Noonan: Mr. Putin's Revealing Speech

Wall Street Journal ^ | 03/27/2014 | Peggy Noonan

[goldstategop]

One of the strategically interesting things about Vladimir Putin is that he has been careful not to set himself against religious belief but attempted to align himself with it. He has taken domestic actions that he believes reflect the assumptions of religious conservatives. He has positioned himself so that he can make a claim on a part of the Russian soul, as they used to say, that his forbears could not: He is not anti-God, he is pro-God, pro the old church of the older, great Russia. ...

At the top, religious references. Crimea is "where Prince Vladimir was baptized. His spiritual feat of adopting Orthodoxy predetermined the overall basis of the culture, civilization and human values that unite the people of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus."

[elhombrelibre]

I keep saying that too. If you’re against Obama, Putin is not the alternative. I won’t trade one aspiring narcissistic statist autocrat for a full blown narcissistic statis autocrat.

[WilliamIII]

you were referring an article that said nothing about Putin wanting to take down America. But you claimed that’s what he wants to do ... based on no evidence. The article said he wants to run Crimea and other neighboring outposts. That’s hardly taking down America. It’s like saying one African country is trying to take down America by invading its neighbor. In both cases, we have nothing on the line,

Sorry if you feel insulted by my posts to you, but I’m so weary of phony excuses for yet another war. We’re in debt to our eyeballs. We don’t need to spend money on military “solutions” to “problems” that don’t concern us, like who runs Ukraine.