My dad fought in WWII to preserve European peace that Josh Hawley wants to dismantle | Opinion

John F. Maxwell enlisted in early 1942, soon after Pearl Harbor. He served in the U.S. Army Air Corps in North Africa, Sicily, Italy and Germany. On June 6, 1944, his unit had arrived in the newly liberated Rome, the eternal city.

My father lived to return home, to start his life as a member of that “greatest generation.” But lest we forget, many of his generation did not return. They lie in hallowed graves all across Europe.

The reason my father and so many millions of young Americans had to fight and risk their lives in a world war is because Adolf Hitler was not stopped earlier, when he could have been stopped, at much less loss of life, in more limited and less costly confrontations.

Now we witness Russian President Vladimir Putin, the 21st century reincarnation of Hitler’s 20th century menace, doing the same thing: invading other countries, destroying cities, murdering tens of thousands. Some say no one can be compared to Hitler. In one sense this is correct. Putin has not yet created extermination camps to eradicate entire peoples. But in another, more dangerous sense, they are wrong. Putin has already — just like Hitler in 1938, 1939, 1940 and 1941 — invaded and attempted to conquer other countries.

And just like Hitler, he operates a vast gulag of concentration camps across Russia and Siberia, where political prisoners, dissidents and “undesirables” are held in captivity — many of whom, like murdered opposition leader Alexei Navalny, simply perish, but unlike Navalny are not known to the outside world.

Luckily for the free world, for Europe and Canada and the United States, the Ukrainian people have not surrendered to the Kremlin tyrant. They are fighting for their freedom and sovereignty with a remarkable fierceness. They know what fate awaits them if they lose this fight.

Sadly and dangerously for the American people, our Congress is now increasingly populated by politicians in the House and Senate who, like ostriches, have their heads firmly planted in the ground, believing that if they look away and do nothing no harm will come to us. This is a dangerous delusion.

These neo-isolationists who have infiltrated the Republican Party are ignorant of history. By refusing to aid the Ukrainian people in their heroic resistance to the new Hitler, they are simply hastening the day when another generation of Americans, like my father’s in 1942, will be compelled to go to war in Europe.

Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley is one of the hardcore bloc of Republican Party isolationists who have consistently railed against aide for Ukraine. His talking points are caricatures of Kremlin propaganda. I consider this neo-isolationism as great a threat to our national security as any other we face.

President Ronald Reagan said it best: “Peace through strength.”

Don’t worry, Dad. We haven’t forgotten you or all the others who fought so valiantly in World War II. Nor have we forgotten the price paid or the lessons learned.