Pat Oliphant for March 06, 2014

a real bear market

Ah, they haven’t even figured out if it is a bear…

“You’re gonnna need a heavier brigade”……..Probably Ukraine is regretting the loss of those nukes just about now!

We’re not out of the woods on this yet..“Bear” … “woods” … uh, oh.

And yes, a bear $h!+$ where he wants to….

That was a very good comment. Ukraine is still needed as an agricultural adjunct to Russia, as a buffer against land invasion, and for southern access to sea ports. There have been ferocious famines and pogroms from which Russians have benefited with land grabs and colonization. (EXODUS, by Leon Uris, explains the concept of “beyond the Pale.”).The misery throughout history which a population has endured often shows in the mixture of genetics. Ukrainians and Afghans, for instance, being at the crossroads of mighty and ambitious empires show the features of many races. The mingling was often not benign, to say the least. Rape was and still is a military and political tactic..These things seem distant and archaic to a young culture such as ours basically is. We wonder why some cultures have such long, simmering hatreds against outsiders. It’s because they remember slaughters and despotism that crushed their cultures in the past.

Never back a bear into a corner. On the other hand, you cannot outrun a bear. Best to kill him, but never shoot him in the head, it just makes him mad.

Trying to make it look like regular citizens when it is just your own soldiers without insignia holding the naval base hostage is classic Putin – laughably transparent crude subterfuge but apparently successful if unopposed by united outrage and physical power. When do we make a stand?

And HOW do we make a stand? McCain said “send the fleet to the Black Sea.” He DOES know, I hope, that there is only ONLY one way in, AND one way out?If our fleet is “trapped”, it is vulnerable to on-shore missile batteries, blocking of the Bosporus, etc. A losing proposition all around.Without EU help, we have no leverage.