Murdock
3/25/2014 07:59 EST
Friends,
I think a few historical facts should be noted.
1. Crimea was part of Russia for more than 200 years. It did not become part of Ukraine until 1954 when Khrushchev gave it to Ukraine by dictatorial fiat. So the Crimeans have never voted at all until last Sunday concerning their membership in Ukraine. On this vote, the Crimeans voted overwhelmingly to become part of Russia. This is not surprising as they are overwhelmingly Ethnic Russians. This was not land-grabbing by Putin but an exercise in freedom by the Crimeans. This certainly would not have been necessary except for the Putsch against the legitimate Ukranian Government (see 4 below).
2. At the end of the Cold War, circa 1991, US President G H W Bush, Helmut Kohl prime minister of West Germany, James Baker US Secretary of State and head of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbechev reached a gentlemen’s agreement that in exchange for the unification of Germany, the freedom of the Eastern Block Countries, and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the West would not expand NATO eastward. Russia stuck by the agreement. Both Clinton and GW Bush have violated this agreement and expanded NATO right up to Russia’s front door. This fact is never mentioned in the Western Media.
3. Viktor Yanukovich, President of Ukraine, was elected in 2010. No one, not even the NeoCons, has questioned this. The election was fair as far as we can see. Yes, he is corrupt but how many politicians are not?
4. The US and the EU working in tandem did everything they could to unseat Yanukovich although he agreed to hold elections earlier than they were scheduled. This is undeniable as the phone call between Assistant Secretary of State Viktoria Nuland and US ambassador to Unkraine Geoffy Pyatt has been recorded and placed on Youtube. You can find it using Google very easily. Moreover Nuland held a conference in Washington in December 2013 where she bragged that the US had spent 5 billion dollars on NGOs dedicated to overthrowing Urkaine.
5. Putin has acted as any normal leader of Russia would act. He is not Stalin; he has been elected. He has a much higher approval rating among Russians than any western leader does among their populations. I certainly admire him more than any current western leader. But even if you don’t admire him, you must admit that he has nuclear weapons. Do you really want to see a WW III? I don’t.
6. Russia has been well behaved since the end of the Cold War. Consider, on the other hand, the US. It has invaded numerous countries mostly on false pretenses. Perhaps the only justifiable war was in Afghanistan. Iraq was based on the two lies that Saddam had WMDs and was connected with Al Queda.
7. The most important point is that the NeoCons have taken over US foreign policy beginning with the GW Bush administration. I had hoped that with the election of Obama, they would be gone but they are not. They still run the show. They love War and US hegemony. They are not peaceful, reasonable people. See Bill Kristol’s latest article in the Weekly Standard. He complains that the Americans are war weary and they need to be motivated to get back into the War Mode.
8. It isn’t 1956 any more.
Murdock
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