I’m not going to bother linking to any of the multitudinous stories ruminating about the meaning of Putin’s latest folly. I’m sure that William Kristol, Charles Krauthammer, et al. are fulminating at length over the Crimean Invasion. Putin is laughing at us! He’s eating our lunch! He is playing chess with tanks and we are playing checkers with “protests”! Hey, I’m writing their columns for them! Because it’s so fucking easy!
While “the gang” pretend to be outraged, they are in fact delighted. At last, some excitement! The time is long, long past when anyone could take exception to vicious, unprincipled criticism of an American president over foreign policy issues—as long as the president is a Democrat. Republicans regard world affairs as a sort of video game where we can blow up anyone, or anything, without receiving the slightest injury, or even spending a penny. All you do is push a button! So go ahead and push it, you goddamn coward! Push it! Push it!
As a total non-expert, I predict that the deeper Putin gets into Crimea and Ukraine, the worse it’s going to be for him. Remember the Soviet caper in Afghanistan? I do. I remember George Will writing a column saying that Afghanistan would not be the Soviet Vietnam because the Soviets, unlike us, were not pussies. They were ruthless totalitarians who would crush everyone, and everything, in their path. As it turned out, of course, Afghanistan hastened the collapse of a dying autocracy by at least a decade. The allure of war—the fantasy ot “total power”—just never seems to fade away, at least, it doesn’t if your name is Bill Kristol of Vladimir Putin. Yes, Vladimir does look better with his shirt off, but otherwise they’re peas in a pod.
