To my GOP and conservative friends: Keep Ukraine out of Putin's hands or you'll be no better at foreign policy and national defense than Obama was. Or Biden is.

Marjory Taylor Green, a hero to many Republicans. But not to me.

In case you needed a reminder, Barack Obama’s national security and foreign policy records were as bad as any in recent memory. He pledged that Assad’s use of chemical weapons in Syria would be a “red line” that if crossed would “warrant U.S. military action.” A year later, videos showed the gut-wrentching videos of twisted bodies of almost 1,500 civilians including more than 400 children killed by Assad’s chemical weapons. Obama’s response? Nada.

Obama also warned Russia not to annex Crimea, a part of Ukraine’s homeland. Poof. There goes another part of Ukraine. Obama’s response? Nada.

Obama was so, so proud of the nuclear arms deal with Iran. After Trump cancelled this insanity, Biden did as his Obama presidium told him—renew the deal. What a mess. All of Biden’s failures were topped, of course, by the disastrous and bloody retreat from Afghanistan.

My friends, do you wanted to follow in those footsteps?

You will if you continue to oppose military aid to Ukraine. Recent reports say that the Russian military is starting to advance against the Ukraine’s defenses, whose front lines are beginning to fail. The country’s independence is in jeopardy.

If past is present, Biden will screw things up—and this is important—with, my friends, your cooperation. Okay, okay. We need to keep better track of where the billions of U.S. aid goes. The country doesn’t have the best record for fighting corruption. As demonstrated by how easily Joe and Hunter Biden got the Ukrainian government to do their bidding.

But that’s a separate issue from letting Putin expand his sphere of influence, to invade the Baltic democracies and weaken NATO. That’s something that opponents of Ukrainian military aid like to avoid discussing.

Are we condemned to not learn from history? The western democracies’ agreement to allow Hitler to boldly march into Czechoslovakia without a shot being fired comes to mind. Please don’t try to tell me that it was so long ago, it is no longer relevant.

Likewise, here’ something from the past that surely applies: In 1994, after the breakup of the Soviet Union, the U.S., Britain and Russia agreed to respect Ukraine’s sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity. Russia pledged to not use force against Ukraine in exchange for Kyiv giving up nearly two thousand strategic nuclear warheads and their delivery systems to Russia. The Soviet Union had originally installed these weapons in Ukraine. Rock solid, that agreement wasn’t.

Now, Putin’s Russia is trying to rid Ukraine of its language, customs, traditions and faith, so as to make the country nothing more than a vassal state or worse. It’s the figurative genocide of a people seeking to be free. (Just like the American colonies once were. Here I’ll remind readers that the War of Independence could have been lost if the French and its fleet had not come to our rescue. France saw it was in its interest to oppose its mortal enemy, Great Britain, and because it strongly agreed with America’s desperate desire for freedom.

One can hardly challenge Ukraine’s ingrained sense of nationality. Nor its courage to stay free. Just as we defended and still continue to support South Korea’s craving for freedom.

So, here comes Marjorie Taylor Greene and her tiny minority to instruct us to mind our own business when it comes to foreign policy. Just like the hardened streak of isolationism that, in our history, turned out to be so disastrous. Now she is threatening, once again, to throw the House of Representatives into the land of make-believe by knifing of House Speaker Mike Johnson. To what end?

Did her previous, successful campaign to destroy former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy accomplish one damn thing? Except to endow her with national attention, serve her ego and cash in on campaign fundraising that she’d use to dole cash to bribe struggling representatives into her corner?

Tactically and strategically, she’s doing nothing more than releasing a fart into the wind. A truly stinky one. What she has accomplished is to give Johnson a Hobson’s choice: Move legislation that gives Ukraine the money it needs and let Margery’s Sword of Damocles behead him and strangle the House again? Or not do anything, and fail to act in the national interest?

Biden and Senate Majority Leader Charlie Schumer made Margery an ally by concocting a “save Ukraine bill” loaded with things that Republicans cannot in good conscience agree to. Like billions more to fight global warming, something that vast numbers of votes have lowered to virtually no priority. If Biden were to strip out those irrelevant things, aid to Ukraine would pass with a bipartisan majority.

For his part: Donald Trump leaves Johnson and his Republican colleagues twisting in the wind. He’s fed the isolationist sentiment in the party with a lot of name-calling. Trump regards as near-traitorous any suggestion that America still has a leadership role in America, rather than an issue that merits clam and reasonable debate. More troubling; he has not been forthcoming about what he would do about Ukraine. He once said he could end that war “in a day.” What else does that suggest other than he would give Putin a “comprise” in which he could keep the parts of Ukraine that he already has taken. That’s a betrayal.

Ask for honest debate on you’re called a “neocon.” How many Trump supporters even know what the word means. In the 1970s, when I was laboring as an op-ed columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times, a boss called me a neocon. I had to look it up. It means “new conservative.” It fit me perfectly. Because the Democratic Party had abandoned me, I found that conservatives were better at describing my values. Now, “neo-con” improperly and carelessly stands for lunatics that would send American troops on the ground to die in the most trivial of campaigns. Slander.

I wasn’t a neocon all the time. I had strongly opposed Bill Clinton’s involvement in the wars of Bosnia, Herzegovina and Kosovo in the former Yugoslavia. I believed that it was time to let Europe settle its own troubles in the continent’s east instead of turning to the world’s only superpower to bail everyone out. A more powerful explanation for my opposition might have been that my son, Don, was of draftable age. If “boots on the ground” had meant the return of the military draft, I would not allow it. I think that the same reason explains why some commentators have turned isolationist. I understand.

This issue comes to a head next week when the Senate returns from (yet another) vacation It’s nut-cutting time for Trump, Johnson, the Republican Party, the Senate and America’s interests. I’m holding my breath.