Putin longs for the past

I’ve searched high and low, and I simply could not find one. I sort of felt like Sherlock Holmes, or Encyclopedia Brown on the hunt for a clue, and yet it kept evading me. Searched and searched until mentally, my mind could not take now more.

Alas, I could not find one quote or phrase admonishing FDR for not taking a stronger stand against Adolf Hitler. I searched further back, trying to find any instance in which elected officials in the US sent so much words of admiration of a man trying to dominate through force a group of weaker people, yet condemning their own elected leader. And yet, that is what we have right now, with people like Lindsay Graham and failed VP candidate Sarah Palin. Graham has suggested that president Obama is weak because he hasn’t gone in guns blazing into Russia to repel Putin’s army. Palin, gushing like a school girl in love with a teen idol. Said “Putin wrestles bears, and a hunt without a shirt on, President Obama wears mom jeans.” Ouch! In fact, talking heads at Fox News (also known as the unofficial PR firm of the Republican Party) have suggested that President Obama is weak because he has the gull to actually negotiate in cases in Russia and Syrian, instead of sending in troops first.

And that’s pretty much the game plan for the Republican Party when it comes to handling world affairs. President Reagan didn’t want to attack Russia in a full scale war, so he used Afghan troops instead. Instead of pulling out of Vietnam like President Johnson had suggest, President Nixon instead rushed in, amped up the war, and cost countless lives. If you trace back through America history, some of the bloodiest and most costly military engagements have occurred under the leadership of a Republican president.

America got into a mess in the Korean War. Countless lives were lost, and it pretty much ended up being a stalemate. Sadly, not much is taught in school about this war. I’m willing to bet that if you polled a random group of people, they would say that Vietnam was the war following World War II.

And on the subject of World War II, I could endlessly restate how America had been on the outside looking in until we got drawn in combat after Pearl Harbor. Instead, I’m going to focus on what Hillary Clinton said when she rightfully compared Putin’s actions to that of Hitler. It is almost like they are following the same game plan. Invade a small country say that you were worried about your fellow countrymen there, etc. Russia under Putin has had some of the most repressive laws of any nation not in the Middle East. Putin famously jailed members of the punk rock band Pussy Riot because they had written songs critical of the government. For those of you, who know your American history, think of President Adams’ “Alien and Sedition” acts, which made it a crime to speak ill of the president or the government. Some of you might have experienced something on a smaller scale from 2002-2008, when anytime you spoke out against the many war crimes of the Bush regime, you were considered not to be a true patriot.

Putin’s outdated thinking has also led him to enact laws that state homosexuality is a crime. In Russia, you can be arrested for being gay, or in possession of pro homosexual material. Yes, owning an all lesbian porn film could very well get you arrested in Russia. So, President Obama, in a stroke of brilliance, sent over to Russia a committee of some of America’s most well-known gay athletes.

Bottom line is this, just because you take a seat at the negotiating table is not a sign of weakness. It shows that you act out of intellect instead of emotion. If said talks fail, then they fail, and it works to the advantage of the US, because it shows Putin for what he really is: A black hearted former KGB agent who longs for the days of the cold war. He longs for the days in which both Russia and the US spent much of their budget on military defense and very little on anything else.

Hell, maybe we’ll take it one step further back. Perhaps Putin envisions himself a modern day Khrushchev, with President Obama playing the role of John Kennedy.  Perhaps all of this is nothing more than Putin’s own Cuban Missile Crisis. It’s clear to anyone that Putin longs for a past that is best to stay buried. Putin wrongly claims that the Ukraine government is illegal, despite that he belief his been rebuked many. Maybe Putin knows that deep down, and it is true what I’ve suggested in this blog. Putin is simply a cold war relic.

I have no problem with how President Obama is handling this. And I really don’t give a damn about what the puppets at Fox news spout. I just find it amusing that these are the same people engaging in acts now that they once found so un-American.  

Putin is a clown, and sooner or later, he’s going to have to retreat back across the border. And if Sarah Palin wants to admire him so much, she can jolly well book herself a one way trip to Russia. And if Lindsay Graham wants a war, he can jolly well carry a gun and stand a post. If anyone is doing anything to harm America’s standing in the world regarding this rift with Russia, it’s people like Graham and Palin. Putin is on the wrong side of history….and he’s going to see that soon enough.