Crimean War II?

By Capt. Fogg

I admit, that my eyes rolled a bit when I noticed Wikipedia just entered some lines of disambiguation to their page on the Crimean War so that the flood of inquiries into just what and where the Crimea is would be directed elsewhere. Yes America, there was another Crimean War and it's beginnings involved Russia claiming the right to "protect" Orthodox Christians in the peninsula as they apparently claim to be doing now by "protecting" ethnic Russians. Should we say Welcome to CW II?

I wonder how many of us will be prompted to recall how Hitler claimed to be protecting ethnic Germans in Poland. There's not a hell of a lot new here and that's scary. Weary and broke after years and years of ongoing and unnecessary war with no end apparent, we hardly need to get involved in yet another unwinnable contest with a major nuclear power.

That doesn't stop the Goddamned Republican Party from using the opportunity to accuse Obama of weakness, perhaps for not ramping up the chest pounding anthropoid display of bellicose bravado those self-destructive bastards are so fond of. Of course even though he's a chickenshit coward, a wimp and a trembling little girl, he's still a tyrant, right? No, a real man, a real American hero like John Wayne would already have his finger on the button and the red phone in hand threatening Putin with annihilation just like Reagan would do. No I don't think they want a nuclear war any more than you and I do, but they do want the humiliation of Barack Obama at any cost and at any risk -- all else be damned. 

Look, Territorial aggression by Russia is a scary thing, but even scarier is the prospect of suddenly being carried back to the dark days of the Cold War and backyard bunkers simply because the Goddamn Republicans think they can use this to bash Obama and don't give a damn about the consequences. We don't need the Incredible Hulk in the White House, we need a cold, calculating chess player. We don't need more inane accusations of "appeasement" and "Communist sympathies." We need a supportive, helpful, informed GOP more concerned with our national future, security and the survival of Democracy in the world than with promoting small minded bigotry and corporate feudalism. We don't have it. We have the excremental Lindsey Graham blaming Russian aggression on the premise that " We have a weak and indecisive president that invites aggression" while simultaneously blasting him for talking tough to Putin because after all, we can't do anything.

Perhaps we can't stare down the Russians, at least not in the short term. We can do something about the saboteurs, the public enemies and the organized crime syndicate pretending to be patriots. We can simply vote them out. We have no other choice, we barely have time.

(Cross-posted at Human Voices)