All history repeats itself, for worse, for better, for sure.
1938. Germany, led by the fascist dictator and Nazi party founder Adolf Hitler, threatened to seize the Sudetenland, the German speaking part of Czechoslovakia. British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain went to Germany and negotiated, acquiescing to Hitler’s demand. In return, Hitler promised that Germany had no further plans for territorial expansion. Chamberlain then infamously proclaimed in a triumphant speech, “My good friends…[I have]… returned from Germany bringing peace with honor. I believe it is peace for our time….Go home and get a nice quiet sleep."
Less than a year later Hitler invaded and conquered Poland. Great Britain and France declared war. World War II began, a cataclysmic conflagration that spanned six years, and plunged the globe into all out war. Hitler and his Axis allies were finally defeated in 1945. Human freedom and human liberty were defended. The United States became the de-facto partner and ally with Europe in defending against a new worldwide threat to freedom: the Soviet Union, aka Russia.
2022. The United States, sided with and helped to fund Ukraine’s efforts to repel Russia which invaded and seized territory, costing hundreds of thousands of lives, many civilians. In the past week that policy has radically changed. We’ve now decided to acquiesce to the Russian dictator Putin. Vladimir Putin. The leader who regularly murders his political opponents, even on foreign soil. Putin, whose rise to power began in 1999 with the mysterious bombing of four apartment buildings, supposed terrorist events. Fear gripped that nation and laid the groundwork for Putin to seize power, and he did, ruthlessly.
Now Putin has apparently become our nation’s new best bud, a “friend” who can be trusted to be a person of peace. That is as long as Russia gets to keep the land they stole. Sound familiar? Representatives of the United States and Russia (I mean, why include Ukraine?) are meeting for talks to end the war. To do as much as he can to prop up his pal Putin I suppose, our President now accuses the leader of Ukraine of being a dictator and also blames that innocent country for causing the war. Even though Ukraine is the victim here, not the criminal.
Is this who we’ve become in this new era in our history? An appeaser of murderous dictators? Fickle ally to Europe. Chummy with any country that strokes the ego of our appeaser in chief.
“Americans will always fight for liberty!”
That’s the stirring sentiment of a 1943 U.S. government poster I have a framed and hanging in my living room. It depicts three Revolutionary War soldiers standing at respectful attention as three modern day army soldiers march by, with grim determination written on their faces. They represent the fighting force that beat Hitler, and fascism, and violent dictatorial rule. Hence the hope then and now that our country will always fight for liberty.
We as a nation haven’t always gotten that ideal right. But it is still our ideal. Our idealistic dream, in the least how we want to see ourselves, maybe even need to see ourselves. As always being on the side of democracy and not despots, the oppressed and not the oppressor, the war-torn innocent and the not the war mongering bullies.
Which makes me wonder…is that cherished value—fighting on the side of liberty—dead? And if not dead, then seemingly on life support? What else can we conclude when our nation’s leaders abandon the country that was attacked to the country that did the attacking? The act of throwing Ukraine under the bus (or in this case a Russian tank) is immoral and obscene, and insulting to all of the American women and men who sacrificed their lives to actually defend freedom and liberty.
What does it profit a nation to gain the world but lose their soul? I guess we are about to find out.
God help us all.
The Reverend John F. Hudson is Senior Pastor of the Pilgrim Church, United Church of Christ, in Sherborn, Massachusetts (pilgrimsherborn.org). He blogs at sherbornpastor.blogspot.com and is a resident scholar at the Collegeville Institute at Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. For twenty-five years he was a columnist whose essays appeared in newspapers throughout Massachusetts and Rhode Island. He has served churches in New England since 1989. For comments, please be in touch: pastorjohn@pilgrimsherborn.org.
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