And again, when you think about their track record since Nixon . . .
.
.
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
|
Posted on 03/07/2014 7:28:25 AM PST by Colonel Kangaroo
In assessing the motives and actions of Vladimir Putin, Hillary Clinton compared them to Adolf Hitler’s. Almost always a mistake. After 12 years in power, Hitler was dead, having slaughtered millions and conquered Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals. And Putin? After 13 years in power, and facing a crisis in Ukraine, he directed his soldiers in the Crimea to take control of the small peninsula where Russia has berthed its Black Sea fleet since Napoleon. To the Wall Street Journal this is a “blitzkrieg.”
But as of now, this is a less bloody affair than Andrew Jackson’s acquisition of our Florida peninsula. In 1818, Gen. Jackson was shooting Indians, putting the Spanish on boats to Cuba and hanging Brits. And we Americans loved it.
Still, there are parallels between what motivates Putin, a Russian nationalist, and what motivated the Austrian corporal. Hitler’s war began in blazing resentment at what was done to Germany after Nov. 11, 1918. The Kaiser’s armies had defeated the Russian Empire, and the Italians at Caporetto, and fought the Western Allies to a stand still in France, until two million Americans turned the tide in 1918. When Berlin accepted an armistice on President Wilson’s Fourteen Points, not a single Allied soldier stood on German soil.
But, at Paris, the Allies proceeded to tear a disarmed Germany apart. The whole German Empire was confiscated. Eupen and Malmedy were carved out of Germany and given to Belgium. Alsace-Lorraine was taken by France. South Tyrol was severed from Austria and given to Italy. A new Czechoslovakia was given custody of 3.25 million Sudeten Germans. The German port of Danzig was handed over to the new Poland, which was also given an 80-mile wide strip cut out of Germany from Silesia to the sea, slicing her in two. The Germans were told they could not form an economic union with Austria, could not have an army of more than 100,000 soldiers, and could not put soldiers west of the Rhine, in their own country. Perhaps this Carthaginian peace was understandable given the Allied losses. It was also madness if the Allies wanted an enduring peace. Gen. Hans Von Seeckt predicted what would happen. When we regain our power, he said, “we will naturally take back everything we lost.” When Hitler came to power in 1933, he wrote off the lands lost to Belgium, France and Italy—he wanted no war with the West—but set out to recapture lost German lands and peoples in the East. He imposed conscription in 1935, sent his soldiers back into the Rhineland in 1936, annexed Austria in 1938, demanded and got the return of the Sudeten Germans from Czechoslovakia at Munich in 1938. He then sought to negotiate with the Polish colonels, who had joined in carving up Czechoslovakia, a return of Danzig, when the British issued a war guarantee to Warsaw stiffening Polish spines. Enraged by Polish intransigence, Hitler attacked. Britain and France declared war. The rest is history.
What has this to do with Putin? He, too, believes his country was humiliated and shabbily treated after the Cold War, and sees himself as protector of the ethnic Russians left behind when the Soviet Union came apart. Between 1989 and 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev had freed the captive nations of Eastern Europe, allowed the Soviet Union to dissolve into 15 nations, and had held out a hand of friendship to the Americans. What did we do? Moved NATO right onto Russia’s front porch. We brought all the liberated nations of Eastern Europe into our military alliance, along with three former Soviet republics. The War Party tried to bring Georgia and Ukraine into NATO, which was established to contain and, if necessary, fight Russia. Had they succeeded, we could have been at war with Russia in 2008 over Georgia and South Ossetia, and today over Crimea.
Now we hear new calls for Ukraine and Georgia to be brought into NATO. Are these people sane? Five U.S. presidents who faced far more violent actions by a far more dangerous Soviet Union—Truman, Ike, JFK, Johnson, Reagan—refused even to threaten force against Russia for anything east of the Elbe river. These presidents ruled out force during the Berlin Blockade of 1948, the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961, the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, and the smashing of Solidarity in Poland in 1981. Yet, today, we are committed to go to war for Lithuania and Estonia, Obama is sending F-16s to Latvia where half a million Russians live, and the War Party wants Sixth Fleet warships moved into the Black Sea.
If there is a Cold War II, or a U.S.-Russia war, historians of tomorrow will as surely point to the Bushes and Clintons who shoved NATO into Moscow’s face, as historians today point to the men of Paris who imposed the Versailles treaty upon a defeated Germany in 1919.
It should have been solved in 1994, but Clinton and Yeltsin blew it.
Shabbily treated? By whom? The Soviet Empire imploded. Its inhabitants rebelled. No foreign troops threatened it. No outside terms were dictated. No ignominious treaties were forced on it.
Regards,
Nice defense of national socialism.
If Yeltsin were sober he probably wouldn’t have ever given up the Crimean. Giving up Russia’s only deepwater year round port was about as dumb as it gets. Its the sort of thing Obama would do.
Pat does a good job of instructing us where the many fault lines in Europe lie.
The borders of countries in Europe and Russia have changed countless times in just the time the United States has been in existence.
What is happening in the Ukraine is not black and white. I don’t know who the good guys are, who the bad guys are, or what the difference is.
All I know, is that after the debacles that our political elite made out of military victories in Iraq and Afghanistan,I am done saving the world. After 70 years of sacrifice, America has done enough.
Let the European Union send their sons and daughters into the battle. It is on their doorstep, not ours.
I'm a big fan of Buchanan, always have been. He makes arguments that others are afraid to make.
But I think he's wrong here. It was said of Napoleon that he didn't want all of Europe, just those parts that bordered his empire. And as his empire expanded, so did the number of countries that bordered it.
Same goes with Hitler. He didn't want to attack the West...yet. If Britain and France would have stayed out of the Polish conflict, perhaps Hitler would have first driven east. Moscow then Paris instead of Paris then Moscow.
Hitler wanted revenge on the French as much as Lebensraum in the East.
The war in Bosnia was a violation of promises made to Russia by George H.W. Bush (IIRC) to wit that there would be no NATO or other western incursions into former Soviet Bloc territory. Of course, this was part of the European Union’s push into that area, since after the Cold War the leadership of NATO was basically handed to them, and Clinton to a great degree was “leading from behind” (actually following).
And since Putin believes that the collapse of the USSR was the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe” of the previous century, he has been working feverishly to rebuild the USSR in his own image.
I just wonder how much pressure the US put on Ukraine to give up their nukes?
And again, when you think about their track record since Nixon . . .
.
.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Our blood and money allowed Europe to recover from WWII. We don’t owe Europe or the world a thing. Woodrow Wilson’s century of American sacrifice should end.
Hitler, in his mind, was fighting International Jewry, and any country that felt that was “run by Jews” was going to be an eventual target, including the USA.
No.
Adolph Hitler and his National Socialist "Third Reich" started WWII.
Britain and France may be fairly blamed for setting the stage for it. Britain in particular may be fairly blamed for permitting it (by inaction and pusillanimous conduct). But starting it?
Hitler started it. And Stalin was complicit.
Yes, and their declaration of war upon the USA was unprovoked and unrelated to any alleged actions by Britain anyhow.
Should he have been allowed to breach every treaty he made in the name of “peace” notwithstanding? I think not.
Damn right Stalin was complicit, he knew signing the Non-Aggression Pact, and agreeing to carve up Poland with Hitler, would start the war in the West.
Then Stalin would bide his time, until all the armies bled themselves dry.
One thing he didn’t count on, France falling without much of a fight. He had to know then and there, it was only a matter of time before Hitler would come after him.
The last thing anyone wants is for those corrupt, antisemitic entities in Europe to take over as world police. Whether they realize it yet or not.
We pretty much were going to be at war with Germany, no matter what.
Britain also declared war on Japan, after Pearl, so that automatically lifted any restrictions on aiding Britain, only a matter of time before the Germans attacked one of our ships, giving us the Casus Belli to declare war on Germany.
I’m just waiting to see which new cold “warrior” in DC is first to declare that we need to give up just a little more freedom and a lot of money to protect us from the Russian horde.
Yep. Of course the -tensions- of war keep our eyes focused on foreign threats to liberty, rather than the far more ominous domestic aggressors. That is something the Soviets exported lock, stock, and barrel to Versailles on the Potomac.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.