HERE, RIGHT MATTERS
An American Story
By Alexander Vindman
In his compelling memoir, “Here, Right Matters,” Alexander Vindman explains how it came to pass that he became a chief witness in Donald Trump’s first impeachment trial. What he presents is the story of an ordinary man placed in extraordinary circumstances who did the right thing.
Those circumstances began when, as an Army lieutenant colonel and expert on Russia and Eastern Europe serving on Trump’s National Security Council, Vindman was present during a call between Trump and Ukraine’s newly elected president, Volodymyr Zelensky. He describes how Trump floated the idea that Zelensky should investigate Joe Biden and his son in exchange for U.S. support. At the time, the administration had suspended millions of dollars of congressionally mandated foreign aid to Ukraine.
Vindman sets out to review the life experiences and character-building moments that led him to report that conversation to White House officials and to remain steadfast in the tumult that followed. He starts with some family history, recounting how his grandmother escaped certain death in World War II by fleeing Ukraine for the Ural Mountains in Russia with his father in tow. He then explains how his father later fled the Soviet Union, despite having overcome rampant anti-Semitism to rise within the Communist system; he could no longer stomach the moral compromises he had been forced to make. Other defining moments for Vindman include his upbringing in Brooklyn’s immigrant communities in the 1980s, as well as the values imparted and lessons learned from his military service.
But Vindman’s story really hits its stride with its discussion of the fateful telephone call and its aftermath. Even those who know the details of Trump’s impeachment will find it chilling to hear them related by one of the event’s chief figures. At the same time, they will likely be disheartened to learn of those who failed to stand by Vindman during his ordeal. That list includes Army leaders, many of whom seemed more annoyed by Vindman’s drawing the military into the political spotlight than impressed with his efforts to do his duty.
The list also includes Vindman’s own father, who initially told his son to do what the president wanted, and questioned whether anyone could survive butting heads with power at that level. Vindman grapples here as well with the contention that his choice was the result of hubris — as one senior military officer put it, that he was like Icarus, flying too close to the sun. A more fitting explanation is that Vindman was driven by idealism, mixed with a little cluelessness about how fully he and his life would be consumed by his revelations.
Perhaps most moving are the questions Vindman asked himself when he considered leaving what increasingly appeared to be a dead-end career in the Army. How would he provide for his family? What purpose would his life serve? Equally gut-wrenching, but in a different way, are his accounts of the many who made the opposite choice — those whose careerism or narrowly conceived professionalism led them to go along with Trump’s chicanery, and sometimes to lie.
In the end, beyond explaining why he did the right thing, Vindman seems to have another goal in telling his story. He is reminding, or rather cajoling, Americans to remember who they are, or at least who he thinks they are. He reassures us that this is the country where right matters, where, in the end, good prevails over bad. Here, though, the reader is left wondering. After all, in a country where those values are deeply revered, the events that inspired Vindman’s memoir should never have happened.
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August 03, 2021 at 04:00PM
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