Not long after, the armies “of three and four millions” capitulated. But France was not being defeated in the flesh, it was being wiped out in the mind. The Germans were moving faster than the sclerotic French high command could comprehend. Their responses were outdated before they were begun. The Blitzkrieg was inside their OODA loop. And thus France fell faster than even Churchill could imagine.

And Obama is no Winston. Obama even sent back his bust to England as one of his first acts in office.

Putin has taken Barack Obama’s Narrative apart and handed him the smoking pieces in a bucket. Barry doesn’t even know how it happened, nor are his advisers any the wiser. Maybe it was a video. And anyway, “what difference does it make?” Obama may emerge from time to time, blinking in the unaccustomed light, seeking to respond in the only ways he knows how: with a speech; as a guest on Leno; firing a few desultory cruise missiles here or there at targets chosen not to matter; or to offer increasingly unaffordable amounts of money for “deals” that won’t last. And none of it will work.

It remains to be seen whether Washington has the institutional depth to reconstitute itself in a crisis. But reconstitute it must. The current team in the White House is broken. Change must come if there is to be hope.