America’s 1938

I am a 79-year-old veteran of 24 years in the U.S. Air Force, including the Air Force Academy, where in 1964 I studied the Nuremburg Trial series.

The communications that came out of the recent meeting of Trump administration officials with a Russian delegation in Riyadh concerning Ukraine are unbelievably like the communications from Munich in September 1938.

That agreement gave parts of Czechoslovakia to Germany and limited the Czechs’ ability to defend themselves, almost exactly what the U.S. says Ukraine must do.

In September 1939, one year later, Germany launched World War II.

Now is our America’s 1938.

How can we betray the Ukrainian people in their fight against the Communist Russian invasion of their sovereign nation?

This is democracy versus tyranny.

Betraying Ukraine in Riyadh makes a mockery of my USAF career, a career which I pursued because I believed it was worth fighting and possibly dying for democracy, the rule of law and the idea that all men are created equal.

We also face an enemy within who appear to be intent on destroying democracy here and abroad.

The nation that we know, that so many military veterans have fought and died for, will no longer be a democracy by any honest definition if we do not also win the fight with that enemy.

We must defeat those who ignore the Constitution and abandon our allies in their fight against communist Russia and China.

Jim Bettcher

Sequim