When J.D. Vance said the other day that an economic deal in Ukraine was a “better security guarantee than 20,000 troops from some random country that hasn’t fought a war in 30 or 40 years,” he once again insulted the two European countries who have provided troops in Ukraine.

Despite his backpedaling on Fox News later, it’s his habit to disrespect Europe. In February in Munich, he claimed that European “retreat from its fundamental values” is more of a threat than Russia or China, a bombastic idea implying that he knows more than the elected leaders of Europe and the people who elected them.

I learned of Vance’s remarks in Europe while having the good fortune to be traveling in Morocco. I remembered that my father went from Casablanca on his way to Oujda, before the invasion of Sicily in World War II. I remembered that he, along with so many of our fathers and grandfathers, fought for Europe and for territorial integrity. And I remembered that they fought against the idea that any group of people can consider themselves superior to any other group, when in the process, they bring out the worst in human emotions to justify the degradations and deaths of those others.

What Vance has been saying about Europe, along with Trump’s made-for-TV tirade against Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy, is a betrayal of our fathers’ and grandfathers’ sacrifices, and of all their buddies who died for the sake of Western democracy. The recent cutoff of aid to Ukraine is not only an embarrassment, but an additional insult to those sacrifices.

We need to keep calling out this degradation of American values. Don’t let them normalize it. Lampoon it. Rail against it.

Donald Trump and Vance are the true ugly Americans. Their Republican toadies in the Senate and House are just as complicit in betraying the true Americans who fought and died for freedom. If they say nothing about the outrageous foreign policy pronouncements and actions of this administration, they are no patriots. Just call them mercenaries.

Scott Barton

Pelham