stop our business, arguing that thousands of innocent people suffer because of us. They deprived us of our freedoms and civil rights because we refused to cooperate with the government and our gratitude. We are shocked that Mr. President Volodymyr Zelenski was treated in the same way.

The history of the 20th century shows that every time the United States wanted to keep its distance from democratic values and its European allies, it ended up being a threat to themselves. This was understood by President Woodrow Wilson, who decided to join the United States in World War I in 1917. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt understood this, deciding after the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 that the war for the defense of America would be fought not only in the Pacific, but also in Europe, in alliance with the countries attacked by the Third Reich.

We remember that without President Ronald Reagan and American financial commitment it would not have been possible to bring the collapse of the Soviet Union empire. President Reagan was aware that millions of enslaved people were suffering in Soviet Russia and the countries it conquered, including thousands of political prisoners who paid for their sacrifice in defense of democratic values with freedom. His greatness was [measured] on the fact that he without hesitation called the USSR the "Empire of Evil" and gave it a decisive fight. We won, and the statue of President Ronald Reagan stands today in Warsaw vis a vis of the US embassy.

Mr. President, material aid - military and financial - cannot be equivalent to the blood shed in the name of independence and freedom of Ukraine, Europe, as well as the whole free world. Human life is priceless, its value cannot be measured with money. Gratitude is due to those who make the sacrifice of blood and freedom. It is obvious for us, the people of "Solidarity", former political prisoners of the communist regime serving Soviet Russia.

We are calling for the United States to [uphold] the guarantees it made with Great Britain in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, which recorded a direct obligation to defend the intact borders of Ukraine in exchange for giving up its nuclear weapons resources. These guarantees are unconditional: there is no word about treating such aid as an economic exchange.

Lech Wales, b. political prisoner, Solidarity leader, president of the Republic of Poland III

Mark Bailin, b. political prisoner, editor of independent publishing houses

Severn Blumstein, b. political prisoner, member of the Workers' Defense Committee

Teresa Bogucka, b. a political prisoner, activist of the democratic opposition and Solidarity

Gregory Bogut, b. political prisoner, activist of democratic opposition, independent publisher

Mark Borowik, b. political prisoner, independent publisher

Bogdan Borusewicz, b. political prisoner, leader of the underground Solidarity in Gdansk

Zbigniew Bujak, b. political prisoner, leader of the underground Solidarity in Warsaw

Władysław Frasyniuk, b. political prisoner, leader of the underground Solidarity in Wrocław

Andrew Gintzburg, b. a political prisoner, activist of the underground Solidarity

Richard Grabarczyk, b. a political prisoner, Solidarity activist

Alexander Janiszewski, b. a political prisoner, Solidarity activist

Peter Kapczy .ski, b. a political prisoner, activist of the democratic opposition

Mark Kossakowski, b. political prisoner, independent publicist

Christopher the King, b. a political prisoner , independence activist

Jaroslav Kurski, b. a political prisoner, activist of the democratic opposition

Barbara Swan, b. a political prisoner, activist of the underground Solidarity

Bogdan Lis, b. political prisoner, leader of the underground Solidarity in Gdansk

Henryk Majewski, b. a political prisoner, Solidarity activist

Adam Michnik, b. political prisoner, activist of the democratic opposition, editor of independent publishing houses

Slavomir Najniger, b. a political prisoner, activist of the underground Solidarity

Peter the German , b. political prisoner, journalist, and printer of underground publishing houses,

Stefan Konstanty Niesiołowski, b. a political prisoner , independence activist

Edward Nowak, b. a political prisoner, activist of the underground Solidarity

Wojciech Onyszkiewicz, b. political prisoner, member of the Workers' Defence Committee, Solidarity activist

Anthony Pawlak, b. a political prisoner, activist of the democratic opposition and underground Solidarity

Sylwia Poleska-Peryt, b. a political prisoner, activist of the democratic opposition

Christopher Push, b. a political prisoner, activist of the underground Solidarity

Richard Push, b. a political prisoner, activist of the underground Solidarity,

Jacek Rakowiecki, b. a political prisoner, activist of the underground Solidarity

Andrew Severn, b. political prisoner, actor, director of the Polish Theater in Warsaw

Witold Sielewicz, b. political prisoner, printer of independent publishing houses

Henryk Sikora, b. a political prisoner, Solidarity activist

Christopher Siemien Krski, b. political prisoner, journalist, and printer of underground publishing houses

Grayna Staniszewska, b. a political prisoner, leaders of Solidarity of the Beskids region

George Degrees, b. a political prisoner, activist of the democratic opposition

Joanna Happy, b. political prisoner, editor of Solidarity underground press

Ludwik Turko, b. a political prisoner, activist of the underground Solidarity

Matthew Wierzbicki, b. political prisoner, printer and publicist of independent publishing houses