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.
When it comes to the issue of anti-Semitism, I’d favor Putin’s self-interested nationalism over the PC new age one world bigotry of the EU.
That might have prevented any sort of a war between Germany and England/France. As for Russia, people I've spoken to who were living in Russia in the late 30s say it was on the edge of collapse at that time and that had Hitler simply waited ten years, he most likely could have picked up the pieces he wanted for free.
You are absolutely correct. Almost every significant problem we have currently was seeded by that mewling fraud. He has worked hand in glove with each successive failure of a president to perpetuate his NWO nightmare.
American Moms and Dads contributed (officially) 116,516 sons to the Euro socialists/communists/work averse, big government, statists in WW I.
In WW II, American moms and dads contributed (officially) 405, 399 sons to a Euro population that we know today is so self loathing and pacifistic that they would not get out of bed, put on a uniform and fight the Russians if they were marching down their streets. Most of the nutless men would hide behind their many times brave mommys.
When will we ever learn? I totally agree with Buchanan on this one subject.
But, my objection is based upon the foregoing. These people (euros), as a population, and with too few exceptions, are just SORRY and not worth our sons dying for. The hell with them! LET THE RUSSKIES have them and, god only knows, they probably don’t want them! Who WOULD want them?! 521,915 of our FINEST kids donated (largely against their will (draft) to sorry, no good, morally rotten to the core and decadent/spineless Europe is enough! If the SOB’s won’t fight next time, they can’t have my grandson!!!
I have more respect for the Vietnamese and Afghans, YES, in some cases, they were all drugged up but by and large they would stand and fight and die en masse for their pathetic beliefs but Euros won’t . In this current bloodless fracas, they are already sucking up to the Russians by failing to offer ANY resisting response whatsoever other than to surrender to Putin demands. Ukraine troops are joining the Russian Army and the Ukraine Navy is surrendering battleships to the Russkies. With 180 guys, William Travis, in his late twenties, said a final good bye to his young son and fought 5,000 Mexicans to his death. My point: There are “peoples” that historically have habitated this earth that ARE/WERE patriots and WILL fight for their country!
AND IN THE CASE OF THE US, we have sacrificed hundreds of thousands of our sons to fight for “OTHER PEOPLE”.
Bottom line: no consideration of helping these inferior and worthless people (continental Euros, not the UK) by donating more American sons should ever be given. 521,915 is way past ENOUGH!! Bring the F15 drivers home now!
And, please spare me the “isolationist” arguments. I will not even respond to them.
An interesting read of this little-unknown operation:
I'm not a Historian, but I think Winston Churchill would have agreed with you that "The Unnecessary War" was Britain's "fault," but probably not in the sense you think.
OTOH, I'm not surprised that Buchanan's fevered mind would come up with a way to blame Britain for Germany's invasion of Poland. I'll bet that, given time, he'll peg some action of the US that forced the Japanese to bomb Pearl.
I’d favor neither. The US has fought both and won; and then lost faith after succumbing to the temptations of both subdued enemies.
And Putin is very much internationalist insofar as his dream to rebuild the Soviet Empire.
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.
Yugoslavia was not Soviet Bloc. It was not in the Warsaw Pact and officially non aligned. Serbia got hammered by the west for backing those Bosnian Serb dirt bags.
Sorry, still don’t agree. German armies marched because Hitler told them to. Hitler started WWII.
The abominable Treaty of Versailles more or less ensured that Hitler (or someone like him) would eventually want to restore Germany ... but that doesn’t excuse Hitler.
McQueeg.
It was still an incursion in that direction. Take note of which way Romania, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland et al tended after that war.
It’s what happened.
Nice to see someone who has been educated and studied history.
To me that's not a statement that he necessarily agreed with the USSR....what he lamented was the loss of Russian prestige and power.
Hitler also lamented the loss of German prestige after WWI, but that didn't mean he wanted to restore the Kaiser.
I think that question would be better directed towards Buchanan. He shot down his political career by being an Adversary Firster. I think he could have made it to the White House, except for his really strange positions about America's enemies - first the Nazis and Imperial Japan, when it really sank his political career, and now the Russians, when his political career is done and his media career is all but over.
When one can't deal with Buchanan's logic, they switch the topic to Buchanan. All the foreign interests then chime in because Buchanan is for America first, last and only.
The USSR was simply the Russian Empire in the 20th century. Russian history is all connected and Putin obviously has a Czar complex.
Right; that’s why I mentioned that Putin is rebuilding the empire in his own image. Territory versus ideology, albeit there remain many similarities in ideology.
At least on the surface, the USSR tried to destroy all the remnants of Russian Nationalism, and replace it with Homo Sovieticus.
I don’t think deep down Putin was ever on board with that.
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