What is one to make of El Supremo’s sweaty, long-running mancrush on stunning Slavic muscleboy Vladimir Putin,1 aka (in Donnie’s dreams) Vlad the Impaler? Is it just a thuggish admiration society, the way Hitler had it in for Mussolini? Secret investments in a polar pipeline? Or maybe the whole golden shower thing?
Well, who knows, and, at this point, who cares, because even the remotest possibility of “sensible” relations between the U.S. and Russia has been blown up by Russia’s disgusting use of nerve gas in the attempted assassination of Sergei Skripal—more or less a deliberate violation of every international standard of human decency. And maybe it “had” to be that way. Putin clearly so much enjoys being the bad guy that, once he got started, however it all began, how could he ever stop?
But maybe it didn’t have to be that way. Contrary to Mitt Romney’s bellowing back in 2008, Russia wasn’t our “foremost geopolitical adversary”— for, as a matter of fact, back then we didn’t have any real “geopolitical adversary” at all. That was what Republicans were so mad about.
Maybe, if the U.S., during the Clinton administration hadn’t expanded a no longer needed NATO into the former Soviet Empire, as a brutal, continuing, and unnecessary reminder of Russian impotency; maybe if Secretary of State Hillary Clinton hadn’t lied to Russia about western plans for removing Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi; maybe if Mrs. Clinton had been able to conceal her obvious appetite for removing Putin from his position as well, via an endless number of western financed initiatives to promote “democracy” in eastern Europe (Democracy American Style!); maybe if Mrs. Clinton and President Obama had acquiesced in the idea that Ukraine could and should remain an informal “satellite” of Russia, then the disastrous series of miscalculations and overreactions in that country would not have led to a pro-western putsch/”revolution”, prompting Putin’s seizure of the Crimea, a Rubicon that (possibly) need never have been crossed; maybe if Mrs. Clinton and President Obama had not bit (again!) on the thoroughly poisoned apple of “regime change” in Syria, Russian and U.S. “surrogates” wouldn’t be killing each other; maybe if all or most of things could have happened, Putin wouldn’t feel the necessity of being a vicious, soulless prick 24/7. Okay, that’s only a possibility, but still.
- Bald and ripped? Sign me up! ↩︎
