Quin: Maybe Fred could have spared himself and the Post its Dobbsian hissy fit if he’d said: “…it doesn’t take you long to realize that our people have shed blood and treasure on behalf of more people’s liberty than anyone else in modern history.” We saved Europe from itself and brought WWI to an end. We liberated Japanese-occupied areas and Japan itself from the cruelties of Imperial Japan. We largely liberated Western Europe from the Nazis in WWII and then rebuilt a ravaged continent.

In any case, we can be grateful for small favors. Dobbs could have blamed the U.S. for the extent of Soviet losses during WWII and for not risking more of its own — after all, we were in no hurry to invade the continent until the Germans had been sufficiently bled on the brutal Eastern Front. Or, if Dobbs had a bit of cold warrior in him, he could have blamed the U.S. for sacrificing the liberty of many millions in eastern Europe whom at Yalta and elsewhere it consigned to the Soviet sphere. Best of all, blame pre-war Poland, which, pre-Ribbentrop-Molotov, refused to allow Stalin free passage through its territory and thus, the argument goes, pushed Stalin into the arms of Hitler.