It’s not Putin, observes Pat Buchanan:
From FDR on, U.S. presidents have felt that America could not remain isolated from the rulers of the world’s largest nation.
Ike invited Khrushchev to tour the USA after he had drowned the Hungarian Revolution in blood. After Khrushchev put missiles in Cuba, JFK was soon calling for a new detente at American University.
Within weeks of Warsaw Pact armies crushing the Prague Spring in August 1968, LBJ was seeking a summit with Premier Alexei Kosygin.
After excoriating Moscow for the downing of KAL 007 in 1983, that old Cold Warrior Ronald Reagan was fishing for a summit meeting.
The point: Every president from FDR through George H. W. Bush, even after collisions with Moscow far more serious than this clash over Ukraine, sought to re-engage the men in the Kremlin.
Whatever we thought of the Soviet dictators who blockaded Berlin, enslaved Eastern Europe, put rockets in Cuba and armed Arabs to attack Israel, Ike, JFK, LBJ, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan and Bush 1 all sought to engage Russia’s rulers.
Avoidance of a catastrophic war demanded engagement.
How then can we explain the clamor of today’s U.S. foreign policy elite to confront, isolate, and cripple Russia, and make of Putin a moral and political leper with whom honorable statesmen can never deal?
What has Putin done to rival the forced famine in Ukraine that starved to death millions, the slaughter of the Hungarian rebels or the Warsaw Pact’s crushing of Czechoslovakia?
As a general rule, the moment you see an American politician pointing at to someone and claiming he is Hitler, you know he’s probably innocent of whatever he’s being accused of doing. It’s not a perfectly reliable device, but when they’re obviously engaging in hyperbolic rhetoric, the chances are they are doing so because they can’t make a reasonable case based on his actual deeds.
It is somewhat remarkable that even the least competent administration in American history is managing to screw up the Middle East, Russia, and the southern border of the USA all at the same time. At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if Obama ordered the bombing of London and an amphibious invasion of Uganda.
It’s obvious that the USA is the real problem here. But what is more difficult to understand is what their motivation might be, beyond a short-term pecuniary interest in pillaging Ukraine.