Soap Box

When you take a look around you nowadays you're apt to want to go back to bed and pull the covers over your head.

Russia is rattling a saber that has lain dormant for decades, dormant but never dead, the seed just waiting to be germinated by a ruthless firebrand like Vladimir Putin, who is willing to kill, lie and use any amount of subterfuge or deception to accomplish his goal of re-instituting the old Soviet Empire.

When the Berlin Wall came down, East and West Germany were reunited and the Eastern European nations were cut loose from the USSR, there were those in our government who started proclaiming a new day of friendship and cooperation with Russia, an era of peace and progress, a reason to reduce our nuclear arsenal to show our good faith to our new found friends.

That all looked good in the New York Times, soothing and reassuring the masses that what Reagan so aptly called the �Evil Empire� was in decline, that communism was being discarded on the junk pile of failed political systems and Russia was ready and willing to become a trustworthy member of the free world, complete with real elections and all the trappings of democracy.

It was a great political public relations tool but in reality a two ton red herring.

The truth of the matter is that it was not Gorbachev�s perestroika or Russia's desire to enter the mainstream of free and progressive nations that drove them to demolish the iron curtain, but the fact that they were flat broke, that the top heavy regimens of socialism and the relentless arms race that the Reagan administration forced them into.

In other words, they were broke, stuck with supporting secret police and security forces in nations who, under communism, lost their desire to be productive and drained the Russian economy plus all the fiscal problems in the Motherland and an increasingly unhappy population who, due to the exponential expansion of worldwide communications were becoming aware of just how deprived they were.

So it was a matter of "have to" not "want to" and so Russia pulled off the biggest slight of hand in modern history, playing up to the West, relinquishing it's strangle hold on Eastern Europe and accepting all the anxious largesse the relieved Western World would offer.

But in my humble opinion, Russia never had any intention of becoming a permanent member of the world community but always had designs on the restoration of the USSR, at least the parts of it that would be of use to them.

Russia is now poised and ready to annex Ukraine, a nation formerly known as the breadbasket of the Soviet Union, and no matter what Putin says, unless seriously confronted by a lot more than the feeble sanctions the Obama administration has applied, will eventually find some bogus excuse for invading.

And then the dominos will begin to fall.

Putin knows that he has absolutely nothing to fear from our president. Obama�s unintentionally captured message to Putin, "After my election, I have more flexibility." - relayed to then Russian President Medvedev - sealed Obama's fate with Putin who probably had a hard time believing that a leader of the free world was capable of such weakness and has flaunted this attitude every since.

Abandoning plans for a missile defense shield for our NATO aligned countries played right into Putin's hands and Obama's timid response - and the rest of NATO for that matter - to Russian aggression further cements the opinion.

Looking at things from the District of Columbia must present an altogether different view that the one in the real world because trusting Russia is tantamount to flirting with disaster.

And if an uneducated redneck like me can figure that out, why can't the "best and the brightest?"

What do you think?

Pray for our troops and the peace of Jerusalem.

God Bless America

Charlie Daniels​