It became a meme: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/you-forgot-poland

A former Foreign Minister of Poland (the equivalent of the Secretary of State) called it "slaving for the Americans".

It was all a part of a plan to ensure that Russia does not colonize the country again, together with things like the Giedroyc doctrine (Ukraine-Lithuania-Belarus doctrine, i.e. establishing strong, democratic buffer zones). Similar reasons caused another government of Poland to allow the CIA to torture people in black sites in north-eastern Poland.

All in all the strategy has worked pretty damn good so far.

Maybe not so well for the people tortured, or for the Iraqis, but yes, offering up someone else's pound of flesh does look like it's worked out well for Poland.

It also doesn't hurt if your foreign ministers wife becomes a prominent American pundit and everyone just acts like it's normal for a foreign politician to be published without a big disclaimer at the bottom of every column.

An 2006 article referencing 2004 memes, that would be missed by anyone born after the late 90s. Internet historians are going to have a hell of a time sorting out internet history.

I suggest you try walking around Hellenic or Roman sites with a historian of the appropriate specialization. At least if you want to experience utterly intimidating amounts of “ah that piece of stone is obviously from a temple to Athena because that indisinct lump on its side is clearly an owl’s eye” (and I’m picking a straightforward example because I couldn’t have remembered the genuinely impressive ones if I tried). If future historians find they have an interest in this particular detail, make no mistake, they are going to have a nice relaxing sip of coffee while they spend all of a half an hour to unravel it.

(If of course anything survives of it at all despite the usual MBA-hypercharged-link-rot reasons. insert grumbling Archive Team-inspired noises)

Side note: while watching that debate, I remember joking that "youforgotpoland.com" would be funny to buy as a gag domain. Maybe an hour later I looked it up and it had already been registered. That was definitely one of my early "whoa" moments in terms of how quickly these (obvious) memes would spread. And this was pre-widespread-social-media like the Twits and such.