Putin and the New Appeasers

Rohrabacher belongs to the school of dangerously ignorant and extremist right-wing pariahs like Pat Buchanan and Ron Paul who find Vladimir Putin very attractive as the leader of a country that obliterates the basic values set forth in the Constitution, men who don't believe as Ronald Reagan did that American must stand up for its values in the world, not work to extinguish them. He knows almost nothing about Russia, certainly has never lived there and does not speak the language, yet he urges the U.S. to embrace Barack Obama's policy of appeasement.

Disturbingly, Rohrabacher is not the only Republican who seems to have devoted himself to obliterating the legacy of Reagan. Thomas Graham, former Russia advisor of George Bush, writing of all places in the New York Times, also sided with the Obama "reset" policy of appeasement towards Russia.

Even as Russia was working with China to block U.S. sanctions against the genocidal and virulently anti-American dictatorship in Syria, and buzzing U.S. ally Japan with nuclear bombers in a clear act of intimidation, echoing Rohrabacher Graham was demanding that the U.S. stop "blaming Russia" and start blaming itself instead.

Graham's diatribe is disturbingly incoherent. He argues that Russia is too weak to require a U.S. response, then he claims "lashing out at Russia comes at a significant cost." He claims "there is no threat of military confrontation with Russia," apparently forgetting Putin's 2008 invasion of Georgia and its current litany of attacks on Ukraine designed to prevent it from joining the European Union. Echoing the line of the Politburo, Graham repeatedly claims that criticism of Russia appears to be sign of American mental illness rather than Russian offenses.

Graham openly admits that the Putin takes "evident glee at poking the U.S. in the eye" and is embarking upon a terrifying racist crackdown eerily reminiscent of Hitler. Yet he wants the U.S. to adopt the isolationist policies of Buchanan rather than the leadership polices of Reagan. This is the kind of advice that brought on World War II.

Those who know Russia better, however, like Russia scholars Stephen Blank and Lionel Beehner, take a quite different view.

Writing on the U.S. News website, Blank opines that "in his quest for pure autocracy, Putin appears to have improved on Josef Stalin." Unlike Stalin, Putin actually put the corpse of one of his critics, Sergei Magnitsky, on trial, and he has arrested and convicted both of the two men who have emerged to challenge him for power, Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Alexei Navalny. And Putin's looting of the Russian treasury makes Stalin look quite unimaginative indeed.

Blank calls Western silence on Putin's neo-Soviet revanchism "shameful" and warns that it encourages Russia to contemplate more aggression both domestically and internationally, including continuing its support for bloodthirsty anti-American terrorists throughout the Middle East.

Beehner sees it the same way. Writing in USA Today, Beehner calls Russia a "broken-down, has-been bully," calls Putin a "thug," and calls upon the West to treat it the way it deserves to be treated, rather than offering only appeasement that makes it too easy for Putin to continue his malignant ways. He points out that Russia has revived the Soviet practice of sending professional ringers into amateur sports contests and is aggressively seeking to take control of mineral resources in the Arctic.

If you want to understand the horror that is Putin's Russia, though, you don't need to turn to the halls of academia. Let me tell you about the Pastafarians.

On August 17, 2013, in Russia's "second city" of St. Petersburg (that's Los Angeles to Moscow's New York), a group of about a hundred jocular Russians went for a walk with spaghetti colanders on their heads. Pastafarianism was given birth in the U.S. as a satirical movement seeking to oppose the teaching of creationism in the public schools. They worship at the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

But they are no joke in Putin's Russia. The marchers were physically attacked by Russian police acting in concert with extremist zealots from the Russian Orthodox Church, and many of them were arrested and jailed.

From day one, there has been an extremely close nexus between Putin and the Russian church. Kirill, the Russian pope, has repeatedly endorsed Putin and suggested he is doing God's work. Graham claims that Putin has no ideology, but that's dead wrong. Putin has replaced Communism with Russian Orthodox Christianity, which bears just as much hostility for the American versions of that faith as the USSR ever did for American capitalists.

The last presidential election clearly showed that the Republican Party has lost its way in domestic politics, and the cast study of Russia shows that it has wandered just as far from the path on foreign policy. It is time for mainstream Republicans to call Rohrabacher and his ilk to task and to return to the path blazed by Reagan, before it is too late.

Russia is trying to protect minorities (including Christians and Kurds) in Syria.

America is arming and funding Al Qaeda terrorists who behead Christians and Kurds and will exterminate them, given the chance.

Open your eyes.

This is satire, right?

The writing style and the wordsmithing reads like a 1950's Pravda piece.

Buchanan is no appeaser to Putin or Russia. His only arguments are that Putin is acting FOR Russia, while our leaders undermine and act AGAINST the US.

Putin's domestic actions do not help his people, but neither do Obama's actions help US citizens. Putin's foreign policy, on the other hand, advances Russia as a state while Obama's "foreign policy" has turned the US into a feckless player on the world stage.

It now turns out that our government has the technology and the will to outdo the East Germans in spying on their citizens. Our local and state police departments have been thoroughly militarized. Meanwhile all vestiges of our Christian heritage are on the decline.

We are on our way to becoming Russia without a soul.

This article is garbage.

“Even as Russia was working with China to block U.S. sanctions against the genocidal and virulently anti-American dictatorship in Syria, and buzzing U.S. ally Japan with nuclear bombers in a clear act of intimidation,”

China is involved in an actual dispute with Japan over the islands and their forces are both having numerous face to face encounters. They are one hothead decision away from a shooting conflict. The Norks are their usual missile firing menace.
But one old Tupelev patrol bomber exiting out into the pacific at the extreme north of Japan hits Japanese airspace for 2 minutes, and that’s buzzing Japan with nuclear bombers.
War with Russia is very low on the Japanese worry list.
Their biggest worry is a car stolen in Japan winding up in Vladivostok.
And whoever wrote this tour de force apparently believes the USN and USAF should fly for Al Qeida in Syria.

But my favorite was when he is upset that atheist demonstrators in St Petersburg were broken up by the police. He breathlessly tells us there us a “nexus” between the Russian government and Orthodox Christianity. First they really were the godless atheist country. Now the government is rebuilding the churches it destroyed and we bust their chops for that too?

What should they do? Adopt a Rick Warren style Christianity and tolerate the same movements that have torn OUR country apart?

Kim Zigfeld is the nom de plume of a Russia and Putin hating provocateur responsible for the La Russophobe blog. It is rumored by Russian blogs, that it is a she, and her locale is Allentown PA which is home to Muhlenberg College -- one of the first American schools to offer a Russian studies program. She may be the recently-divorced American ex-wife of a Brit television hack who worked in Moscow.

In any case, she is just as interested in the best for Russia as Obama is interested in the best for America.

MY personal opinion is that she is an old time Communist enraged that Putin is moving the Communists and atheists out of power in Russia.

I couldn't get past the second sentence from this deeply stupid Kim thing.

When last we heard from U.S. Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, a fourth-term Republican of California, he was working feverishly to help U.S.-despising Russian dictator Vladimir Putin deflect blame justifiably coming his way over the Boston Marathon bombing.

Putin is to blame because the several warnings he gave "our" people about the scum sucking bombers were ignored by "our" people--possibly because "our" people really wanted Islamic butchers to succeed in a terrorist attack on those who really are OUR people.

I'm no great fan of Putin's, but his regime DID ACTUALLY TRY TO HELP AMERICAN CITIZENS while our regime did the opposite!

Thanks cunning_fish.

Those who know Russia better, however, like Russia scholars Stephen Blank and Lionel Beehner, take a quite different view.

Writing on the U.S. News website, Blank opines that "in his quest for pure autocracy, Putin appears to have improved on Josef Stalin." Unlike Stalin, Putin actually put the corpse of one of his critics, Sergei Magnitsky, on trial, and he has arrested and convicted both of the two men who have emerged to challenge him for power, Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Alexei Navalny. And Putin's looting of the Russian treasury makes Stalin look quite unimaginative indeed.

Blank calls Western silence on Putin's neo-Soviet revanchism "shameful" and warns that it encourages Russia to contemplate more aggression both domestically and internationally, including continuing its support for bloodthirsty anti-American terrorists throughout the Middle East.

Beehner sees it the same way. Writing in USA Today, Beehner calls Russia a "broken-down, has-been bully," calls Putin a "thug," and calls upon the West to treat it the way it deserves to be treated, rather than offering only appeasement that makes it too easy for Putin to continue his malignant ways. He points out that Russia has revived the Soviet practice of sending professional ringers into amateur sports contests and is aggressively seeking to take control of mineral resources in the Arctic.