The following is an email stream from a list where this Damn Yankee participates.
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There is an amazing U.S. trait which persists that allows our people to act from an ignorance of history - ours and others.
We have been here before.
The nation brags about beating the Soviet Union and wearing them down. This, all the while allowing ourselves to ignore that what we are doing by circling and embroiling Russia is very near what the U.S. was doing throughout the 1920s and 1930s which led to the Japanese "need" to attack us in Hawaii. It is possible, also, that a significant reason behind the Chinese sponsorship of North Korea was based on similar fears that we were increasing our exploitive influence in Asia as a result of our "win" over Japan.
We certainly gave "proof" for and encouraged that "Asian concern" with our dogged support for Taiwan and our gradual occupation of South Viet Nam after the French were defeated at Dien Bien Phu.
Another aspect of our willing ignorance hiding behind the falsehood that we "beat the Soviets," relates directly to the willingness to perceive Russia as the relatively backward, over-controlled and bureaucratically excessive Soviet Union.
Whereas the Soviets were mostly unable to produce sufficientg food and material from an incompetent agricultural and industrial base, Russia is a far different and improved nation with more natural resources and the ability to exploit them than the U.S. in the 21st century. They export food surpluses, oil and other resources, including science and technology in direct competition (and opposition, in some cases) with "The West."
And, in this 21st century, we are a far more dependent nation, on the world's non-U.S. resources than we accept andacknowledge for the most part. This simply because we continue to delude ourselves, and allow our national leaders to support that delusion, by believing we are the only potential and extant super-power remaining in this world of rapidly advancing and developing, competitive nations.
Russia, for example, has vast, untapped and known petroleum resources as well as other natural resources - and the world is now it's acknowledged marketplace as it was for the U.S. in the 1950s-1990s. The world has changed.
In my opinion for the U.S. to continue dealing with Russia and other nations which our leaders and political ideologues persist in their attempts to demonize, in the way we have since the 1940s, reflects downright ignorance and wrong-headedness. I believe, if we are to survive as a relatively free nation, we must seek and maintain equitable and friendly relations and partnerships with all nations and stop attempting to pass ourselves off as some sort of arrogant, brash, independent, all powerful and entitled demagogic world leader.
Sam Conant
Colchester, Vermont
http://samcvt@blogspot.com
----- Original Message -----
From: jordan.joseph@comcast.net
Sent: Saturday, August 23, 2008 4:17 PM
Subject: Re: Who Started Cold War II?
Hi Folks,
Bush courted the former USSR state of Georgia for two reasons.
1- The oil line from the Caspian to the Black Sea.
2- Turkey couldnt be bought to launch troops and planes to invade Iraq..(I think neither to Iran.)
( Georgia is North of Turkey and if Iraq wouldnt let Bush attack Iran from there he could use Georgia from one side and Kuwait from the other.
Remember folks, Russia is assisting Iran with its manufacturing of nuclear power.
Thats why Russia interfered with Georgia. They dont want us invading Iran from anywhere.
Meanwhile putting ICBMs in Poland is dumb as hell when we can strike anywhere in the world from Submarines, Ships and Planes as well as ICBMs from Canaveral or Dallas with nuke warheads and maybe even from multiple nuke warheads in space sattelites.
Isnt it enough that we have the whole Arab world stirred up against us except Kuwait? (Even our VPs pet Saudi Arabia wont let our military on Allahs land). The Pentagon has farmed our Military manufacturing capability out to the extent that that we dont want go back to the "Cold War".
On the other hand if Russia attacks one American troop anywhere in the world I say nuke Russia and prepare to die when they retaliate.
We have no alternative in war with Russia but to nuke or lose as China will help Russia. Both are Communist inspired Nations.
All China would have to do to help Russia against the USA is to cut the USA exports off and send them to Russia.
Joe
-------------- Original message --------------
From: "Sanjay Sathe"
It just amazes me how for every conversation Hitler is pulled out. Frankly, I would have thought that intelligent people could come up with better arguments then Hitler and the Sudetenland over over again. I guess when one has nothing more original to say old bromides work as a substitute. Frankly, there is no reason to draw parallels between Russian actions and Hitler when drawing parallels between their actions and past actions would do just as well. But that sort of conversation requires a more nuanced conversation and why bother with that when one can just resort to bumper stickers.
Curious are you a supporter of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank?. Did you write letters of protest when Israel bombed Lebanon for 35 days because Hezbollah took 2 Israeli's captive? I don't recall statements of dis-proportionality even when Israel attacked civilian infrastructure in direct violation of the Geneva conventions. Did you support Hezbollahs attacks on Isr ael when they were occupying Lebanon?
And BTW since you are such argent supporter of the Iraq policy where was the international authority to replace the Iraqi government led by Saddam Hussain. Why is American unilateral preemption legal but everybody else reminds you of Hitler.
On Thu, Aug 21, 2008 at 2:02 PM, Jeff Scribner
Perhaps we should ask Pat how one "invades" it's own territory. The "problem" in Georgia arose because the President of Georgia had the temerity to try to enforce the law in a part of his own country that housed a large (but not too large) Russian minority. This was used by the Russians as an excuse for an adventure in Georgia that still might not be over and could still result in one of the Kremlin's main aims, closing or control of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline (sometimes abbreviated as BTC pipeline). If we don't quickly find a way to make the Russians back down from most of this, we are going to have a major future problem with them - just as we had when the west didn't face down Hitler in the Sudetenland and the Soviet Russians at the end of WWII.
JLS
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From: Sanjay Sathe
Sent: Tuesday, August 19, 2008 14:26
Subject: not a left wing nut case
not often I find myself agreeing with Pat Buchanan!!
I think we should all be wary of the propaganda coming out of Georgia. It is designed to provoke the Pavlovian response in Americans. Russia was not trying to crush "democracy" in Georgia. They would have behaved in exactly the same manner whether it was a right wing or left wing dictatorship allied with the United States. I think we have to get out of our knee jerk reaction that people hate us for our democracy. There are plenty of other things they hate us for!
It is also worth remembering that Stalin was a Georgian and Krushchev was Ukranian. Clearly the Russian didn't regard them or the provinces they came from as outsiders- unlike I might say about the likes of Cokie Roberts who haven't figured out that Hawaii is not some exotic place but a rather a state of the Union. That somebody growing up there is as much an American as somebody growing up in Arizona, Idaho or any other state.
Who Started Cold War II?
by Patrick J. Buchanan
The American people should be eternally grateful to Old Europe for having spiked the Bush-McCain plan to bring Georgia into NATO.
Had Georgia been in NATO when Mikheil Saakashvili invaded South Ossetia, we would be eyeball to eyeball with Russia, facing war in the Caucasus, where Moscow's superiority is as great as U.S. superiority in the Caribbean during the Cuban missile crisis.
If the Russia-Georgia war proves nothing else, it is the insanity of giving erratic hotheads in volatile nations the power to drag the United States into war.
From Harry Truman to Ronald Reagan, as Defense Secretary Robert Gates said, U.S. presidents have sought to avoid shooting wars with Russia, even when the Bear was at its most beastly.
Truman refused to use force to break Stalin's Berlin blockade. Ike refused to intervene when the Butcher of Budapest drowned the Hungarian Revolution in blood. LBJ sat impotent as Leonid Brezhnev's tanks crushed the Prague Spring. Jimmy Carter's response to Brezhnev's invasion of Afghanistan was to boycott the Moscow Olympics. When Brezhnev ordered his Warsaw satraps to crush Solidarity and shot down a South Korean airliner killing scores of U.S. citizens, including a congressman, Reagan did รข€" nothing.
These presidents were not cowards. They simply would not go to war when no vital U.S. interest was at risk to justify a war. Yet, had George W. Bush prevailed and were Georgia in NATO, U.S. Marines could be fighting Russian troops over whose flag should fly over a province of 70,000 South Ossetians who prefer Russians to Georgians.
The arrogant folly of the architects of U.S. post-Cold War policy is today on display. By bringing three ex-Soviet republics into NATO, we have moved the U.S. red line for war from the Elbe almost to within artillery range of the old Leningrad.
Should America admit Ukraine into NATO, Yalta, vacation resort of the czars, will be a NATO port and Sevastopol, traditional home of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, will become a naval base for the U.S. Sixth Fleet. This is altogether a bridge too far.
And can we not understand how a Russian patriot like Vladimir Putin would be incensed by this U.S. encirclement after Russia shed its empire and sought our friendship? How would Andy Jackson have reacted to such crowding by the British Empire?
As of 1991, the oil of Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Azerbaijan belonged to Moscow. Can we not understand why Putin would smolder as avaricious Yankees built pipelines to siphon the oil and gas of the Caspian Basin through breakaway Georgia to the West?
For a dozen years, Putin & Co. watched as U.S. agents helped to dump over regimes in Ukraine and Georgia that were friendly to Moscow.
If Cold War II is coming, who started it, if not us?
The swift and decisive action of Putin's army in running the Georgian forces out of South Ossetia in 24 hours after Saakashvili began his barrage and invasion suggests Putin knew exactly what Saakashvili was up to and dropped the hammer on him.
What did we know? Did we know Georgia was about to walk into Putin's trap? Did we not see the Russians lying in wait north of the border? Did we give Saakashvili a green light?
Joe Biden ought to be conducting public hearings on who caused this U.S. humiliation.
The war in Georgia has exposed the dangerous overextension of U.S. power. There is no way America can fight a war with Russia in the Caucasus with our army tied down in Afghanistan and Iraq. Nor should we. Hence, it is demented to be offering, as John McCain and Barack Obama are, NATO membership to Tbilisi.
The United States must decide whether it wants a partner in a flawed Russia or a second Cold War. For if we want another Cold War, we are, by cutting Russia out of the oil of the Caspian and pushing NATO into her face, going about it exactly the right way.
Vladimir Putin is no Stalin. He is a nationalist determined, as ruler of a proud and powerful country, to assert his nation's primacy in its own sphere, just as U.S. presidents from James Monroe to Bush have done on our side of the Atlantic.
A resurgent Russia is no threat to any vital interests of the United States. It is a threat to an American Empire that presumes some God-given right to plant U.S. military power in the backyard or on the front porch of Mother Russia.
Who rules Abkhazia and South Ossetia is none of our business. And after this madcap adventure of Saakashvili, why not let the people of these provinces decide their own future in plebiscites conducted by the United Nations or the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe?
As for Saakashvili, he's probably toast in Tbilisi after this stunt. Let the neocons find him an endowed chair at the American Enterprise Institute.
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