Babiš at the White House

The low point of the Cold War was the Cuban Missile Crisis of Oct. 1962. It was also the low point of relations between the United States and Czechoslovakia. The U.S. had severed diplomatic ties with Cuba in 1961, and Czechoslovakia's embassy in Washington became the official go-between. On Oct. 24, 1962, the Czechoslovak government issued a sharp condemnation in Rudé právo of the "imperialist" blockade of Cuba. Thousands of Czechs protested in Prague the next day and tore down the flag at the U.S. embassy, according to the New York Times. When U.S. politicians and diplomats speak today about 100 years of Czech-American "friendship," it's an Orwellian distortion of history. It's even more perverse when the Czech prime minister - an elite of the Czechoslovak Communist regime - sits next to the U.S. president and states that the two countries have been allies since 1918. Let's celebrate the high points of Czech-American relations, but let's not airbrush the low points.