Monday, August 18, 2008

Russophobia: A Political Pathology

Why the new cold war with Russia?

By Justin Raimondo

"No one ever believed the Americans' explanation of why they wanted to base interceptor missiles in Poland, of all places, some 20 years after the fall of the Soviet empire – not even the Americans. The idea, said Washington, is to defend the Poles against the alleged threat of an attack from… Iran, which has yet to exhibit any hostile intentions toward Warsaw, and in fact does not even possess the sort of missiles the new system is designed to intercept.

Putin's pained response – "We are being told the anti-missile defense system is targeted against something that does not exist. Doesn't it seem funny to you, to say the least?" – showed signs of the sort of exasperation that reached a crescendo last week with the Russian counterstrike against Georgia's invasion of South Ossetia. Since Bill Clinton invaded the Balkans and severed Kosovo from the Yugoslav torso, the incredibly patient Russians had stoically endured years of abuse, insults, and increasingly open belligerence directed at the Kremlin. Yet still they tried to have normal relations with the West. The turning point was reached only recently, as the Americans defended the Georgian invasion of South Ossetia and implicitly justified the murder of a dozen Russian soldiers, who were on a UN-sanctioned peacekeeping mission......"

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