by Greg Mayer

As someone interested in history, I am both interested and wary when analogies are drawn among different periods and events in history, especially applying the past to the present day. And, as another prelude, I should note that I have said here before at WEIT that Bret Stephens is wrong about most things. But when he’s right, he’s right, and he’s right about yesterday’s cringe-inducing display of depravity by the erstwhile leaders of the free world, the President and Vice President of the United States. [JAC: You can find Stephens’s piece archived here.] I found Stephens’ historical analogy to the pre-Pearl Harbor meeting between Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, which led to the Atlantic Charter, whose principles include that there should be “no aggrandizement, territorial or other” and that “sovereign rights and self-government [shall be] restored to those who have been forcibly deprived of them”, very clarifying. Money quote:

If Roosevelt had told Churchill to sue for peace on any terms with Adolf Hitler and to fork over Britain’s coal reserves to the United States in exchange for no American security guarantees, it might have approximated what Trump did to Zelensky.