Is Putin The Problem?

Is Putin Worse Than Stalin? -- Pat Buchanan, Buchanan.org

In 1933, the Holodomor was playing out in Ukraine.

After the “kulaks,” the independent farmers, had been liquidated in the forced collectivization of Soviet agriculture, a genocidal famine was imposed on Ukraine through seizure of her food production.

Estimates of the dead range from two to nine million souls.

Walter Duranty of the New York Times, who called reports of the famine “malignant propaganda,” won a Pulitzer for his mendacity.

In November 1933, during the Holodomor, the greatest liberal of them all, FDR, invited Foreign Minister Maxim Litvinov to receive official U.S. recognition of his master Stalin’s murderous regime.

On August 1, 1991, just four months before Ukraine declared its independence of Russia, George H. W. Bush warned Kiev’s legislature:

Read more ....

My Comment: For the past few weeks the U.S. coverage and commentary on the Ukraine crisis has been the same .... see here (The Fragile Deceptions of Vladimir Putin, Simon Shuster/Time), and here (Stuck in the middle of a war zone on a Donetsk-bound train, Scot Peterson/CSM).

In short .... doom and gloom with a decided pro-Kiev message in the coverage with little if any coverage on why the people in eastern Ukraine are rebelling in the first place. But even with all of this reporting .... no one in the U.S. has brought up an more important question .... why should the U.S. care about Ukraine .... and is Ukraine a country that we are willing to go to war for ... even if the opponent is a nuclear armed Russia?

This is why this commentary from Pat Buchanan is a must read .... and quoting David Stockman  ....  
.... In just 800 words Pat Buchanan exposes the sheer juvenile delinquency embodied in Washington’s current Ukrainian fiasco. He accomplishes this by reminding us of the sober restraint that governed the actions of American Presidents from FDR to Eisenhower, Reagan and Bush I with respect to Eastern Europe during far more perilous times. 

Read it all.