In 1945, while serving as the Military Governor of Bavaria, General Patton shared the following with Larry Newman, a correspondent for Integration News Service:

“The thousands from North Africa to the Channel, on the sea, in the air, in the mud and filth, who gave their lives in what they believed was the final fight in the cause of freedom. I wonder how the dead will speak today when they know that for the first time in centuries we have opened Central and Western Europe to the forces of Genghis Khan. I wonder how they feel now that they know there will be no peace in our times and that Americans, some not yet born, will have to fight the Russians tomorrow, or ten, 15, or 20 years from tomorrow… 

Churchill was the only man in a position of power who knew what we were walking into. He wanted to get into the Balkans and Central Europe to keep the Russians at bay. He wanted to get into Berlin and Prague and get to the Baltic coast on the North. Churchill had a sense of history. Unfortunately, some of our leaders were just damn fools who had no idea of Russian history. Hell, I doubt if they even knew Russia, just less than 100 years ago, owned Finland, sucked the blood out of Poland, and were using Siberia as a prison for their own people.”¹

Today, as we follow the debates in the U.S. Congress, I wonder why we are not learning from past events. Leadership is extremely important if we want to effectively engage globally. There are a number of individuals in Congress lacking leadership skills that are negatively impacting unity of effort and progress. Defending freedom around the world is important and will keep us safe at home. Supporting efforts in Ukraine and other places will help us avoid future large-scale wars, which are costly both in human and financial terms. We are globally interconnected and there is no way around that, so we need to evolve and lead from the front.

---

1. D’Este, Carlo. Patton: A Genius For War. (P. 734). New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1995.  ↩︎

• Politics