Michael Totten: Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine Was Easy to Predict
68 Replies to “” I’m surprised that anyone is surprised.””
Michael Totten is right that this invasion of Ukraine was predictable. Some of us here suggested that this might be the Russian’s end game.
Ukraine orders full military mobilization of reservists. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26405635
It is unfortunate that the US currently has the weakest president since Carter.
Putin’s an old soviet imperialist villain, we know that (well maybe the CBC zombies don’t but most of us outside the media pimping machine do). We expect an imperialist Russian to defend Russia’s only access to the Mediterranean through the Ukrainian Black sea ports – a given.
So all this has me scratching my head over the timing (during the Olympics) and the organized ferocity of the revolt/revolutionaries – and then they install an EU banker crony as Uke Pres. Seems pretty obvious this Coup was orchestrated, or at least facilitated by Brussels. I’m holding off cheerleading for the Uke rebels until I see the people break them free from their grip on government.
Mean time the real wild card here is the emasculated narcissist in chief who leads a hollowed out US empire. What will he do – over react? Start meddling in Russian satellite states with more inept black ops? Or talk nukes? I feel nervous with an unpredictable, inept sleaze bag with his thumb on the nuke button. Obumbles is just arrogant enough to fall for Putin’s testing them over the Ukraine – it could all blow up in both their faces (and ours as well)
The wise thing to do right now is de-escalate the tension of the situation and get all heads calmed before a solution is arrived at. – you don’t do that by issuing open threats – you do it by reminding the aggressor they have to do business with us if they wish to maintain their new found western consumer lifestyle/economy.
In the mean time, Bambam and VP Joe merrily jog around the oval office…
Could we say Bambam and Joe are doing the lame duck two-step?
Sarah Palin, the supposedly stupid snowily, saw this coming in 2008.
Wasn’t it Mitt Romney that said Russia was probably our greatest threat right now in the world and everybody laughed? Anybody still laughing?
There’s no way the American intelligence ‘community’ could have seen this coming. But they have naked pictures of every American with an iPhone.
The U.S. intelligence community didn’t see this coming because they were too busy spying on those evil Tea Party types. Priorities.
Russian reaction was ordained as much as the reaction the USA had to Soviet missles in Cuba. Militarily a not ‘friendly’ government in Ukraine threatens the Russians. It is one thing to talk tough to Putin but not being able to back it up becomes a joke. What Putin is doing will be popular at home and in large parts of the Ukraine. The only way this would have worked would have been the NATO entry into the Ukraine as soon as the government was over thrown. We all know that was not going to happen. I doubt there is much military resistance to Ukraine either.
The corruption that exists mostly under the surface here in Canada and the USA exists in the Ukraine for all to see. The Soviets are just as bad. Brut force works most of the time.
If it is in Russian or American interests do you think Canadian sovereignty claims in the Artic would be treated any different?
It should be realized that the KGB and CIA have had ‘assets’ in Canada for decades. It is neither’s interest to have a rich and independent Canada on their borders. That is why no pipelines to the Pacific for Canadian crude export.
Obungler gave Putin permission to do WHATEVER when he leaned forward at his Russian face-to-face with their Premier (not Putin; Putin’s puppet) and was caught saying on an open mic: “…tell Vladimir I’ll have more flexibility after the (2012) elections.” Putin’s puppet was seen to nod vigorously and replied “I will tell him.”
This is high treason, pure and simple … but NOBODY in Congress has the guts to impeach America’s first black President, and it appears that nobody (such as a Secret Service agent or a Marine guard) has the deep sense of patriotic necessity to shoot him.
This is NOT going to end very badly for Europe, for the Ukraine, for America, and for any remaining allies of America once the true depths of Obungler’s impotence are laid bare globally for even ‘low information’ morons (= Obama voters) to notice.
Of course this is the same “intelligence community” that couldn’t imagine 9/11 happening even when warned of Muslim student pilots learning how to fly planes but not land them.
We now have the massive bureaucratic nightmare that is Homeland Security, but even Russian warnings about the Boston bombers fell on deaf ears there.
CORRECTION ABOVE > “This IS going to end very badly…”
Sorry for the brain fart.
Some creepy similarities in the way 2014 has so much in common with 1914. Better technology today but still the same pissing contests over territorial disputes. Happy 100th anniversary.
rosseuage >
“But they have naked pictures of every American with an iPhone.”
Bang!
The best policy for the west in the Ukraine is doing exactly the OPPOSITE of whatever Obamba’s Whitehouse tries to jamb down our throats as “The Truth”.
“…once the true depths of Obungler’s impotence are laid bare globally for even ‘low information’ morons (= Obama voters) to notice.”
You assume that they care. I’d be careful making that assumption.
Yeah well, this follows a pattern….Russia will not(cannot) surrender it’s warm water naval base…
Generally the Russians (since Stalin) have been wise competent statesmen.
Khruschev did make a bungle by putting nukes into Cuba but wisely backed down when Kennedy stupidly grandstanded….
Generally the Russians play chess while the US (especially when headed by donkey Dems) seem unable to play checkers.
Can’t argue the assessment, but………………
Oblowhard is just that. All words, huff and puff, and glowing oratory.
Actions? Really? When? How many red lines will Da Wun draw this time.
He will, as usual, just add to his own global warming.
This is the same intelligence community that even after the Russians identified Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev as terrorists less than a year ago, still allowed the Boston Marathon to be bombed.
I think jdn at 11:17 AM has it right.
Someone pointed out the resumes of the two
Putin Ex head of the KGB
Obama Ex community organizer
Robert of Ottawa >
You forgot……
Putin Ex head of the KGB
Obama Ex community organizer …………/ Affirmative Action President.
Obamba himself has publicly said many times that he is “a benefactor of Affirmative Action” i.e. attained his position by virtue of his skin color.
Well this is proof the Zero can keep one promise.
He is so transforming USA foreign policy, that they will have no allies when he is gone.
More flexibility indeed, does he do yoga?
Cause he is certainly in love with himself.
Calling the action what it is. Treason this obvious must be punished.
The 5th columns here in Canada, are deliberately sabotaging our development , to ensure we remain the supplier of raw materials at a discounted price, to their masters.
The toothless blob of the north.
I have visited all 57 states…
Putin> “We reserve the right to protect the interest of Russia and the Russian peoples.”
NATO> “We will Barry you!”
http://www.the-american-interest.com/blog/2014/03/01/putin-smashes-washingtons-cocoon/ As far as we can tell, the default assumption guiding our political leadership these days is that the people on the other side of the bargaining table (unless they are mindless Tea Party Republicans) are fundamentally reasonable people who see the world as we do, and are motivated by the same things that motivate us. Many people are, of course, guided by an outlook not all that dissimilar from the standard upper middle class gentry American set of progressive ideas. But some aren’t, and when worlds collide, trouble comes. Too much of the Washington policy establishment looks around the world and sees only reflections of its own enlightened self. That’s natural and perhaps inevitable to some degree. The people who rise through the competitive bureaucracies of American academic, media and think tank life tend to be those who’ve most thoroughly absorbed and internalized the set of beliefs and behavioral norms that those institutions embody and respect. On the whole, those beliefs and norms have a lot going for them. It would not be an improvement if America’s elite institutions started to look more like their counterparts in Russia or Zimbabwe.
As usual, Spengler (David Goldman) says it best.
Ukraine is hopeless …… but not serious. http://pjmedia.com/spengler/
Re: Michael Totten’s “I’m surprised that anyone is surprised”, the following passage is from a Politico story co-authored by Andrew S. Weiss, who is “vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace where he oversees research In Washington and Moscow on Russia and Eurasia”, and Eugene Rumer, senior associate and director of same:
President Barack Obama’s handling of the Western response to the Ukraine crisis is now arguably the biggest test of his presidency. It is a crisis that no one anticipated..
“a crisis that no one anticipated’: welcome to the hyperbaric isolation chamber of exquisitely credentialed “experts”
Can anyone tell me if ever there was a president who could play checkers all by himself and lose both sides like Obumbles?
You have every right to be as morally outraged as you want, about anything. However what Russia does to keep their only warm water port is really none of our business. We sure as hell don’t like other countries meddling in our affairs do we?
I suspect that Obama has reassured Putin that he can have at-it in Crimea and that Obama will continue to pacify his mindless media and electorate that he is concerned and will continue issuing hollow warnings.
But really folks, would we want to actually do something? The US is exhausted from Bush’s entirely futile decade-plus of wasted blood and treasure in the Islamic wastelands. If he and his radically more progressive successor had instead done targeted kills of terrorist camps while concentrating defense spending on ABM development and deployment, making nuclear proliferation less profitable while bolstering Eastern European defenses, the US and the world would be in a much better situation today.
The Russians won’t and likely shouldn’t be deterred from the Crimea. The big question is how much of the Eastern Ukraine Putin wants back into his Empire and at what cost.
Please reread your last sentence. It does not make sense as written and contradicts the rest of your comment.
Sorry. Correction already made as I would have seen had I read to the end. It’s disorienting to have corrections or replies to comments separated from the original comment.
I feel for Ukrainians. What to do? Be with the West that is a dying civilization being taken over by Islam with the Nations governments in full co-operation with Islamists, to replace their populations with Muslims. Including adopting the horrific anti-human sharia law.
That of going back to being Russia’s bitch. To the very folks who killed 7 million of your people. In both cases its a lose lose situation.
“We will Barry you”
– (in my best Larry the cable guy drawl); I don’t care who ya are thet there is funny!
Obama did tell Medvedev, after all, that he would be more flexible after his re-election.
I’m certainly with north of 60 (LAS?) that we should just butt out.
Obama’s inaction is fine. Now if we could only get him to follow this approach domestically!
My only criticism is that he should refrain from delivering warnings he has no intention or even the ability to deliver on.
Amerika’s world cop days are over. She’s broke financially and morally.
He wasn’t the head of the KGB, only a Lieut.-Colonel.
Wikipedia: “For 16 years Putin served as an officer in the KGB, rising to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel before he retired to enter politics in his native Saint Petersburg in 1991.”
Obama on the other hand,is the man who saved Chicago. After his years as a community organizer in Chicago, there is little crime, illiteracy, unemployment or poverty in that fortunate city.
I’m of the paranoid belief that Obama and Putin are comrades in the Communist Internationale,and neither will do anything too nasty to the other. Putin,as senior member, treats Obama like his little idiot brother.
The West might as well get used to the idea that the Crimea is part of Russia, and save a lot of time and trouble by just drafting an agreement with them to return the territory to the Russkies.
We NATO/the West are in no position to fight a war against Russia over what is historically their territory,anyway.
In personal defiance of the Russians,I shall continue my boycott of the Lada and all other things Russian, except maybe those beautiful 20-something Russian women who entice me from the margins of many websites.
What I’m getting from the comments here is that Europeans should embrace the suck.
1. We’re sick of saving their smelly asses.
2. You wished Obama was running for president of the world. LOL
3. The US is broke.
4. Better to back a strong horse than a horses ass.
5. We want the Russians to have a mobile navy.
I think you’re right MND, the US’ days as world cop are over.
You’re correct, Putin was a Lt. Colonel in the KGB.
Putin retired from the KGB a full Colonel whose Grandpa was Joseph Stalin’s personal cook, this in a country where poisoning your political opponents is the unofficial national sport.
Putin’s daddy was in the NKVD, maybe even in SMERSH.
sasquatch – Ever hear of a US President named Ronald Reagan? Their is no chess analogy for his victory over the Soviets. They were utterly ruined, and he orchestrated every step leading to that ruin.
“They were utterly ruined”
Not at all. The Russians merely downsized and rebranded the Soviet Union back to the Russian Federation and the Cold War never ended. Well except for NATO pretending it ended(all real evidence to the contrary) and the U.S. declaring victory where there was none.
Today Russia emerges for all to see in great economic shape(better than the U.S.) and acting like the Evil Empire Ronald Reagan knew and warned us about.
All you people who carped on about Reagan and John Paul II ‘Winning the Cold War’ were dangerously wrong and your erroneous meme served the Russians and Chinese very handily.
I agree with all of your comment, and suggested similar results in another thread.
Revnant Dream, you are right, except if I may, I might add a “morally corrupt” dying civilization.
Putin was a KGB Lieut-Colonel. So he was up high enough to see that the Soviet system was bankrupt and unworkable, and hence a return to a firm autocracy with a president for life rather than a tsar.
acting like the Evil Empire Ronald Reagan knew and warned us about.
ROTFL
Somebody bought into too much Cold War propaganda. the US’ days as world cop are over.
Posted by: rosseuage
Exactly, and it’s about time. Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan… Everyplace the US meddled ended up worse off for it. America’s version of Imperialism was little more than wasting American lives to make the world safe for McDonalds and KFC.
Both Romney and Palin said that Russia would be our greatest geopolitical foe. Sure seems true, as a super fun note there was a security meeting recently on the Ukraine and Russia. The “Smartest man in the room” wasn’t present, he blew it off to go see a film festival.
“Somebody bought into too much Cold War propaganda”
Unlike you, I wasn’t a child when Ronald Reagan was elected President, if you were even alive then.
The Soviet Union was clearly winning everywhere around the globe at that time(Eastern Europe, Africa, Asia, South America) and there was a lot of talk about capitulation and accommodation until Reagan was elected.
You think the Soviet Union wasn’t an Evil Empire, huh.
What you need to do is read Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s ‘the Gulag Archipelago’, just for starters.
During that period, incidents like this were fairly common: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Lines_Flight_007
Oh please! If the US is “exhausted” by “Bush’s entirely futile decade-plus of wasted blood and treasure in the Islamic wastelands” then it really is in deep trouble. Gdamn it, the US lost more in its first two weeks on Iwo Jima
than in the entire Iraq war. And let us not get into Okinawa, etc. The Canadian army’s losses at Vimy Ridge
were greater, and that was a big success! And let us not get into the US Civil War (Pickett’s Charge lost more than
US losses in Iraq; and try finding “Cold Harbor” on Wikipedia). To claim that the US was ‘exhausted” and to blame it
all on BOOOOSH is beyond pathetic. Nor is Iraq some “Islamic Wasteland”.
Indeed, the Victoria Nuland (yet another of Obama’s Night Hags) did not realize what she was meddling with.
A little geography: the Gulf of Finland freezes most winters. The Neva River freezes
most winters. Not a great place for one’s principal naval base. “Sevastopol was founded in June 1783 as a base for a naval squadron … by Rear Admiral Thomas Mackenzie, a native Scot in Russian service, soon after Russia annexed the Crimean Khanate.” Catherine the Great was Empress at the time.
I was in university when Kennedy was killed.
Take your silly unfounded accusations and stick them where you can check on your prostate health.
The USofA has been just as much of an Evil Empire as Russia.
Try being objective, it’s the mature thing to do.
“The USofA has been just as much of an Evil Empire as Russia.”
Irrelevant. Even if the U.S. is an Evil Empire it is no logical counter to the verity of a statement that Russia/USSR is/was an Evil Empire.
So which is it? Is Russia NOT an Evil Empire and I therefore bought into to much Cold War Propaganda by believing Ronald Reagan’s false statement or is Russia/USSR truthfully an Evil Empire and you’re full of shit.
Objectively, the U.S. being an Evil Empire does not negate Russia being an Evil Empire. Or are you too immature to admit it.
I didn’t say that Russia wasn’t an “Evil Empire”, did I?
Pay attention, read slowly for full comprehension.
Regan’s comments were the pot calling the kettle black, that’s what made your comment so ironically amusing, ie. “ROTFL”
Try to state your own views clearly and concisely.
Do you have brown eyes?
Everyplace the US meddled ended up worse off for it. north of 60
And how do you know what the world be like without US ” meddling “. That is the real question. Would the world be enjoying Utopia? Do you have an argument to make, or only emotion?
Oz – Russia is no longer an existential threat to the US because of Reagan; all else is detail when judging Reagan wrt national security.
Michael Totten is right that this invasion of Ukraine was predictable. Some of us here suggested that this might be the Russian’s end game.
Ukraine orders full military mobilization of reservists.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26405635
It is unfortunate that the US currently has the weakest president since Carter.
Putin’s an old soviet imperialist villain, we know that (well maybe the CBC zombies don’t but most of us outside the media pimping machine do). We expect an imperialist Russian to defend Russia’s only access to the Mediterranean through the Ukrainian Black sea ports – a given.
So all this has me scratching my head over the timing (during the Olympics) and the organized ferocity of the revolt/revolutionaries – and then they install an EU banker crony as Uke Pres. Seems pretty obvious this Coup was orchestrated, or at least facilitated by Brussels. I’m holding off cheerleading for the Uke rebels until I see the people break them free from their grip on government.
Mean time the real wild card here is the emasculated narcissist in chief who leads a hollowed out US empire. What will he do – over react? Start meddling in Russian satellite states with more inept black ops? Or talk nukes? I feel nervous with an unpredictable, inept sleaze bag with his thumb on the nuke button. Obumbles is just arrogant enough to fall for Putin’s testing them over the Ukraine – it could all blow up in both their faces (and ours as well)
The wise thing to do right now is de-escalate the tension of the situation and get all heads calmed before a solution is arrived at. – you don’t do that by issuing open threats – you do it by reminding the aggressor they have to do business with us if they wish to maintain their new found western consumer lifestyle/economy.
In the mean time, Bambam and VP Joe merrily jog around the oval office…
Could we say Bambam and Joe are doing the lame duck two-step?
Sarah Palin, the supposedly stupid snowily, saw this coming in 2008.
Wasn’t it Mitt Romney that said Russia was probably our greatest threat right now in the world and everybody laughed? Anybody still laughing?
There’s no way the American intelligence ‘community’ could have seen this coming. But they have naked pictures of every American with an iPhone.
The U.S. intelligence community didn’t see this coming because they were too busy spying on those evil Tea Party types. Priorities.
Russian reaction was ordained as much as the reaction the USA had to Soviet missles in Cuba. Militarily a not ‘friendly’ government in Ukraine threatens the Russians. It is one thing to talk tough to Putin but not being able to back it up becomes a joke. What Putin is doing will be popular at home and in large parts of the Ukraine. The only way this would have worked would have been the NATO entry into the Ukraine as soon as the government was over thrown. We all know that was not going to happen. I doubt there is much military resistance to Ukraine either.
The corruption that exists mostly under the surface here in Canada and the USA exists in the Ukraine for all to see. The Soviets are just as bad. Brut force works most of the time.
If it is in Russian or American interests do you think Canadian sovereignty claims in the Artic would be treated any different?
It should be realized that the KGB and CIA have had ‘assets’ in Canada for decades. It is neither’s interest to have a rich and independent Canada on their borders. That is why no pipelines to the Pacific for Canadian crude export.
Obungler gave Putin permission to do WHATEVER when he leaned forward at his Russian face-to-face with their Premier (not Putin; Putin’s puppet) and was caught saying on an open mic: “…tell Vladimir I’ll have more flexibility after the (2012) elections.” Putin’s puppet was seen to nod vigorously and replied “I will tell him.”
This is high treason, pure and simple … but NOBODY in Congress has the guts to impeach America’s first black President, and it appears that nobody (such as a Secret Service agent or a Marine guard) has the deep sense of patriotic necessity to shoot him.
This is NOT going to end very badly for Europe, for the Ukraine, for America, and for any remaining allies of America once the true depths of Obungler’s impotence are laid bare globally for even ‘low information’ morons (= Obama voters) to notice.
Of course this is the same “intelligence community” that couldn’t imagine 9/11 happening even when warned of Muslim student pilots learning how to fly planes but not land them.
We now have the massive bureaucratic nightmare that is Homeland Security, but even Russian warnings about the Boston bombers fell on deaf ears there.
CORRECTION ABOVE > “This IS going to end very badly…”
Sorry for the brain fart.
Some creepy similarities in the way 2014 has so much in common with 1914. Better technology today but still the same pissing contests over territorial disputes. Happy 100th anniversary.
rosseuage >
“But they have naked pictures of every American with an iPhone.”
Bang!
The best policy for the west in the Ukraine is doing exactly the OPPOSITE of whatever Obamba’s Whitehouse tries to jamb down our throats as “The Truth”.
“…once the true depths of Obungler’s impotence are laid bare globally for even ‘low information’ morons (= Obama voters) to notice.”
You assume that they care. I’d be careful making that assumption.
Yeah well, this follows a pattern….Russia will not(cannot) surrender it’s warm water naval base…
Generally the Russians (since Stalin) have been wise competent statesmen.
Khruschev did make a bungle by putting nukes into Cuba but wisely backed down when Kennedy stupidly grandstanded….
Generally the Russians play chess while the US (especially when headed by donkey Dems) seem unable to play checkers.
Can’t argue the assessment, but………………
Oblowhard is just that. All words, huff and puff, and glowing oratory.
Actions? Really? When? How many red lines will Da Wun draw this time.
He will, as usual, just add to his own global warming.
This is the same intelligence community that even after the Russians identified Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev as terrorists less than a year ago, still allowed the Boston Marathon to be bombed.
I think jdn at 11:17 AM has it right.
Someone pointed out the resumes of the two
Putin Ex head of the KGB
Obama Ex community organizer
Robert of Ottawa >
You forgot……
Putin Ex head of the KGB
Obama Ex community organizer …………/ Affirmative Action President.
Obamba himself has publicly said many times that he is “a benefactor of Affirmative Action” i.e. attained his position by virtue of his skin color.
Well this is proof the Zero can keep one promise.
He is so transforming USA foreign policy, that they will have no allies when he is gone.
More flexibility indeed, does he do yoga?
Cause he is certainly in love with himself.
Calling the action what it is. Treason this obvious must be punished.
The 5th columns here in Canada, are deliberately sabotaging our development , to ensure we remain the supplier of raw materials at a discounted price, to their masters.
The toothless blob of the north.
I have visited all 57 states…
Putin> “We reserve the right to protect the interest of Russia and the Russian peoples.”
NATO> “We will Barry you!”
http://www.the-american-interest.com/blog/2014/03/01/putin-smashes-washingtons-cocoon/
As far as we can tell, the default assumption guiding our political leadership these days is that the people on the other side of the bargaining table (unless they are mindless Tea Party Republicans) are fundamentally reasonable people who see the world as we do, and are motivated by the same things that motivate us. Many people are, of course, guided by an outlook not all that dissimilar from the standard upper middle class gentry American set of progressive ideas. But some aren’t, and when worlds collide, trouble comes.
Too much of the Washington policy establishment looks around the world and sees only reflections of its own enlightened self. That’s natural and perhaps inevitable to some degree. The people who rise through the competitive bureaucracies of American academic, media and think tank life tend to be those who’ve most thoroughly absorbed and internalized the set of beliefs and behavioral norms that those institutions embody and respect. On the whole, those beliefs and norms have a lot going for them. It would not be an improvement if America’s elite institutions started to look more like their counterparts in Russia or Zimbabwe.
As usual, Spengler (David Goldman) says it best.
Ukraine is hopeless …… but not serious.
http://pjmedia.com/spengler/
Re: Michael Totten’s “I’m surprised that anyone is surprised”, the following passage is from a Politico story co-authored by Andrew S. Weiss, who is “vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace where he oversees research In Washington and Moscow on Russia and Eurasia”, and Eugene Rumer, senior associate and director of same:
(emph mine)
David Burge on Twitter:
Can anyone tell me if ever there was a president who could play checkers all by himself and lose both sides like Obumbles?
You have every right to be as morally outraged as you want, about anything. However what Russia does to keep their only warm water port is really none of our business. We sure as hell don’t like other countries meddling in our affairs do we?
I suspect that Obama has reassured Putin that he can have at-it in Crimea and that Obama will continue to pacify his mindless media and electorate that he is concerned and will continue issuing hollow warnings.
But really folks, would we want to actually do something? The US is exhausted from Bush’s entirely futile decade-plus of wasted blood and treasure in the Islamic wastelands. If he and his radically more progressive successor had instead done targeted kills of terrorist camps while concentrating defense spending on ABM development and deployment, making nuclear proliferation less profitable while bolstering Eastern European defenses, the US and the world would be in a much better situation today.
The Russians won’t and likely shouldn’t be deterred from the Crimea. The big question is how much of the Eastern Ukraine Putin wants back into his Empire and at what cost.
Please reread your last sentence. It does not make sense as written and contradicts the rest of your comment.
Sorry. Correction already made as I would have seen had I read to the end. It’s disorienting to have corrections or replies to comments separated from the original comment.
I feel for Ukrainians. What to do? Be with the West that is a dying civilization being taken over by Islam with the Nations governments in full co-operation with Islamists, to replace their populations with Muslims. Including adopting the horrific anti-human sharia law.
That of going back to being Russia’s bitch. To the very folks who killed 7 million of your people. In both cases its a lose lose situation.
“We will Barry you”
– (in my best Larry the cable guy drawl); I don’t care who ya are thet there is funny!
Obama did tell Medvedev, after all, that he would be more flexible after his re-election.
I’m certainly with north of 60 (LAS?) that we should just butt out.
Obama’s inaction is fine. Now if we could only get him to follow this approach domestically!
My only criticism is that he should refrain from delivering warnings he has no intention or even the ability to deliver on.
Amerika’s world cop days are over. She’s broke financially and morally.
He wasn’t the head of the KGB, only a Lieut.-Colonel.
Wikipedia: “For 16 years Putin served as an officer in the KGB, rising to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel before he retired to enter politics in his native Saint Petersburg in 1991.”
Obama on the other hand,is the man who saved Chicago. After his years as a community organizer in Chicago, there is little crime, illiteracy, unemployment or poverty in that fortunate city.
I’m of the paranoid belief that Obama and Putin are comrades in the Communist Internationale,and neither will do anything too nasty to the other. Putin,as senior member, treats Obama like his little idiot brother.
The West might as well get used to the idea that the Crimea is part of Russia, and save a lot of time and trouble by just drafting an agreement with them to return the territory to the Russkies.
We NATO/the West are in no position to fight a war against Russia over what is historically their territory,anyway.
In personal defiance of the Russians,I shall continue my boycott of the Lada and all other things Russian, except maybe those beautiful 20-something Russian women who entice me from the margins of many websites.
What I’m getting from the comments here is that Europeans should embrace the suck.
1. We’re sick of saving their smelly asses.
2. You wished Obama was running for president of the world. LOL
3. The US is broke.
4. Better to back a strong horse than a horses ass.
5. We want the Russians to have a mobile navy.
I think you’re right MND, the US’ days as world cop are over.
You’re correct, Putin was a Lt. Colonel in the KGB.
Putin retired from the KGB a full Colonel whose Grandpa was Joseph Stalin’s personal cook, this in a country where poisoning your political opponents is the unofficial national sport.
Putin’s daddy was in the NKVD, maybe even in SMERSH.
sasquatch – Ever hear of a US President named Ronald Reagan? Their is no chess analogy for his victory over the Soviets. They were utterly ruined, and he orchestrated every step leading to that ruin.
“They were utterly ruined”
Not at all. The Russians merely downsized and rebranded the Soviet Union back to the Russian Federation and the Cold War never ended. Well except for NATO pretending it ended(all real evidence to the contrary) and the U.S. declaring victory where there was none.
Today Russia emerges for all to see in great economic shape(better than the U.S.) and acting like the Evil Empire Ronald Reagan knew and warned us about.
All you people who carped on about Reagan and John Paul II ‘Winning the Cold War’ were dangerously wrong and your erroneous meme served the Russians and Chinese very handily.
I agree with all of your comment, and suggested similar results in another thread.
Revnant Dream, you are right, except if I may, I might add a “morally corrupt” dying civilization.
Putin was a KGB Lieut-Colonel. So he was up high enough to see that the Soviet system was bankrupt and unworkable, and hence a return to a firm autocracy with a president for life rather than a tsar.
acting like the Evil Empire Ronald Reagan knew and warned us about.
ROTFL
Somebody bought into too much Cold War propaganda.
the US’ days as world cop are over.
Posted by: rosseuage
Exactly, and it’s about time. Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan… Everyplace the US meddled ended up worse off for it. America’s version of Imperialism was little more than wasting American lives to make the world safe for McDonalds and KFC.
Both Romney and Palin said that Russia would be our greatest geopolitical foe. Sure seems true, as a super fun note there was a security meeting recently on the Ukraine and Russia. The “Smartest man in the room” wasn’t present, he blew it off to go see a film festival.
“Somebody bought into too much Cold War propaganda”
Unlike you, I wasn’t a child when Ronald Reagan was elected President, if you were even alive then.
The Soviet Union was clearly winning everywhere around the globe at that time(Eastern Europe, Africa, Asia, South America) and there was a lot of talk about capitulation and accommodation until Reagan was elected.
You think the Soviet Union wasn’t an Evil Empire, huh.
What you need to do is read Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s ‘the Gulag Archipelago’, just for starters.
During that period, incidents like this were fairly common:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Lines_Flight_007
Oh please! If the US is “exhausted” by “Bush’s entirely futile decade-plus of wasted blood and treasure in the Islamic wastelands” then it really is in deep trouble. Gdamn it, the US lost more in its first two weeks on Iwo Jima
than in the entire Iraq war. And let us not get into Okinawa, etc. The Canadian army’s losses at Vimy Ridge
were greater, and that was a big success! And let us not get into the US Civil War (Pickett’s Charge lost more than
US losses in Iraq; and try finding “Cold Harbor” on Wikipedia). To claim that the US was ‘exhausted” and to blame it
all on BOOOOSH is beyond pathetic. Nor is Iraq some “Islamic Wasteland”.
Indeed, the Victoria Nuland (yet another of Obama’s Night Hags) did not realize what she was meddling with.
A little geography: the Gulf of Finland freezes most winters. The Neva River freezes
most winters. Not a great place for one’s principal naval base. “Sevastopol was founded in June 1783 as a base for a naval squadron … by Rear Admiral Thomas Mackenzie, a native Scot in Russian service, soon after Russia annexed the Crimean Khanate.” Catherine the Great was Empress at the time.
I was in university when Kennedy was killed.
Take your silly unfounded accusations and stick them where you can check on your prostate health.
The USofA has been just as much of an Evil Empire as Russia.
Try being objective, it’s the mature thing to do.
“The USofA has been just as much of an Evil Empire as Russia.”
Irrelevant. Even if the U.S. is an Evil Empire it is no logical counter to the verity of a statement that Russia/USSR is/was an Evil Empire.
So which is it? Is Russia NOT an Evil Empire and I therefore bought into to much Cold War Propaganda by believing Ronald Reagan’s false statement or is Russia/USSR truthfully an Evil Empire and you’re full of shit.
Objectively, the U.S. being an Evil Empire does not negate Russia being an Evil Empire. Or are you too immature to admit it.
I didn’t say that Russia wasn’t an “Evil Empire”, did I?
Pay attention, read slowly for full comprehension.
Regan’s comments were the pot calling the kettle black, that’s what made your comment so ironically amusing, ie. “ROTFL”
Try to state your own views clearly and concisely.
Do you have brown eyes?
Everyplace the US meddled ended up worse off for it. north of 60
And how do you know what the world be like without US ” meddling “. That is the real question. Would the world be enjoying Utopia? Do you have an argument to make, or only emotion?
Oz – Russia is no longer an existential threat to the US because of Reagan; all else is detail when judging Reagan wrt national security.