Today is Ukraine’s D-Day — Ukraine’s Counteroffensive Has Started

Seventy-nine years ago, Allied forces landed across dozens of miles of beaches in Normandy, France. The landings were supported by paratroopers from both the famed 101st Airborne Division and the 82nd Airborne Division.

These soldiers from the U.S., Canada, the UK, and Australia began their moral crusade against a very real evil that had spread across Europe.

I say “moral crusade” because in all the wars of the modern era, from World War I to the War on Terror, WWII was pretty clear cut — it wasn’t for fake WMDs, it wasn’t for oil, it wasn’t even to stop Communism from spreading — it was a fight of good against evil > full stop.

Granted, the United States of the mid-20th Century was an imperfect democracy, and it still is today. In the 1940s, many Americans of color were denied even basic rights, and segregation was the law of the land.

But at least the ideals of America were intact, even if the nation has yet to live up to them.

Like the U.S. in WWII, Ukraine is also fighting to defeat a very real evil. And like the U.S., it is also an imperfect democracy with corruption and some elements of white nationalism.

And yet, Ukraine’s fledgling democracy is authentic, where the citizens genuinely desire closer ties with the West.

The landings in June of 1944 signaled the beginning of the end of the Nazi regime. 160,000 allied troops were expertly…