Just before WWII, Western European powers appeased Hitler hoping the NAZI problem would just go away. Some apologists for Chamberlain and Daladier suggest that Britain and France were just buying time, that they were not really ready to fight Germany and overestimated its strength. I’m not sure I buy that, but even if there’s a kernel of truth to it, that’s not what’s happening now.

It appears now that the betrayal and abandonment of Ukraine will not be a failure of European foreign policy, but of American domestic politics. If Ukraine falls to Putin, the consequences will be devastating for the freedom of the world. And my country will be crippled with a burden of shame and guilt as great as NAZI Germany, Soviet Russia or Maoist China. We will become a pariah state, one who abandoned its responsibilities and betrayed its ally while it was fighting for our freedom. Britain’s Munich shame was eventually redeemed by Churchill’s dogged leadership, but I see no one like that in America today.

This movie is not over yet, but if it ends the way I expect it to, I will, for the first time in my life, be ashamed to be an American. If America lasts a thousand years, this will be remembered as our worst hour.