Sarah Palin and the Ukraine!
The neoconservative American right has trotted out a quote by former Alaska governor and failed vice presidential candidate and pundit and favorite of the Tea party Sarah Palin in which she predicted that if Barack Obama were elected president that Vladimir Putin would invade the Ukraine. This bit of far sighted wisdom was postulated during the 2008 campaign for president and was made sometime around the same time that Ms Palin stated in regard to foreign policy that she “could see Russia from outside of her window” there in western Alaska.
In point of fact, taking into account that there has been another election in 2012 since sister Sarah made this bold prediction, it would probably be of some truth to state that it would have been very likely that even if Mitt Romney had been elected president instead of Barack Obama in 2012, that Putin would have probably invaded the Ukraine and more particularly Crimea anyway.
We are approaching another anniversary this month around the ides of march when another neoconservative president pulled off an invasion of a country that was doing the United States little if any harm: Iraq and George W. Bush.. In further point of fact, the Ukraine wants its freedom and is probably going to get it one way or the other. Vladimir Putin is living in a very dangerous dream world if he thinks that anything else is going to occur. Putin can send in his armed forces and crush the Ukrainian desire for freedom under his very reminiscent of the Cold War iron heal but the rest of the world is not likely to stand for what is going on for very long. Russia is, whether Putin likes it or not, very westernized and a part of the global economy and world leaders like Barack Obama and Angela Merkel of Germany can exercise a great effect over the Russian economy with sanctions and freezes on assets that may cripple an already stressed Russian society already plagued by corruption and political and economic inequalities. Even Putin’s election campaign of a couple of years ago is suspect and many feel that the election was rigged and that the Russian quasi-dictator is not the real leader of the country at all.
There was an article today in a major newspaper that states that the German leader Merkel thinks that Putin is not in touch with reality. That certainly appears to be so. Putin is in touch with a past reality that was backed by the old Soviet Union and its massed armed forces of a generation ago. One thing, in dealing with Putin had best not be forgotten. His lack of touch with reality is matched equally by a still very potent nuclear missile force that could do major damage to anyone that he might feel the need to unleash it on. One of the great and continuing nightmares of the Cold War era was that that very scenario might very well unfold.
In point of fact, Putin is nothing more than an old cold warrior bent on putting the old empire back together again. But there something even deeper than that to what Putin is about. There is the old white Russian empire that dates back to the days of Peter the Great in play here. The white Russians of which Putin is a part, have always felt that they were the superior race in Russian society and part of what Putin is doing is trying to protect segments of that society in the Crimean area of the Ukraine. There has been a seething resentment among several ethnic groups in the Ukrainian area and a great fear among some of them that their rights might be trampled on if the wrong people get into power in that nation. But the corruption inherent in a Putin backed leader showed up to the maximum after the previous Ukrainian leader was ousted from power and his opulent lifestyle came to the forefront after he left the country and showed up in Moscow seeking aid for he and his lifestyle to continue.
It is interesting to note that Putin waited until after the Russian Sochi Olympics ended to pull of this little trick of his. He knew that if he tried it before or during the games, that they would have either not been held or would have collapsed while they were in progress. It is interesting to postulate on what might have happened if Mitt Romney had been elected president of the United States in the 2012 elections. It was widely noted that he had assembled much of the old Bush foreign policy team including many from the group for a new American century. Had Romney been elected, it is more than possible that instead of the Obama decision to cut back on the American military, Romney might have continued an American military buildup to fight phantom and quasi real enemies that probably did not exist at all. So, Sarah Palin’s statement that Putin would invade the Ukraine holds little more water than her statement that she was an expert in foreign affairs because she might have been able, on a very clear day, to see a little bit of Russia from her front yard there in Alaska. Palin’s “vision” about Putin and the Ukraine is about as clear as so many things that she has uttered in the past. But the right trots it out anyway as another affirmation that Barack Obama should have never been elected president of the United States. The truth probably is that if she and John McCain had been elected that we would be involved in more wars and police actions than we could have said grace over.
IOVHO,
Regards,
Joe
To say that "God exists" is the greatest understatement ever made across space and time.
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