Thursday, March 28, 2024
Miles from the Mainstream
D. R. ZUKERMAN, proprietor

"Expansionist" Russia?


May 1, 2014 --

"Vladimir Putin's Russia...has become more expansionist..." according to an April 24 editorial in The Wall Street Journal Doesn't that mean that Russia is "spreading out?" But who is expanding into new territory: Russia...or NATO? It seems to this observer that it is NATO that is expanding outside its traditional area, not "Putin's Russia."

The Wall Street Journal also asserted that Putin's leadership has become an "increasingly despotic one-man rule." Heavens, what word, then, is left to describe Kim Jong-Un, the absolute and tyrannical ruler of North Korea? There is an image of Putin greeting Israel's Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, last November, with what appears as warm smiles on the faces of the two leaders. LPR wonders if that image will be reason to raise the level of the boycott-divestment-sanctions (BDS) movement against the State of Israel. (Although academic groups have not called for an anti-Russia BDS, such a trend is to be expected in view of signals from the Obama administration.

The New York Times, serving as the semi-official paper of the Obama administration, reported April 20 that the president "is focused on isolating President Vladimir V. Putin's Russia by cutting off its economic and political ties to the outside world, limiting its expansionist ambitions in its own neighborhood and effectively making it a pariah state." That is to say, it apparently has become Washington policy to make "Putin's Russia" an outcast state, rejected and despised. Fascinating to see The Wall Street Journal volunteer for service in an Obama crusade.

And no less fascinating is it to see Republicans vying with leftists to out-demonize Putin. Clearly, the basis of animus cannot rise from the same base. Perhaps for the Republicans, Putin is still a commie member of the KGB and, accordingly, must be opposed steadfastly. Also, it must be a source of relief for Republicans that they can join the anti-Putin demonizing process and, thereby, be spared demonization, for a time, themselves. The cause of leftist animus against Putin might be considered proof enough that the Russian president is not a commie. Certainly, the American left seems to demand that Washington, today is the the rightful center of the Left International.

In the looming Ukraine/European conflict (how better to mark the 100th anniversary of the War Against the Kaiser?) will The Wall Street Journal call for a congressional declaration in support of belligerency against Russia. And in the looming conflict with Russia, will Republican senators urge voters to keep the U.S. Senate in the hands of Majority Leader Harry Reid?

Will House Speaker John Boehner urge the nation to rally behind the leadership of President Obama, and toss aside petty domestic politics.

The lack of balance in media coverage of the NATO-Russia confrontation should remind us that truth is the first casualty of war. A media that points to armed pro-Russia militants in east Ukraine and ignores the armed nationalist militants in west Ukraine is a media that has enlisted as a "fifth column" one the side of one of the opposing groups. A news story in The Wall Street Journal, April 24, suggested that there was no connection between a visit of CIA Director John Brennan to Kiev, in mid-April, and the Ukraine political situation. LPR is not holding its breath to get the truth of the Brennan mission to Ukraine.

After all, we still don't know why a U.S. facility was attacked by terrorists in Benghazi, Libya, killing the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans, much less the purpose of that facility. Hmm.

Could the Brennan visit have had anything to do with the appearance, a few days later, of the phony anti-Semitic leaflets that showed up in east Ukraine.