August 8, 2008, was an eventful day. John Edwards confessed to screwing or being screwed. China opened the 2008 Olympics. Caylee Anthony continued to be among the missing. Obama shuttled off to Hawaii; Hillary got on his stump in Nevada.
And, Russia started bombing Georgia.
That last event seemed to be an afterthought in the news of the day. Indeed, as the day closed, it seemed that the only place to get information on the Russia / Georgia conflict was on the Internet. One can't help but surmise that the Russian move was planned that way. Bush is off to the Olympics, Congress is out for their summer "energy problem evasion" vacation, and the world's news sources are focused everywhere but where they should be.
The first alert to us should have sounded when Putin arranged for a sham puppet leadership to take his place in the Kremlin. With Putin's former firm grip on the Soviet Secret Service gulagang that ruthlessly killed opponents and ruled with terror, I've always been suspicious that when the time came to relinquish his Russian Presidency, he'd find some way to evade the relatively new Russian Constitution. That he did.
Putin's cold shoulder to the United States in general and recently to Bush in particular has signified to many that the "Cold War" between us and Russia may have propelled itself from extinction back into a renewed state of tension. And, Putin is no fool. In fact, he's a well-known genius at plotting, conniving, and getting his agenda accomplished. He's never been a friend of American capitalism and has long resented the fact that Reagan engineered the fall of Communism and Soviet rule in the Baltics. Frankly, I do not believe that his ascension to becoming the "top dog" in Russia was a result of happenstance. It was well-planned and executed and his term as the "Top Dog" has allowed him to centralize and consolidate his power.
History will show that the Russians rarely enter a country with the thought of leaving. History will also show that Russia fancies itself as being the dominant power in the world, if not "the" dominant power. Of course, China is a pretender to that role, as is Osama Bin Laden and his increasingly sophisticated terrorist followers. Where the United States stands in this mix should be enough to send all of us to the commode.
We are stretched thin in Afghanistan. Iran is proving to be a formidable enemy that probably will not hesitate to take advantage of any troop withdrawal from Iraq. Our own borders are leaking like a sieve. America itself is war weary. We have no draft. We've had no political backbone since Reagan left office and that's easily interpreted as a sign of weakness, if not outright cowardice, by those who have spent centuries at war.
In short, we are vulnerable. It's almost as if Bush, Clinton and Bush, along with Congress, conspired to put us in this position.
If Russia crushes Georgia, which they may well do, and they then decide to go on and on and on to reassimilate the Soviet Union, who...... WHO IS GOING TO STOP THEM?
At some point, folks, we're going to have to get our collective heads out of our asses and come to grips with reality, or the real reality may become the above flag flying over Washington.
That's MY AMERICAN OPINION, respectfully submitted.
No comments:
Post a Comment