Every time I hear about an American civilian getting picked up and imprisoned in places like Afghanistan, North Korea, Iraq or Iran, I say — what the heck are they doing there anyway? They shouldn’t be there!
It always reminds me of the last verse in the Dylan song, “Frankie Lee and Judas Priest,” where he sings, “The moral of this story / the moral of this song / is simply that one should never be where one does not belong …”
So, imagine my surprise when, during our recent trip to Poland, after driving 3-½ hours from one Arabian horse farm to another, our friend and guide remarked — you know we drove right along the Ukraine border, don’t you?
No, I did not know that, and then I asked myself the same question I ask the ones I hear about on the news, namely, what was I doing there?! And I laughed when I answered – I’m here for my girlfriend, as it was a dream come true trip for her to visit these farms and see these horses.
In the week before embarking on our journey, I quelled the concerns of family members who knew we would be in the general vicinity of the borders with Belarus and Ukraine by saying, “We’ll be 300 miles away from the bombing.”
It was true a few weeks ago, but today, as I write this, every main airport in Poland is shut down, including the one we flew in and out of — in Warsaw, due to Russian drones violating Polish airspace. One of the drones hit a house located in the vicinity of the town where we stopped for gas, so what may have been a safe zone two weeks ago, today, is on the front line of the action.
Sign up to receive headlines in your inbox!
Breaking News | Local Sports | Daily Headlines | Local Obituaries | Weather | Local Offers
I won’t attempt to offer any geopolitical analysis or what it might mean that Russia tested the waters by encroaching on a NATO country because who knows where things will stand a week from now when this column comes out. But I will say, the news of a Russian threat is now changing the narrative and adding a bit of intrigue to the story of our trip, after the fact.
Not that we were ever in any real danger, mind you, but as our friend who was with us kept saying, “Never let the truth get in the way of a good story.”
The truth, in this case, is that our guide did drive along the Ukraine border, but we didn’t because our friends from Sweden, having been there before and knowing the roads, convinced us to peel off from the others and follow them along a winding route 20 miles to the west, still pretty close, but not right on the border.
While the horse-related activities and the experiences at those stud farms will undoubtedly be what will persist and predominate in my gal’s memories of the trip, the most culturally consequential or historically significant moment occurred on our second day in Warsaw.
As we were walking into the Old Town section of the city, we found ourselves smack-dab in the midst of the inauguration ceremony for Poland’s newly-elected President — on a street filled with more than a hundred-thousand people marching, singing songs, carrying banners displaying the Polish flag and the U.S. flag; large posters depicting the Polish President face-to-face with the U.S. President; signs saying “Poland First,” and revelers wearing red and white hats saying “Make Poland Great Again,” in English. We have described this episode to everyone who has wanted to hear about our trip.
With the news of the Russian drones in Poland, I couldn’t help but wonder, given our President’s expressed skepticism toward security commitments in Europe, and America’s leadership role in NATO (which was created to deter Soviet aggression), if those people who filled that street in Warsaw and waved U.S. and Polish flags together in a display of “solidarity,” will continue to show enthusiasm for nationalistic, non-interventionist policies should more Russian drones advance across their borders?
