It’s an odd place for an American president, Matt Welch of Reason notes:
His country sits transfixed by a war more than 4,500 miles to the east, rooting openly in solidarity for the hopelessly outgunned underdogs fighting bravely for their homeland against a ruthless invader from Moscow. Hundreds of thousands of desperate refugees have already poured out to the West, while the young men back home fashion Molotov cocktails to hurl at tanks. The United States, unusually, is not a central protagonist in this military conflict, to the disappointment of both the ragtag rebels and some overenthusiastic hawks back home.
U.S. history being long enough, the above description fits another State of the Union address: Dwight D. Eisenhower’s somber message to Congress on January 10, 1957, two months after the dramatic and bloody Soviet putdown of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, an event seared into the memory of the Americans who lived through it. Time had declared the “Hungarian Freedom Fighter” its 1956 Man of the Year; Elvis Presley hawked donations for refugees on The Ed Sullivan Show. Even Jean-Paul Sartre broke with his longtime communist comrades (as did many fellow travelers in the West).
[…]
Having foregrounded this “season of stress that is testing the fitness of political systems and the validity of political philosophies,” Ike then laid out two very different approaches to confronting it: patient institution-building in Europe, and a more hegemonic responsibility for security arrangements in the Middle East. Biden would be good to learn lessons from both.
“The recent historic events in Hungary demand that all free nations share to the extent of their capabilities in the responsibility of granting asylum to victims of Communist persecution,” Eisenhower said. So asylum, not bombs.
The president also emphasized non-military means of bolstering the anti-communist bulwark in still-rebuilding Western Europe. “We must emphasize aid to our friends in building more productive economies and in better satisfying the natural demands of their people,” he said. Critical to that effort were long-term tariff reduction and mutual cooperation. “We welcome the efforts of a number of our European friends to achieve an integrated community to develop a common market.” For the duration of the Cold War, increasingly freer trade would be seen by Washington as an essential component of strengthening what was then called “the free world.”
None of these measures provided anything like immediate relief for Polish workers, Hungarian students, or other routed freedom fighters in the East Bloc. But — importantly! — they also avoided hot military conflict between two nuclear-armed superpowers, while also clearing the way for the eventual anti-communist revolutions of 1989 by the very people who’d been subjugated for so long.
That was then — this is now.
We talk about “freedom” for Ukrainians, when we all know about the corruption there which extends all the way to the Biden Crime Family. Meanwhile, we ignore Canadian mounted police riding down old ladies and pay not attention to the US citizens languishing in jail after the January 6 protest — waiting more than a year for their constitutionally guaranteed “speedy trial”. We ignore that imposition on our “freedom” even when one of those prisoners commits suicide.
Sadly, there is now little difference between our Ruling Class and the Soviets of old.
Yes, in terms of freedom, I can’t honestly see that Ukrainians would be any worse off under Putin than they would be under Zelensky. Given what Stalin did in Ukraine, I can see why Ukrainians would not want to live under Russian domination, but in terms of actual rights, Russia is probably at least as free as Ukraine.
The arrogant ignorance of a particular strain of right-wing Westerners writing about Ukraine or Russia is a thing to behold. Their dumb fascination with Putin is really intellectualy disqualifying of their opinion on any other topic as well.
If a Russian journalist uses the word “war” or “invasion” he will be jailed for 15 years. That is certainly the type of country I want to live in!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum_on_Security_Assurances
It is considered mandatory that we all hate Putin, love the Ukrainians and blame the previous US administration instead of the current one.
I’m all for doing the first of these three things, and can manage the second well enough. That’s as far as my lovehate can go along with the approved opinion.
Lefties always want to personalize a situation — it is part of their Rules for Radicals. So today Lefties are demanding we all hate Putin.
Remember how dumb Lefties said President Reagan was? Then Bush was stupid? And of course President Trump was really stupid and a scary warmonger?
Now we are supposed to believe that President Putin is as bad as a Republican. We are supposed to forget that “Our Guys” pushed Russia into a corner by refusing even to discuss their concerns about NATO’s aggressive expansion. If Putin is evil, he is not the only one in this sad episode.
Gavin, I’m not sure there was anything to discuss after Chechnya, Syria and then the Crimea. No excuses.
“Our guys” provoked Putin by signaling weakness, not by showing strength.
By the way, what would have constituted non-aggressive expansion by NATO?
1984
“WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH”
“…All Party members and Proles are taught to hate Emmanuel Goldstein, Eurasia, and Eastasia, each day Oceania citizens are required to watch a telescreen and participate in the two-minutes hate…”
2022
Things are worse now. Instead of 2 minutes of hate, it’s 24/7 hate.
“¡His country! sits ¡transfixed! by a war more than 4,500 miles to the east, ¡rooting openly! in ¡solidarity! for the ¡hopelessly outgunned underdogs! fighting ¡bravely! for ¡their homeland! against a ¡ruthless invader! from Moscow.”
Long live Comrade Stalin!
The Budapest memorandum on security where we got the Ukrainians to give up 5000 nukes in 1994 nails it.
We used and betrayed our noble money laundering operation in the Ukraine.
“Chechnya”
A hotbed of muslim terrorism that Putin rather miraculously civilized into a functional client state under Kadyrov.
“Syria”
Globohomo once again sponsoring forces of chaos to overthrow legitimate sovereign keeping order in some place; the very fact of him keeping order naturally involving things unacceptable to globohomo faith — Jews and or oil pipelines are involved.
Tale as common as dirt and as old as time across the duration of globohomo’s reign; except in this case, a plot twist happens in the form of another extra-national power intervening on the side of civilization.
“and then the Crimea.”
NATO’s purpose for existence ended when the Soviet Union ended… except, it didn’t end, and so it keeps compulsively returning back to that purpose — pointing military force at Russia — quite regardless of whatever context, state of affairs, or realities are at play.
Putin’s one big shining red line was not expanding NATO to Russia’s doorstep; globohomo kept trying to expand NATO, once again sponsoring forces of chaos in Ukraine to make it happen (eg, the ethnic cleansing in the Donbass region), and so this becomes the inevitable result.
There is, indeed, no excuse.