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Trump Went Easy on Putin? Get a Load of Churchill on Stalin
Winston Churchill to the House of Commons in 1945, shortly after returning from the Yalta Conference:
Published in GeneralThe impression I brought back from the Crimea is that Marshal Stalin and the Soviet leaders wish to live in honourable friendship and equality with the Western democracies. I feel also that their word is their bond. I know of no Government which stands to its obligations…more solidly than the Russian Soviet Government. I decline absolutely to embark here on a discussion about Russian good faith.
There’s excoriation, then there’s incitement. No former CIA head called it “treasonous” when W was schmaltzing the Vlad. Here, John Brennan going full “t” word over the Donald’s press conference flattery is few clicks past what any right wing pundit ever said about W.
Brennan is a partisan hack. Stipulated.
Absolutely. We need Russia to maintain a balance of power. His only mistake today was in answering the question about our intelligence vs Putin at all. He could have side-stepped it and avoided all the controversy in the press. Sigh.
Moderator Note:
Please don't call people names while disagreeing with them. It's rude.Peter, I admire you tremendously, but [don’t agree with your point of view]. Churchill needed Russian cannon-fodder to literally preserve the British monarchy; FDR was promised 600,000 Russian casualties for the invasion of Japan – what is Trump getting for debasing American values? Do you honestly proffer that Pompeo or Bolton had any input on this grovelling?
I promised myself I would put a cork in my NeverTrump commentary, but this is unacceptable.
Proper history, should it still exist at the time (not a given), will likely have an interesting read on the current mass hyperventilation. As for me, I am relatively confident that much of what the most prominent heavy breathers are spewing this day will turn out to be mostly bunk. In fact, that is maybe the surest bet you will get this year.
For your consideration (or entertainment if you prefer), an interesting historical passage from Adam Hochschild in the introduction to a very worthwhile read:
A bit of advice. Take a break and go read some Victor Serge.
I’m comforted that the adults in the administration seem to take whatever rhetoric Trumps spews forth on Russia and enact the exact opposite as policy. That doesn’t really make what Trump says okay, it does mitigate it.
Which is why Rosenstein decided to sabotage the meeting with his announcement last week.
This doesn’t fill me with confidence about Trump, since it is quite arguable that any faith placed in Stalin at Yalta was severely missplaced. At least FDR and Chruchill were actually getting something from the Russians at the time that made their platitudes a price worth paying. What have we gotten from Putin for him to deserve such watm regards?
Within a year of these statements by Chruchill he would deliver his Iron Curtain speech pointing out that half the capitals of Europe had fallen to Soviet domination. Am I to expect that Trump will one year hence also deliver such a speech? What a interesting thing to look forward to.
Does Russia want war with us?
My thoughts disjointed (?) thoughts are:
Putin is no Stalin. He runs a corrupt country, and he’ll kill his enemies and suppress free speech, but in general a Russian citizen that keeps his nose clean and his head down has a good chance to live a decent life there. If he doesn’t like it, he can leave the country without having to get smuggled out. That was not the case with Stalin’s Soviet Union. If you want to look at something worse than Trump’s (or Bush’s) “friendship” with Putin, how about Obama’s “friendship” with Castro?
Russia’s efforts to influence our elections have had minimal effects. We have to guard against any kind of fraud and foreign influence, and we’re mostly successful at that. Frankly, I’m more concerned about domestic voting fraud than I am of Russia. This issue has been blown out of proportion. And by the way, Obama pushed the envelope a little with an Israeli election and Brexit.
I don’t know whether this will blow over or not. I often have a tin ear when it comes to predicting how a majority of my fellow citizens will react. I would not be surprised either way.
Did the KGB launch an operation to get Chruchill elected? I’ll take an American Deep State over a useful idiot for Russia any day.
Politically speaking, “okay” isn’t really a very high bar. Let’s check back in 6 months or a year and see if things are “okay.” OK?
Peter, if you don’t watch it they may try to throw you off your own island.
One can be intellectually dishonest and not necessarily have bad intentions. Purposefully trying to use war rhetoric from a past foreign leader is an example of that. The two incidents are considerably dissimilar but whataboutism, with a particular focus for war rhetoric, is the bread and butter of Trump defenses. I say this as someone who came to Ricochet because he discovered Uncommon Knowledge, and watched every episode that could be found on the internet, when he first got internet service his senior year of high school.
For how long? The partisan urge to defend Trump is leading to such pieces of wisdom as claiming a fictious Deep State is more dangerous than a very real and hostile Russian regime. On this thread alone we see Trump’s supporters grasping for whataboutism to square the circle of Putin’s clear history of dishoensty and antiamerican hostility with Trump’s lavish praise of him. Putting the lie to their so called patriotic nationalism.
One would think the 16 years of failed dealings with Putin would mean we had finally learned our lesson. But now we just watch Trump stick his hand in the fire to learn it is hot. First was Georgia, then Ukraine, who will pay the price next for this reset?
I said, and I meant, that I admire Peter immensely. I think Trump is as unfit to be President, in his way, as Henry Wallace would have been back during the time of these quotes. Peter does not and Ricochet does not. Mostly I hold back but this time I couldn’t.
I’ll go back under my bridge now.
Whether this is appropriate in this thread, I don’t really know. And feel free to see that as a cop-out. But we’ve just undergone a bit of a self-examination here in a few threads about “bubbles” at Ricochet, and about the influence of the “Happy Warriors.”
I’m at severe pains to see Trump’s press conference as being helpful in any respect. But, so far, I see one poster, @jamielockett, willing to say so. While I’ve tended to be a Trump defender of late, I can’t do it here. Perhaps we could hear from some who can.
We had a useful idiot for Russia in the White House from 2009 to 2017, to whom the Deep State gave their tacit approval. And the Deep State gave their open and explicit approval to another idiot in 2016 named Hillary Clinton. The Deep State needs to be purged to the last man; they are fundamentally un-American.
There is nothing fictional about a Deep State whose spoke-stooges like Bret Stephens openly fantasize about having a majority of native-born Americans “replaced.” Those are fighting words.
Peter, would you have posted this Churchill quote if Obama had given such a performance?
See I thinks a President who stands up in front of the world and blames America for Russian aggression is fundamentally un-American. And likewise those that defend him for it.
And I, a native-born American who grew up during the late Cold War Era when this was still a free country, think an unelected, unaccountable bureaucracy that harbors totalitarian aspirations is fundamentally un-American. And likewise those who defend it.
This thread is awesome. It’s like watching Alex Jones on acid fighting it out with the gay frog only he can see.
I don’t fear fictional things.
Moderator Note:
This is an incredibly inappropriate and rude thing to say, as well as assuming bad faith on account of millions of people.Well some of us Americans still appreciate and like our country just fine and always did.
But I guess it takes a true native born American to really despise America in such a patriotic way as the MAGA crowd does.In don’t think the historical perspective depicted by Peter is analogous to the situation with Russia today. Yalta occurred with Roosevelt quick sick and was to determine how Europe would look like after the war. Shortly after Yalta, Churchill gave a ringing speech on the Iron Curtain falling on Eastern Europe. Russia is not a world power today. They have many nuclear weapons and their economy is twelfth in worldwide GDP, with 50% of it dependent on energy. America’s military power is far superior to Russia. We don’t need better relations with Russia. We need Russia to start acting like a country that implements agreements they have signed with America and to stop invading their neighbors.
@peterrobinson Peter, please list those ways and how likely it is Russia would cooperate with u on them. Thank.
@peterrobinson Peter, that’s true. But given we have no data to answer them, any answers are simply opinion and speculation at this point.
The fact that Bush made a major mistake doesn’t make Trump’s position laudatory. I think Trump just made the same mistake Bush and Obama did. Putin played all three of them successfully.
It’s too early to conclude that President Trump’s method is successful for dealing with China, North Korea, and Russia. But after eighteen months, there have been no successes that can be documented. None of the policies Trump has implemented have changed the behavior of these three countries. How much more time needs to elapse before we conclude they don’t work?