Friends in '18, '38, '48, '56, '68, '89 and '18

When U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright welcomed the CR, Hungary and Poland into Nato on March 12, 1999, she told the foreign ministers of the three countries that, "Never again will your fates be tossed around like poker chips on a bargaining table." It was clearly an allusion to 1938, and perhaps to 1948, 1956 and 1968 as well. "'Nothing about you, without you,' is now formalized," she said. It was an apology of a sort for failing the people of Central Europe when they needed U.S. amity the most. In a joint declaration on March 27 of this year by Radek Vondráček and Paul Ryan, the two speakers of the House nevertheless said that, "For long decades, our nations did not acquiesce to the Iron Curtain division of Europe." Yesterday, U.S. Amb. Stephen King tweeted that the U.S.-Czech relationship is 100-years strong. It might indeed be true that Czechs felt friendship for the U.S. throughout the Nazi and Cold War periods, but can the same be said of the U.S. government? Instead of pretending unending friendship, isn't it more honest to admit, as Albright did, that Czechs were cruelly left out in the cold?