Russian army has invaded the Crimea

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Don't look for help from our Nero. He is too busy raising money and having fun with Hollywood. Oh, and remember how Romney was mocked by the media and the Obama campaign for calling Russia our #1 geopolitical problem?

That's a good point but a bit of a rookie mistake. In Putin's Russia there are only four words remaining in the language. Nazi, homosexual, terrorist and radical. So when you see "Nazi" for example, it often means, "I want to buy fish". Meaning is differentiated with eyebrow motions.

Now the US is making nice with Ukrainian neo-nazis.

Suddenly the Russians don't seem so bad.

http://original.antiwar.com/chris_ernes ... and-syria/

Why certainly! It wouldnt be very nice of them not to return the gesture and expend some of their ordnance on us.

So what the Russians are doing is NOT imperialistic? Or are you saying it's okay when they do it?

Next, you'll probably start preaching about how it was really the USSR that saved the UK during WWII.

the people of the Crimea WANT Russian rule, that is the difference.

As for WWII we certainly wouldnt have won if the USSR wasn't on our side.

Andriy Parubiy is a co-founder of the neo-Nazi Svoboda Party.
Dmytro Yarosh is his deputy on the State Security Council.
The Right Sector is another neo-Nazi group...

The Kiyiv Post reports that ...

Right Sector ready to fight for Crimea

March 2, 4:15 p.m. -- Leader of the Right Sector ultranationalist organization Dmytro Yarosh said that Right Sector is mobilizing its members to protect the country against Russian intervention. According to him, the Right Sector coordinates its actions with State Security Council and its head Andriy Parubiy.

"We guarantee safety to all civillians in Crimea," Yarosh said at the press conference in Dnipro hotel in Kyiv.

He called for Ukrainians to join the squads of the Right Sector that are being formed all around Ukraine.

Yarosh also said that Right Sector established military headquarters that coordinates the actions of the Right Sector's squads.

"The very first task of this headquarters is to work out the plan of protection those regions which can suffer from Kremlin intervention," Yarosh said.

You do realize that there are methods beyond making stuff explode when it comes to matters such as these? Proxy wars, covert operations, hacking, surveillance, electronic disruption, psy-ops. Global superpowers have so many methods of beating the holy hell out of each other without ever firing a conventional weapon that it barely makes sense to even do it.

Remember when Obama was making fun of Donald Trump at the White House Correspondent's Dinner? The operation to kill Osama bin Laden was already in motion. It had to appear as though it was just another day of political theater so the target wouldn't catch on. They even removed a joke from Obama's monologue about Osama bin Laden so it wouldn't start trending online and registers with OBL's handlers.

Until Hitler turned on them, I don't recall the Soviets having any objections to his expansion. Stalin never protested or gave a damn when London was getting blitzed. The Soviets never gave any aid to the UK, and I don't recall the USSR being there on D-Day. The reason the Soviets took on the brunt of the fighting is because they were attacked and betrayed, not to save Western Europe, and the Red Army was heavily supplied by the Americans via a long sea route around Africa through the Red Sea to avoid the mess in the Mediterranean and the Baltic. That's what you call 'being on your side?'

But getting back to Russia and the Ukraine: the Crimea is NOT actually part of Russia. Are you saying Ukraine's sovereignty has no bearing because Russia say so? It's like saying, "there are people in Northern Ireland who WANT to join the Republic, therefore, the UK has NO say whatsoever."

Of course, NI is part of the UK, just as Crimea is part of the Ukraine.

Moreover, it's not just about Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula, but about Russian meddling in national politics in Kiev. It's Russian imperialism pure and simple. (Not too unlike those that would argue the UK holding on to NI is British imperialism).

The point is these things can be prevented if you have adults running the country, working proactively on things and not asking for flexibility.
Putin has watched as the U.N. and the international community have pontificated on Syria and abandoned Iraq and Afghanistan. He has taken his measure of yellow stripe Obama. He knows that Europe has no effective military. He tested the waters in Abkhazia and South Ossetia and got away with it.

Appeasement always leads to aggression, and it has here.

The West is impotent against a Russian partition (at best) and takeover (at worst) of Ukraine. The only country with sufficient muscle to stand up to Putin's bullying is "leading from behind," while mis-led by the man who has played the most golf of any modern President. He can't be bothered to pick his head up from his putter to support the freedom of people in other countries. If the US were a feared and powerful nation like it was pre-Obama, Putin wouldn't even think of such a stunt.

Obama and his people believe that "perception is reality" and that words are the same as actions. His lack of action on foreign aggression is evidence that he doesn't actually know how to distinguish action from words.
Meanwhile, aggression, autocracy, and evil are on the march worldwide. Who is left to stand against them?

And after the Obama administration abandoned Shakil Afridi, leaving him to rot in a Pakistani prison after he helped pinpoint the location of OBL, who would be willing to assist the US in the future?

Everyone should stay home, and wait for the next election.

Russia refuses to deal with the Ultra Nationalists. An elected democratic government is needed.

Also $700,000,000 a week till then.

If Europe and America have anything to say, it is making sure of fair elections, and the rule of law.

Should our provience withdraw from the Ukraine? Should we chose Putin for our President?

There are three options, vote in a new government, vote to leave, and vote to join Russia.

The first would be the least destructive.

The Ultra Nationalists might raise 100,000 street fighters, but that is nothing in an election of 46 million.

Disrupting the election, invading other provences, is not a free and fair election.

The Russian speakers will win, the country will remain one, they will still be more than broke.

Partition followed by civil war is the second choice. A border can be secured.

Joining Russia would be the best for the south and east. Someone else to defend their border, and being part of a much larger economic unit.

Having secured for all time the north shore of the Black Sea for the Motherland, they would be heros, and beach resort owners.

Just because Obama doesn't shoot first without asking questions, as his predecessor, hardly means Obama has a yellow stripe. Must I remind you that Bush was amazed to learn that not all Iraqis were of the same Islamic sect, or even the same ethnicity, and actually violently disliked one another? And that was by the time he had already set his invasion into action. I hardly think Obama is going to leap blindly off the curb the same way Bush had in a situation like this, where American lives could be at risk. Next time, don't rely so much of Fox Noise for your political perceptions.

I'm only going by what Putin himself had told the former President, George W. Bush, that Ukraine isn't a real country, but a province of Russia. Putin had also claimed that the break up of the Soviet Union was illegal, and that Russia has the right to reclaim all these these disparate, breakaway republics.

He has consistently gotten it wrong on Russia. He wants Putin to play a role in the international system that time and again Putin has rejected. He was wrong in 2008 about creating a new G8 without Russia, the reset was seen as a weak by Russia (and as a green light to the precedent they set in Georgia). Now his policy in Ukraine has been to more or less give a green light to Russia annexing the place through Yanukovych in 2010 but is now complaining when Russia moves in to firm up its position in the face of popular resistance. It is an inside out policy.

Putin, like many Russian hawks, knows a dove when he sees one, Obama has never really been able to internalize that Putin is a hawk with a worldview that is irreconcilable with his own. Its time for Obama to have a Carter 79 moment and start putting the screws to Putin. The comparative element to your argument is something I completely agree with, Obama is much better than Bush on foreign policy. Doing nothing is often better than doing the wrong thing and Obama gets that and I respect him for it. But it is really quite depressing to me that the comparison is between Bush and Obama, I mean, when was that the standard? Where is Truman, Roosevelt or Kennedy in all this? By those standards Obama is a massive underachiever as a leader on foreign policy, even if he is not a failure. American Presidents should be measured against the the very best examples, not the worst.

True, but this crisis has just begun, and so Obama can still make history. Who knows, maybe Obama will read your appraisal of him, and act on it!

Seems kind of ridiculous to single out Obama. Bush "gazed deep into Putin's soul" and found a worthy partner. And yet Georgia took it in the teeth and Bush could do nothing. Just as Clinton could do nothing when Russia seized an airbase in 1999 during the Kosovo war. And frankly just as Russia could do nothing about anything we've done militarily. Does that make Putin incompetent? Or does the argument only work to take shots at your favored bogeyman?

The fact remains that the Warsaw Pact is dead and buried. If you told Ronald Reagan in 1984 that the Russian Bear would be boldly maneuvering in Crimea in 2014, he'd have laughed. What's next? A lighting strike on St Petersburg? I think the whole thing is embarrassing for Russia. But Putin still lives in the real world and unless he's lost his mind he'll only go so far.