Republicans must help Biden defend democracy

President Joe Biden courageously faced down Russian President Vladimir Putin and communism as he traveled to Ukraine, the first president in history to visit an active war zone that did not have an active U.S. military presence to protect him.

He did so to show support for the brave people of that land who have defied the odds for a year now.

In 1956 the world watched helplessly as Russian — then the Soviet Union — tanks rolled into Hungary, crushing a freedom movement.

In 1968 its tanks crushed dissent in what is now the Czech Republic.

In 2022 Russian tanks were on the roll again, into Ukraine, an independent country with an elected president. Putin thought he could crush freedom there in three days.

But the world also has stood against Russian aggression.

In 1962 President John F. Kennedy famously stood eyeball to eyeball with Soviet Union Premier Nikita Khrushchev in the Cuban Missile Crisis, and that nation’s ships retreated.

In 1987 President Ronald Reagan told Soviet President Gorbachev to “tear down this [Berlin] wall.” And it fell.

Once again our nation and its leader, President Biden, are defending democracy and freedom against Russia and its tanks, planes and mercenaries.

But this time we are hearing that some in the Republican Party are wanting to back away from that resolve. Is that simply because a Democratic president leads the effort?

I hope that Republican Senator J.D. Vance, and central Ohio’s Republican House, Jim Jordan and Troy Balderson will learn from the past, and emulate their Democratic colleagues, Sherrod Brown and Joyce Beatty, along with President Biden, in showing bipartisan, patriotic and unrelenting strength against this Russian President, his tanks and Communism.

Robert Fathman, Dublin