Posted on 03/11/2014 1:04:04 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Pardon the cliche, but I think we have come upon a teachable moment. I am referring to the crisis in Ukraine and what it teaches us, not just about the future but also about the past. Vladimir Putin has turned us all into Neville Chamberlain. The umbrella, please.
Chamberlain is famous for the Munich Agreement and his statement that, by acquiescing to Hitler’s demands, he had brought Britain and Europe “peace for our time.” He and the French gave Hitler the Sudetenland, which was the name applied to the substantially German areas of what was then Czechoslovakia. Hitler was a monster, but in this case his argument had a superficial appeal: Germans, he contended, ought to be in Germany.
What complicates matters is that we now know — indeed, we soon learned — that for Hitler the Sudetenland represented mere batting practice. He was soon to invade Poland and much of the rest of Europe, faltering only when he disregarded the bitter lesson Napoleon learned and plunged into Russia. It was a very cold winter.
Putin is demanding for Crimea more or less what Hitler wanted for the Sudetenland: Russians ought to be in Russia. No doubt the Crimean Russians agree and, come Sunday, will vote accordingly. That would place a patina of democracy — or at least self-determination — over what is essentially a power grab, but it will be hard to argue that the Crimean Russians aren’t getting the government they want, if not the one they deserve.
So we can see — can’t we? — that Chamberlain was not such a noodle after all. He certainly appeased Hitler. But the Western world — needing Russian gas for Germany, Russian rubles for London flats — over time probably will do the same with Putin.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Putin is not Hitler—I think Criemea is all he wants—Now if he invades Ukraine I will change my opinion. If he rolls into Poland and Germany—we should be ready to send troops to France and UK. Maybe bring back the draft.
Obama has failed for the 5 1/2 years since Russia invaded Georgia to do ANYTHING to deter Putin.
Bush was out of office 3 months after the invasion therefore his reaction was all short-term and tactical.
But Obama has had the chance to really pressure Russia through energy policy, forced defense of it's allies or humiliation, diplomatic pressures, arms purchases and sales...and the reinforcement of our allies materially and economically.
He has acted in the opposite of US interests in every area that counts. Then he acts surprised when Russia senses the green light.
Hell, they would have been required to strap themselves to bedrock to avoid being sucked into that leadership vacuum.
Now the only real actions available are those that would hurt us and our allies at least as much as the Russians. Maybe more.
I once had the delusion Obama was an evil, corrupt genius.
Now I know he's just another STUPID LIBERAL. He's going to get us all killed by virtue of his stupidity.
Oh, did I mention he's a pu$$y?
If you’ve read Richard Cohen, the NYT’s top journalist covering Europe, over the years, you know how much stock you can put in his opinions.
Cohen’s ideal would be a for Europe to be a socialist single state, populated exclusively by Muslims.
And what will your piss poor argument be when he moves into the Baltics?
In his election bid, Vladimir Putin stated that one of his goals would be the re-unification of what was once the USSR.
He has re-acquired the nation of Georgia, and he is working on the Ukraine, once “Stalin’s breadbasket”, and which the Crimea Peninsula, (the dead zone for English Light Cavalry brigades), is part of.
The Warsaw Pact nations are not part of the prize, and never were. They were just ‘buffer property’, before the fences of the USSR.
The various “Stans”, that WERE part of the USSR, are also being eyed, and toyed with, again.
Mr. Putin has, indeed, began anew The Cold War.
I don’t deal in bullshit. One other thing you should know about Vladimir Putin for that matter is that he is primarily responsible for defusing the green scheme to totally wreck all of the world’s economies for the greater glory of Gaea, i.e. he basically got a number of Russia’s top hackers into a room and said something like “Guys, I’m not gonna **** Russia’s economy over a bunch of BS, I want you to BLAST your way into that East Anglia email database and spread to the four winds whatever you might find there.” That is the genesis of the Climategate email scandal and why nobody has ever ever taken those lunatics seriously enough to act on their advice since then and why you and I aren’t rubbing sticks together to make fire to cook with tonight.
Ukraine aside... I believe it is a teaching moment to those in America who say they value multiculturalism as good in itself. NOT NECESSARILY !!
Note what is happening in Ukraine where one part of the “country” speaks Russian and consider themselves loyal to mother Russia instead of Ukraine.
LANGUAGE and VALUES are what unites a country. The moment you start splitting a country up into multiple groups who value their own language and values above the founding principles of this country, you have a formula for balkanization. It happened in the former Yugoslavia, is happening in Belgium and we are seeing it up close now in Ukraine ( with other places like Lithuania and Latvia, God forbid, soon to follow ).
That is why the Chinese Emperors long ago understood that you need a COMMON LANGUAGE and WRITING SYSTEM to unite the disparate ethnic groups of that one big land mass into ONE country.
That is why I am extremely troubled when I see Hispanics in Los Angeles watching a soccer game CHEERING for their “Home Team” Mexico and booing the US team. Some people say this is not a big deal.... I call it a portent of things to come.
I’ll enlist. I’m 65, but in better shape than most 19 year olds I know.
Funny thing... The television set and the internet have totally killed the Southern accent in Texas and they will do the same thing to most of the world's languages in the next 20 years. The world needs fewer than 12 languages; figure:
Two Germanic languages, English and German.
Two Romance languages, French and Spanish.
One Slavic language, Russian.
Hebrew and Arabic.
One subcontinent language, Hindi.
One Chinese language, Mandarin.
Japanese and Korean.
That's it. I assume Ukrainians will all speak Russian (they pretty much all do anyhow), and Baltic people will speak English or German. English will remain an international language of commerce IF we can come up with a decent alphabet and system of spelling for it.
The world is shrinking at an accelerating rate.
How? With that umbrella of his?
And he had to be literally pried away from No 10 Downing.
Everything looks so much clearer with hindsight. But at the time it wasn't clear what would happen or how bad the situation was. Did Chamberlain try to hang on? Sure. But the idea that Churchill would be the great wartime leader wasn't clear to everyone at the time.
Chamberlain would have destroyed England. England and the Western World dodged a bullet when Chamberlain was at last removed.
Read some history...and keep reading. There is more there than you and I can imagine.
If you defend Chamberlain...you don't know Chamberlain. He's a skunk.
Baloney.
Many knew exactly how bad the situation was...but Chamberlain controlled the media (sound familiar?)...so the public was kept in the dark until finally the SHTF.
Again, bullsh!t.
Read all the speeches at the time. See who emerges as the most popular figure in the UK. It wasn't Eden (another worm) or even Duff Cooper (a diamond in the rough)...it was Churchill.
Churchill awakened England to the threat...and mobilized it against a force that would have ended it.
Sorry bout that.
Read "Troublesome Young Men" and then read the bibliographical sources.
And read all the speeches before the Commons. Amazing stuff.
“He has re-acquired the nation of Georgia...”
Oh really?
The fall of France came as a surprise to most people, so it stands to reason that not everyone saw the Allies' situation as dire as it was during the "Phoney War."
Churchill changed parties several times in his career. He had been responsible for some bad policies -- the Gallipoli campaign of the First World War, the botched return to the Gold Standard in 1925. The Norwegian campaign that led to Chamberlain's dismissal was also Churchill's idea.
We know now that Churchill was a great wartime leader, but there were plenty of reasons why his contemporaries didn't entirely trust him. And if his speeches were great, we know now that people with a reputation for great oratory don't always make great leaders.
I don't know how accurate it is, but it is well worth a read to get some different perspective on Churchill's rise to power.
In the book, it almost seems that Churchill didn't want to be PM if it meant kicking Chamberlain to the curb.
Anyway, fascinating read.
Great stuff...have fun!
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