Oh, wait. They’re talking about Crimea, not Texas. Nor Hawaii, or Midway, American Samoa, Wake Island and half dozen other pacific islands we annexed, from what I can see, without money changing hands. And there are a dozen other annexations the good old U.S. of A. pulled off where we actually paid the owner while we held a gun to their head. Such as Puerto Rico and Guam, not to mention the Panama Canal zone.
The neo-cons, some holding positions within this administration’s State Department are rattling their sabres. Or should I say, the sabres held by the great unwashed’s sons and daughters they’re eager to send off to blast and be blasted. And John McCain just can’t wait to mix it up with Russia.
As usual, many in America suffer historical amnesia about our own empire building and are eager to hold us up as the model of rectitude in the realm of nation-building. Fortunately, our President once again is the voice of rationality in the Crimean crisis, advocating diplomacy over a display of shock and awe. He’s opposed by a bunch who argue that we need to act tough, not necessarily act smart and calmly. And he does not seem eager to restart the cold war.
I lived through the cold war, beginning, middle and end. And paranoia is not a happy place to be. I remember the drills teaching us to crouch under our little school desks with the storage tops, as if that would shield us from radiation. And the storage of survival items and canned goods in our basements, as if that would protect us from the Soviet invaders. And the crude propaganda films about the superiority of capitalism over communism. And the televised McCarthy hearings that even my Republican father thought were an outrage.
I don’t want to go there again, nor do I want that for my grand and great grandchildren. I don’t want this major distraction intended to make us forget about our own economic crisis for most in this economy or the pathetic dysfunction of our body politic.
Maybe it is time to let go of the behavior of competing nations trying to mimic our big stick diplomacy and concentrate on cleaning up our own act, unless our safety as a people is actually threatened.