Dana Rohrabacher.
Alan Grayson.
The Crimeans exercised their legitimate self-determination, assisted bloodlessly by the Russians, DR and AG said Tuesday.
America should be pleased, they said.
They did not quite say that the Russians are not starting up a new cold war but we and the Europeans are, and quite needlessly.
DR pointed out huge differences between Putin's Russia and the Soviet Union, oddly (for a conservative) omitting the absence of communism, citing instead the presence of opposition newspapers, religion, and elections, much as a liberal of some decades ago might have done, before that moment in the 1960's when liberals of both parties chose public culture-war against Christian faith and morals.
DR was apparently responding to the many absurd comparisons and groundless allegations that have been made, starting even before the crisis of the Ukraine, that Putin is a Stalinist dangerous to America who misses the Soviet past and Russia is a smothering tyranny, a semi-dictatorship somewhere between fascism and communism.
What Putin misses is Russian grandeur and the extent and potency among European powers of the empire of the Tsars.
Those who would oppose any return of Russia to a leading place among European powers find it inconvenient to recall that Russia fought with the Western allies against Germany twice, and that a chief purpose of the post-WW2 division of Germany and the Warsaw pact was to have done with the German threat.
But the prospect of such a rise does not disturb Americans for whose views on foreign affairs and preferences regarding America's place in the world Zbigniew Brzezinski and the National Review cut no ice.
No comments:
Post a Comment