Nancy Pelosi's visit to Kyiv, and thoughts it has triggered about the Alamo

 I concede the validity of the this-latest-example-of--recent-visits-by-leaders-of-Britain, Poland and the Baltic states-is-to-a-large-degree-grandstanding argument. Very little in this universe is pure. 

Still, I think it sends a damn important signal. 

I'm sort of free-associating here, but just before I decided to write this post, I had reason - never mind the specifics - to consider the unique spirit of independence that is part of the Texas character.

I will say that if you've never spent much time in Texas, or specifically in San Antonio, don't mess with booking your hotel room in some chain place or swanky modern place. Get a room at the Menger Hotel, which was built in 1859, just as San Antonio was becoming a city and beginning to surround the Alamo area. 

And then go to the Cinemax across the street and watch the re-enactment movie about the Alamo massacre. 

In 1836, when the battle took place, people - yes, of Northern European extraction - had been settling into the compound called the Alamo that had originally been established as a religious community for many years. Davy Crockett, from Tennessee, had been among them. After Mexico's securing of independence from Spain in 1821 and the subsequent rise of the dictator-general Santa Ana, that land had become an expansionist victory for the newly established nation-state. But at that point, there was not much but wilderness around the compound, and the people within had come to develop a strong sense of it being home.

Scouts from the Alamo went out and came back with reports that Santa Ana's forces were coming northward, and were within a couple of weeks of reaching where they were. 

Things came to a head after one guy in the Alamo community, William Barrett Travis, called all the men into the courtyard after dinner one evening. He took his sword out of its sheath and drew a line in the dirt. All those who were with him were to so indicate by coming over the line. He said that if anyone had a problem with the collective decision to defend the walls of the Alamo, he would respect that decision, and no hostility would be shown to that man. One man took that position, and the community wished him well as he walked away. 

There is a statue of Travis unsheathing his sword in the Menger Hotel lobby. 

What happened when Santa Ana's forces arrived was a complete bloodbath. Literally, as in blood flowing down the walls. Not a single man defending the Alamo survived. 

Mexican forces rounded up the women and children and huddled them in an inner chamber. 

The whole Mexican victory soon became moot, however, as Texas won a territory-wide victory and became an independent nation for nine years, and then part of the United States of America.

At this point, the Alamo, in the 1830s a lone outpost surrounded by wilderness, is in the middle of downtown San Antonio.

The parallel I hope you are seeing is that the defenders of the Alamo were willing to face the prospect of every last one of them dying. In fact, that's what happened. 

That's the spirit animating the defense of Ukraine. 

So, sure, these visits by leaders from other countries to Kyiv are not rolling back Russian aggression. But they are making the statement that there is such a thing as the West, which is driven by a set of laudable values, and that they stand with good people who will not be trampled into submission, whatever the cost.