The handling of the crisis in #Ukraine has once again
pointed out how fortunate we are to have Obama as our president. #Mark Helpern,
a senior political analysts at Time Magazine, and frequent guest on #Joe
Scarborough (MSNBC) made what sounded like an astute observation this morning but
in truth was fundimentally and dangerously wrong. He said that in dealing with #Vladimir
Putin of Russia, we are dealing with an unstable personality comparable to #Kim
Jong-Un. No. Putin has the clear objective of restoring Russia to greatness, while
Kin Jong-Un is torturing and suppressing his people to maintain power.
I could not but help but think of #Lindsey Graham and #John
McCain as well as a number of Fox news people and the #Wall Street Journal editorial
that seems to want Obama to start a war
while they are saying they do not want a war. How can such mixed logic make
sense to anyone? The answer is simple. The Republican rhetoric has always been
to play the tough guy; for example the aphorism, “walk softly and carry a big
stick”. If there were political parties in Russia Putin would be following a Republican
international relations policy—that big stick policy. The Obama detractors’
idea seems to be that if we take a tough aggressive stance, we will scare Putin
into submission. It should be clear to all who care to examine the situation;
John McCain and Lindsey Graham have the identical political personality as Putin;
matching personalities is exactly what causes very expensive and ineffective cold
war type stand offs.
If Putin acts tough enough, he hopes to scare the United States
and Europe into not fighting to restore Ukraine to Russia just as before the
1991 dissolution of the Soviet empire. The way he does that is to build up his
war machine, assumes a war time footing by taking Crimea, and hopes the United
States proves it is scared by building up its war machine. It is no secret that
in the United States, the for profit military-industrial complex is right there
to support the bomb, bomb, bomb, rhetoric of McCain, and the feed into the hate
Obama Fox news network.
Putin does not want “actual” war any more than John McCain
or Lindsey Graham want war. He knows the obvious, which is the Untied States and
NATO is multiple times stronger militarily and economical than he is. The
important thing is that Obama knows it as well and is acting accordingly. He knows
he is not up against a crazy man such as Kim Jung-Un as Mark Helprin thinks. Obama
has not ordered one ship to turn toward the Black Sea or even the eastern Mediterranean
or one troop to leave their barracks because he is frighten he might provoke a
madman. He knows what he is doing
He is not going to restart the foolishness of the “cold war”.
He knows he is facing a conniving scoundrel who wants to build up his personal prestige
in Russia by standing up to the big all-powerful America and perhaps rebuild
Russia. Our President is smart enough to know that he beat Putin by diplomacy
and economic means. There will be problems here at homer because radical Duck
Dynasty type right wing-nuts want to cause Obama political problems. They will
use the media to demand a tough show of force; they will demand action; and
that we bomb, bomb, bomb somebody somewhere, perhaps so they can blame the best
president we have ever had with being a coward if we don’t and a war monger if
we do.
URL: firetreepub.blogspot.com Comments Invited and not moderated
Glad you raised this issue here. I've noticed that Russia has taken a calculated step by sending forces into the Crimea region. Predominately allied with Russia, the Crimean region is an easy occupy of a neighboring country by Russia, potential annexation, and highly valuable for its position on the Black Sea. The calculation in this move is what the global response will be. It is really too soon to know the full measure of any response, but it will certainly not be armed French or British troops. Europe is not posturing any military interest in Russia's occupation of a sovereign nation. Such posturing is unlikely, according to many experts, mostly for economic reasons. In history, there was another country that started out in this sort of political environment. Germany's invasion of Poland was far more aggressive but the calculation of global response by Germany at the time seems very similar to me. The present risk to Russia is small enough, since they can easily reverse field and claim that they were only protecting Russian citizens there. It will be interesting to see whether economic sanctions are leveled at Russia and whether they have any effect.
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion, your analysis is right about the Hitler parallel but Obama is no Chamberlin nor is he a 19th century John McCain. I am convinced economic sanctions will be leveled at Russia, which will be in keeping with the way things are done in the 21st century; watch the news coming out of the Kerry-Russia meeting in Paris.
Delete