Does American Eagle have the guts to confront Russian Bear ?

[editec]

Well, here's at least one conservative (a real one, I think) who doesn't think it is a good idea to continue baiting the bear go to war with Russia..

Pat Buchanan

From Harry Truman to Ronald Reagan, as Defense Secretary Robert Gates said, U.S. presidents have sought to avoid shooting wars with Russia, even when the Bear was at its most beastly.

Truman refused to use force to break Stalin's Berlin blockade. Ike refused to intervene when the Butcher of Budapest drowned the Hungarian Revolution in blood. LBJ sat impotent as Leonid Brezhnev's tanks crushed the Prague Spring. Jimmy Carter's response to Brezhnev's invasion of Afghanistan was to boycott the Moscow Olympics. When Brezhnev ordered his Warsaw satraps to crush Solidarity and shot down a South Korean airliner killing scores of U.S. citizens, including a congressman, Reagan did -- nothing.

These presidents were not cowards. They simply would not go to war when no vital U.S. interest was at risk to justify a war. Yet, had George W. Bush prevailed and were Georgia in NATO, U.S. Marines could be fighting Russian troops over whose flag should fly over a province of 70,000 South Ossetians who prefer Russians to Georgians.

The arrogant folly of the architects of U.S. post-Cold War policy is today on display. By bringing three ex-Soviet republics into NATO, we have moved the U.S. red line for war from the Elbe almost to within artillery range of the old Leningrad.

Should America admit Ukraine into NATO, Yalta, vacation resort of the czars, will be a NATO port and Sevastopol, traditional home of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, will become a naval base for the U.S. Sixth Fleet. This is altogether a bridge too far.

And can we not understand how a Russian patriot like Vladimir Putin would be incensed by this U.S. encirclement after Russia shed its empire and sought our friendship? How would Andy Jackson have reacted to such crowding by the British Empire?

Now, I am not entirely sure that I agree with Pat regarding this issue, to be candid.

I do not understand the internal workings of the states involved well enough to know what the people of Ossetia want.

But still, I appreciate it when I find any conservative with the balls to at least THINK about the problems facing us, and to have the ability to at least IMAGINE what is motivating the others guys to act the way they do.

Per usual, Pat comes down on this issue like a nationalist --one who believes that our nation is best served when it does not get involved in every crises in the world.

Some might think that isolationism, some might even think it cowardly.

I think it both politic and realistic to understand the difference between issues that are truly vital to the USA's vital interests, and issues which are not.

Who rules Abkhazia and South Ossetia is none of our business. And after this madcap adventure of Saakashvili, why not let the people of these provinces decide their own future in plebiscites conducted by the United Nations or the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe?

So the questions REALLY are these:

Are the fates of Abkhazia and South Ossetia REALLY issues of VITAL AMERICAN interests?

And if they are vital interests to the USA, what CAN WE DO that will have a meaningful effect to our benefit?