Who Lost Russia?

Patrick J. Buchanan "Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom; and a great empire and little minds go ill together," Edmund Burke admonished the haughty rulers of the British Empire of his time. Our American empire is suffering from a similar want of wisdom and plenitude of the hubris that cost George III his 13 colonies.(...)

(...) it is with near-despair that one reads the front-page story in the Washington Times: "Senators Seek to Sanction Russia: Say Putin Acts Autocratically."

Who are the senators? They are those twin protectors and proctors of global democracy, Joe Lieberman and John McCain, and they want Putin sanctioned by having the world's industrial democracies, the G-8, suspend Russia's membership, which would be an insult and humiliation.

Putin's crimes? Says McCain: "Mr. Putin has moved to eliminate the popular election of 89 of Russia's regional governors, has cracked down on independent media, continued his repression of business executives who oppose his government, and is reasserting the Kremlin's old-style central control." Says McCain, "The coup is no longer creeping – it is galloping."

But a question arises: Why are these internal matters of the Russian republic any business of John McCain's? Putin is the elected president of Russia. Who elected McCain to anything outside of Arizona?

During our Civil War, Lincoln blockaded Southern ports without the approval of Congress, suspended habeas corpus, sent troops to prevent a free election in Maryland, sought to arrest Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, shut down newspapers, shot down rioters on the streets of New York, and made himself dictator of the Union. Was that any business of the members of Britain's House of Lords? Just who do we Americans think we are?

Whether Russia's governors are elected or appointed is none of our business. As for the jailing of oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, or any of the others in that den of thieves, that is no more our concern than TR's smashing of the trusts or Truman's seizure of the coal mines or Bush's incarceration of Martha Stewart was or is any of Russia's business.

As for President Putin acting "autocratically," can Sen. McCain recall when Russian rulers have acted any other way?(...)

Since Reagan achieved the rapprochement with Russia, the United States has pushed NATO up to her borders; bombed her ally Serbia for 78 days; interfered in elections in Georgia, Ukraine, and Belarus; and begun a pipeline to cut Moscow out of the Caspian oil trade.

Now, Russia is going her own way: selling SAMs to Syria, AK-47s to Venezuela, missiles and fighter aircraft to China, and aiding Iran in completing its first nuclear power plant.

Of this generation of leaders, it may be said in epitaph: They were too small to see the larger world. They frittered away in a decade what others had won in a half-century of perseverance in the Cold War."