{"id":3523,"date":"2025-03-01T00:18:54","date_gmt":"2025-03-01T00:18:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/friscotimes.org\/?p=3523"},"modified":"2025-03-01T00:18:54","modified_gmt":"2025-03-01T00:18:54","slug":"opinion-a-day-of-american-infamy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/friscotimes.org\/?p=3523","title":{"rendered":"Opinion | A Day of American Infamy"},"content":{"rendered":"


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In August 1941, about four months before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Franklin Roosevelt met with Winston Churchill aboard warships in Newfoundland\u2019s Placentia Bay and agreed to the Atlantic Charter,<\/a> a joint declaration by the world\u2019s leading democratic powers on \u201ccommon principles\u201d for a postwar world.<\/p>\n

Among its key points: \u201cno aggrandizement, territorial or other\u201d; \u201csovereign rights and self-government restored to those who have been forcibly deprived of them\u201d; \u201cfreedom from fear and want\u201d; freedom of the seas; \u201caccess, on equal terms, to the trade and to the raw materials of the world which are needed for their economic prosperity.\u201d<\/p>\n

The charter, and the alliance that came of it, is a high point of American statesmanship. On Friday in the Oval Office, the world witnessed the opposite. Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine\u2019s embattled democratic leader, came to Washington prepared to sign away anything he could offer President Trump except his nation\u2019s freedom, security and common sense. For that, he was rewarded with a lecture on manners from the most mendacious vulgarian and ungracious host ever to inhabit the White House.<\/p>\n

If Roosevelt had told Churchill to sue for peace on any terms with Adolf Hitler and to fork over Britain\u2019s coal reserves to the United States in exchange for no American security guarantees, it might have approximated what Trump did to Zelensky. Whatever one might say about how Zelensky played his cards poorly \u2014 either by failing to behave with the degree of all-fours sycophancy that Trump demands or to maintain his composure in the face of JD Vance\u2019s disingenuous provocations \u2014 this was a day of American infamy.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n