Posted on 07/25/2014 11:10:00 AM PDT by Kaslin
In 1933, the Holodomor was playing out in Ukraine.
After the "kulaks," the independent farmers, had been liquidated in the forced collectivization of Soviet agriculture, a genocidal famine was imposed on Ukraine through seizure of her food production.
Estimates of the dead range from two to nine million souls.
Walter Duranty of the New York Times, who called reports of the famine "malignant propaganda," won a Pulitzer for his mendacity.
In November 1933, during the Holodomor, the greatest liberal of them all, FDR, invited Foreign Minister Maxim Litvinov to receive official U.S. recognition of his master Stalin's murderous regime.
On August 1, 1991, just four months before Ukraine declared its independence of Russia, George H. W. Bush warned Kiev's legislature:
"Americans will not support those who seek independence in order to replace a far-off tyranny with a local despotism. They will not aid those who promote a suicidal nationalism based upon ethnic hatred."
In short, Ukraine's independence was never part of America's agenda. From 1933 to 1991, it was never a U.S. vital interest. Bush I was against it.
When then did this issue of whose flag flies over Donetsk or Crimea become so crucial that we would arm Ukrainians to fight Russian-backed rebels and consider giving a NATO war guarantee to Kiev, potentially bringing us to war with a nuclear-armed Russia?
From FDR on, U.S. presidents have felt that America could not remain isolated from the rulers of the world's largest nation.
Ike invited Khrushchev to tour the USA after he had drowned the Hungarian Revolution in blood. After Khrushchev put missiles in Cuba, JFK was soon calling for a new detente at American University.
Within weeks of Warsaw Pact armies crushing the Prague Spring in August 1968, LBJ was seeking a summit with Premier Alexei Kosygin.
After excoriating Moscow for the downing of KAL 007 in 1983, that old Cold Warrior Ronald Reagan was fishing for a summit meeting.
The point: Every president from FDR through George H. W. Bush, even after collisions with Moscow far more serious than this clash over Ukraine, sought to re-engage the men in the Kremlin.
Whatever we thought of the Soviet dictators who blockaded Berlin, enslaved Eastern Europe, put rockets in Cuba and armed Arabs to attack Israel, Ike, JFK, LBJ, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan and Bush 1 all sought to engage Russia's rulers.
Avoidance of a catastrophic war demanded engagement.
How then can we explain the clamor of today's U.S. foreign policy elite to confront, isolate, and cripple Russia, and make of Putin a moral and political leper with whom honorable statesmen can never deal?
What has Putin done to rival the forced famine in Ukraine that starved to death millions, the slaughter of the Hungarian rebels or the Warsaw Pact's crushing of Czechoslovakia?
In Ukraine, Putin responded to a U.S.-backed coup, which ousted a democratically elected political ally of Russia, with a bloodless seizure of the pro-Russian Crimea where Moscow has berthed its Black Sea fleet since the 18th century. This is routine Big Power geopolitics.
And though Putin put an army on Ukraine's border, he did not order it to invade or occupy Luhansk or Donetsk. Does this really look like a drive to reassemble either the Russian Empire of the Romanovs or the Soviet Empire of Stalin that reached to the Elbe?
As for the downing of the Malaysian airliner, Putin did not order that. Sen. John Cornyn says U.S. intelligence has not yet provided any "smoking gun" that ties the missile-firing to Russia.
Intel intercepts seem to indicate that Ukrainian rebels thought they had hit an Antonov military transport plane.
Yet, today, the leading foreign policy voice of the Republican Party, Sen. John McCain, calls Obama's White House "cowardly" for not arming the Ukrainians to fight the Russian-backed separatists.
But suppose Putin responded to the arrival of U.S. weapons in Kiev by occupying Eastern Ukraine. What would we do then?
John Bolton has the answer: Bring Ukraine into NATO.
Translation: The U.S. and NATO should go to war with Russia, if necessary, over Luhansk, Donetsk and Crimea, though no U.S. president has ever thought Ukraine itself was worth a war with Russia.
What motivates Putin seems simple and understandable. He wants the respect due a world power. He sees himself as protector of the Russians left behind in his "near abroad." He relishes playing Big Power politics. History is full of such men.
He allows U.S. overflights to Afghanistan, cooperates in the P5+1 on Iran, helped us rid Syria of chemical weapons, launches our astronauts into orbit, collaborates in the war on terror and disagrees on Crimea and Syria.
But what motivates those on our side who seek every opportunity to restart the Cold War?
Is it not a desperate desire to appear once again Churchillian, once again heroic, once again relevant, as they saw themselves in the Cold War that ended so long ago?
Who is the real problem here?
No. His body count isn’t that high—yet.
It seems that Pat believes that FDR’s friendliness and appeasement toward Stalin set the standard by which US-Russia relations should be measured today.
Hey sparky, VK is Russian Facebook.
Lol. .. hashtag fact
> Your dislike of Obama has hopefully only temporarily caused you to lose your perspective.
And what makes you think he’s going to leave? There are reports from credible sources that martial law signs are being shipped and stored at different locations that aren’t Snopes rumors which have been debunked. These reports are from credible people directly out of their mouths not posted Internet hoax rumors. I realize that could be done initially as a propaganda measure due to the Wizard of Oz administration we have in place to cause fear but it’s still best to pay attention. They’re both tyrants just different ruling styles.
> We are being primed for war. Zeros legacy will be WWW3.
And many politicians’ coffers will be overflowing due to their influence on getting military contracts approved...
Girkin bragged that they shot the plane down before he knew it was a civilian airliner, then after he found out he removed the post. He’s cold busted. You can try to deny it but the whole world knows what the Russky savages did.
Lol
Writer yo be trippin!
Obama has done more damage to the USA than Putin.
As for the downing of the Malaysian airliner, Putin did not order that. Sen. John Cornyn says U.S. intelligence has not yet provided any “smoking gun” that ties the missile-firing to Russia.
...............
Whoa. That’s not going to go over well here.
****************
Before we get too upset about Putin’s supplying missiles to the rebels who pressed their buttons, we need to find out how ISIS is getting its weapons in Iraq and Syria. There have been reports about American weapons ending up in terrorist hands.
~My concern is that zer0 is up there with Stalin hitler and Mao. We are in a world of hurt. We are being invaded in the south and our dear leader is out there fund raising.~
In defense of Stalin, when the Japanese started this crap on his south border in 1930s he hurt them so badly that they rejected any plea from Hitler to help him out in Russia later.
So you guys still defend Stalin, that is why most of us here think you haven’t changed, and never will.
You seems to be the most anal person I ever met, Ansel. I have never defended Stalin, I just find comparison between Stalin and Obama on border issues ridiculous. Isn’t it?
I'm surprised your people still defend him, would you say that most of the people in your section of Russia have fond memories of him or despise him?
Scholastics much, Ansel?
I think there is a group of some 70 yo admirers, these same idiots gathering around Lenin statues. Some liberal teenage jerks emerged among these idiots, same type which wears Che Guevara shirts in the West. The rest (majority) population takes Stalin for what he is. Gulag Archipelago by Soljenitsyn is part of a school program since mid 1980s in Russia.
I was just judging from your post interjecting a defense of Stalin, and polling of your nation.
“The Carnegie report, released Friday, was based on the first-ever comparative opinion polls in Russia, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia. It found that support for Stalin in Russia has actually increased since the Soviet collapse.
The report concluded that attitudes toward Stalin have improved during President Vladimir Putin’s 13-year rule, as the Kremlin has found Stalin’s image useful in its efforts to tighten control.”
“Lev Gudkov, a sociologist at the Levada Center, which conducted the survey, noted that in 1989, the peak of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s efforts to liberalize the country and expose Stalinist crimes, only 12 percent of Russians polled described Stalin as one of the most prominent historical figures.
In the Carnegie poll last year, 42 percent of Russian respondents named Stalin as the most influential historical figure.
“Vladimir Putin’s Russia of 2012 needs symbols of authority and national strength, however controversial they may be, to validate the newly authoritarian political order,” Gudkov wrote in the Carnegie report. “Stalin, a despotic leader responsible for mass bloodshed but also still identified with wartime victory and national unity, fits this need for symbols that reinforce the current political ideology.”
Putin has avoided open public praise or criticism of Stalin, but he has restored Soviet-era symbols and focused on the nation’s Soviet-era achievements rather than Stalinist crimes. Kremlin critics have seen attempts to whitewash Stalin’s image as part of Putin’s rollback on democracy.
Many in Russia have been dismayed by government-sponsored school textbooks that paint Stalin in a largely positive light and by a reconstruction of Kurskaya metro station that restored old Soviet national anthem lyrics praising Stalin.”
~I was just judging from your post interjecting a defense of Stalin, and polling of your nation.~
Well
Do you realize that the term ‘defense’ has different meaning. All I have told is Stalin had better border control than Obama. Am I factually wrong or what?
~Lev Gudkov, a sociologist at the Levada Center, which conducted the survey, noted that in 1989, the peak of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachevs efforts to liberalize the country and expose Stalinist crimes, only 12 percent of Russians polled described Stalin as one of the most prominent historical figures.
In the Carnegie poll last year, 42 percent of Russian respondents named Stalin as the most influential historical figure~
It us all taken out of context. Do you realize a difference between being ‘an influential figure’ and ‘nice person’? I An author of your cite obviously aren’t. On the other hand he simply has an agenda.
Stalin was influential figure for sure. It wasn’t all that good influence but it is another question.
(Reuters) - Soviet dictator Josef Stalin was voted Russia’s third most popular historical figure in a nationwide poll that ended on Sunday, despite the famine and purges that marked his rule.
The “Name of Russia” contest run by Rossiya state television channel over more than six months closed on Sunday night with a final vote via the Internet and mobile phones. It drew more than 50 million votes in a nation of 143 million.
Millions of Soviet citizens perished from famine during forced collectivization, were executed as “enemies of the people” or died in Gulag hard labor camps during Stalin’s rule which lasted for almost 30 years until his death in 1953.
“We now have to think very seriously, why the nation chooses to put Josef Vissarionovich Stalin in third place,” prominent actor and film director Nikita Mikhalkov, one of the contest’s judges, said after the results of the vote flashed on a screen.
Is popular = nice to you?
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