Wednesday, March 19, 2014

Let's Play Along And Say That Putin Did "Take" Crimea

By, Chris Rossini

The neocons are doing their darndest to whip up war fever against Russia. Bill Kristol's juices are flowing:
"A war-weary public can be awakened and rallied. Indeed, events are right now doing the awakening. All that’s needed is the rallying. And the turnaround can be fast."
There's no way he wants to come down from this high.

The standard neocon line is that Putin "took" Crimea, which is absurd. But let's play along with them for entertainment's sake. Let's say that Putin really did "take" Crimea.

Ok. So what?

Lincoln "took" the South right?

The South was comprised of about 100% Americans when Lincoln invaded. The South was right in the North's backyard as well. The South did better than just vote to leave the "union," they formed their own government too! They wanted out!

Lincoln invaded and would force them to stay in the "union," costing 600,000+ lives in the process, and then made sure to "reconstruct" those recalcitrant people.

Now...you can calm your moral compass down...because in 1945, Harry Truman would point out that this American horror story actually has a happy ending:
“It will be just as easy for nations to get along in a republic of the world as it is for us to get along in a republic of the United States.”
You see, everyone "gets along" in the Union (wink, wink).

Now let's take a look at Hillary Clinton's Hitler, or Putin and Crimea:

Crimea is composed of less than 100% Russians, and wasn't trying to break free of Russia. In fact, the people of Crimea voted (yay Democracy...go USA!) to re-join Russia. And as best as anyone can tell, not one person has died in the process!

So if 600,000+ can die in forcing half the U.S. to stay with the other half, and it can turn out to be a fairy tale ending, how bad can Putin "taking" Crimea be?

Ok...entertainment over.

Let's see if Bill Kristol can find his Belligerent in Shining Armor to rile up another American horror story.


Chris Rossini is on Twitter

14 comments:

  1. The better analogy is when the US annexed Texas from Mexico. Texas was roughly half white settlers and half hispanics and natives. Texas voted to join the US. Anyone who views Russia's actions as wrong must also decry how the US has treated Mexico.

    Further, the US then prompted an unnecessary war, and after it's inevitable victory, annexed territory where it truly had no prior claims, like Arizona and California. Even if Putin were to invade eastern Ukraine, fight a serious war, and seize half of Ukrainian territory, his actions would be at best on par with the US in the Mexican War.

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  2. Lincoln did not "invade" the South. Lincoln was President of the United States and the slave states were part of the United States. Since secession was illegal, the slave states never left the United States. The slave states violated Art IV by forming their own government.

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    1. I take it that logic is not one of your strong suits Jerry.

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    2. Jerry, you keep using the term "slave states" in a disingenuous, propagandistic way of attempting making anyone who is against northern aggression an apologist for slavery. It's so laughable and easily refutable when you realize that there were four "slave states" that remained in the sacrosanct "Union" that protected slavery with the Fugitive Slave Act (Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri). Also, four states didn't leave it until after Lincoln's provocation at Fort Sumter (Arkansas, Tennessee, North Carolina and Virginia).

      We're all against war and slavery here buddy, except for you who clearly accepts the loss of 600,000 American lives to hold together some "Union" that originally protected slavery. The ending of slavery was an unambiguously great outcome of the war, but couldn't we have abolished it a peaceful manner like the rest of the western world and spared the enormous loss of life and property?

      As usual your wrong about secession being illegal. Many congressman and senators leading up to the War for Southern Independence attempted to pass legislation that would have made secession illegal. Meaning they recognized that is was permissible under the constitution and wanted to change that underlying reality. Do you condemn the colonies for seceding from Great Britain?

      Question Jerry: Should the Soviet Union had invaded the eastern European and Baltic states that were seceding the collapsing Soviet Empire because your doctrine of at all times "secession is illegal"? Pretty sure you would be ranting and raving (rightfully) on this blog about Russian aggression in the past.

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    3. Re: Jerry Wolfgang,
      -- Lincoln did not "invade" the South. --

      Yes, he did. He sent troops to sovereign states - that's an invasion according to Mr. Noah Webster.

      -- Lincoln was President of the United States and the slave states were part of the United States. --

      The fact that Lincoln was the president of the United States does not invalidate the historical fact that he invaded the Southern States with troops. I don't even know what you're trying to accomplish here. Are you trying to change the meaning of the word "invasion"? If my landlord enters the home I'm renting by force, my landlord is invading my home, and he has more of a claim than Mr. Lincoln had.

      -- Since secession was illegal,--

      But it wasn't illegal. The States seceded from England - are you saying that THAT was illegal?

      -- The slave states violated Art IV by forming their own government. --

      Article IV only pertains to those States that remain in the Union.

      By the way, there were slave states that did not secede, so your contention that "slave states seceded" is historically incorrect.

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    4. Such a beauty to behold how JW's arguments keep getting taken apart by EPJ readers.

      At what point will JW realize that the trolling is becoming counterproductive (from the point of view of the troll) when it does not confuse anymore, but is actually useful as a sparring partner / devil's advocate to hone ones argumentation skills?

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    5. Even if secession was expressly prohibited in the US Constitution, which of course it wasn't, so what? Spooner makes the case that whatever the founding fathers agreed to in 1789 should not be binding on future generations. Additionally, people always have the right to dissociate themselves from a tyrannical, in their view, government. Why should any government have the moral right to kill and imprison anyone to keep them subjugated? Because the same tyrannical government made it illegal to secede? Hence the cause of the 1861-65 war is simple. There was war because the North refused to let the South secede. The discussion of why the South wanted to secede is a different and more complicated question. The North invaded, not to free the slaves, but to quash the South's secession attempt.

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  3. "Since secession was illegal". Oh, ok then. I see.

    JW, what a persistent troll. You've got to give him/her/it/them that.

    "Welcome to the Hotel California...

    You can check-out any time you like,
    But you can never leave!"

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  4. There are two possible interpretations really. Either the south was not part of the Union, and therefore Lincoln invaded the South, or it was part of the Union, in which case Lincoln committed treason as defined in the US constitution.

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  5. As replies to JW indicate, defenders of Southern session are easily put on the defensive by the implication, if not the accusation, that they're somehow justifying slavery. Then they then try to make the case that session was "legal" as opposed to being "illegal."

    These replies only serve to dignify those who promote intellectually corrupt, politically correct, ideological agendas. I think it best to ignore them.

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  6. As Karl Marx and, later, the American so-called progressive historians pointed out, Northern capitalists who financed and held the mortgages on Southern plantations and needed continued cheap access to their output for New England textile mills were not about to let Southern aspiring entrepreneurs cut them out of the money loop by dealing with their foreign customers (especially in the UK) directly. And I believe the current estimate of casualties required to maintain control of this resource is in the range of 750,000.

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  7. As one of the great historians of the 20th century, A.J.P. Taylor, said in another context: "No matter what political reasons are given for war, the underlying reasons are always economic." The Ukraine is the "bread basket" of the Russian nation, comparable to the Great Plains of the North American continent in productivity. After the October Revolution, the resistance of Ukrainian peasants to collectivization led Lenin to entertain a return to capitalist economics to ensure a food supply for the nation but undeterred hard-liners like Stalin prevailed and the Holodomor ensued.

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  8. It's not "absurd" to say that Putin took Crimea any more than it's "absurd" to say that Hitler took the Sudetenland.

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