Vlad the geopolitical derailer.......................by Mischa Popoff

I’ll bet everyone thought I was going to come out this week with both barrels a’ blazing about what a bully Vladimir Putin is being. Wrong!

You won’t get such facile nineteenth-century thinking from me. No way!

I’ll bet you thought I was going to condemn the Ukrainian military for following Putin’s orders and sending snipers out to shoot protesters through the chest, neck and head. Nope. Or that I was going to condemn Putin for sending Russian attack helicopters and armed soldiers into Ukraine as a threat to the Ukrainian people so they’d shut up and accept their fate as an Eastern Bloc country, just like their parents and grandparents had to do during the good ol’ days under Joseph Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev. Nope!

I have turned over a new leaf. To say such things would merely perpetuate simplistic, right-wing stereotypes about good and evil in this world. And there’s no such thing as good and evil. Right President Obama? Ukrainians should just forget about living in a free-market economy like ours. Why you ask? Well, for their own good, silly.

Putin, like all those other “colorful” historical figures: Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Castro and Idi Amin, is simply formulating a calculated response to Western aggression. What aggression you ask?

Well, you know how Western companies always set up shop in countries with stable economies and make stuff to sell to its citizens? Can’t have that. It’s American imperialism. And it must be countered lest the whole world resemble America someday. You know… democratic, egalitarian, wealthy, and all the rest of the horrible stuff the poor people of Ukraine fail to realize is nothing but a front for Western Manifest Destiny. Case closed you war monger!

So now, if you would please all stop listening to that tired old battle axe, that narrow-minded white Republican John McCain who thinks we should stand up to the “bad guys” of this world, who believes that 100,000 civilians slaughtered in Syria was reason for the president to take action instead of just talking, who believes (get this) that America is some sort of “beacon to the world” for God’s sake (literally), then we can all get back to the bargaining table and continue talking for the next year or two.

Why go inflicting American exceptionalism onto the rest of the world? Yeesh!

Everyone knows that when Obama says something like, “No country has the right to invade another country,” he’s referring to white Republican president George “W.” Bush who (get this) invaded Iraq just because Saddam Hussein had thwarted 17 United Nations Security Council resolutions (and who’s counting, right?) while murdering innocent civilians inside and outside his borders.

Now aren’t you glad that stoopid cowboy isn’t in the White House anymore, flexing American muscle all over the world like President Reagan did when he scared the Mullah’s in Iran into releasing those 50 American hostages within a half hour of taking the Presidency from Jimmy Carter?

So no, I’m not going to call for the freezing of bank accounts of Putin’s top brass so they can’t wine and dine their harlot mistresses on those weekend “business trips” to Prague. Nor will I call for Obama to reverse his decision to back down on Bush’s commitment to put a missile-defense system in Poland and Czechoslovakia. Calling for such things will only aggravate Putin and force his hand even further! And then the next thing you know he might try to reform the old Soviet empire. And it would be our fault!

Of course, he might try reforming the old Soviet empire no matter what we do. But isn’t it better to be safe than sorry?

Mischa Popoff has a degree in the history of science and is a Policy Advisor for The Heartland Institute.