The adulation Donald Trump holds for known murderer and dictator Vladimir Putin, and the contempt he holds for Churchill-esque defender of his country President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, is now all but official. Trump has now called Zelensky a “dictator,” said that Ukraine started the war, and claims that Zelensky’s approval rating is 4%, whereas in fact it is 57% according to a poll by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology earlier this month, a number Trump can only fantasize about. Trump plans to meet with Putin—Europe and Ukraine itself are not invited—to surrender gritty little Ukraine to his Russian friend. Aside from Trump’s jaw-dropping lies–Zelensky is the dictator? Ukraine started the war? –has America fallen so low that it now abandons a democratic ally and exchanges smiles and handshakes with the former KGB officer who is the first to invade a European neighbor since Adolph Hitler?*
In 1938, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain infamously appeased Hitler by surrendering a region of Czechoslovakia known as the Sudetenland to Hitler for a promise of “peace for our time” at Munich. “Munich” is now considered the most shameful act of appeasement—one country debasing itself to another in the hope of some reward—in modern history. (Churchill said to Chamberlain, “You were given the choice between war and dishonor; you chose dishonor, and you will have war.”) The ignominy of Munich and the ignominy of Trump’s plans to dismember and surrender Ukraine to Putin are certainly not perfect analogues, but in one way Trump’s plan, or concept of a plan, is worse. Chamberlain chose dishonor, but he surely knew Hitler was no friend; Trump will choose dishonor by abandoning a friend in need to a despot he admires.
* I must do my homework a little better. After thinking about it more carefully, I remembered the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, looked it up, and was also reminded of the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956. Mea culpa.
John Rachal's Blog
Shameful Echoes
February 20, 2025 at 2:15 am (Political Commentary)
The adulation Donald Trump holds for known murderer and dictator Vladimir Putin, and the contempt he holds for Churchill-esque defender of his country President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, is now all but official. Trump has now called Zelensky a “dictator,” said that Ukraine started the war, and claims that Zelensky’s approval rating is 4%, whereas in fact it is 57% according to a poll by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology earlier this month, a number Trump can only fantasize about. Trump plans to meet with Putin—Europe and Ukraine itself are not invited—to surrender gritty little Ukraine to his Russian friend. Aside from Trump’s jaw-dropping lies–Zelensky is the dictator? Ukraine started the war? –has America fallen so low that it now abandons a democratic ally and exchanges smiles and handshakes with the former KGB officer who is the first to invade a European neighbor since Adolph Hitler?*
In 1938, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain infamously appeased Hitler by surrendering a region of Czechoslovakia known as the Sudetenland to Hitler for a promise of “peace for our time” at Munich. “Munich” is now considered the most shameful act of appeasement—one country debasing itself to another in the hope of some reward—in modern history. (Churchill said to Chamberlain, “You were given the choice between war and dishonor; you chose dishonor, and you will have war.”) The ignominy of Munich and the ignominy of Trump’s plans to dismember and surrender Ukraine to Putin are certainly not perfect analogues, but in one way Trump’s plan, or concept of a plan, is worse. Chamberlain chose dishonor, but he surely knew Hitler was no friend; Trump will choose dishonor by abandoning a friend in need to a despot he admires.
* I must do my homework a little better. After thinking about it more carefully, I remembered the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, looked it up, and was also reminded of the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956. Mea culpa.
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