How do you ask a man...

...to be the last man to die for a "completely trumped up pretext"?

Via Ghosts of Tom Joad.

Secretary Kerry Facing the Nation, via Tengrain:

[I]t is an incredible act of aggression … really a stunning, willful choice by president Putin to invade another country. Russia is in violation of the [jump]
sovereignty of Ukraine. Russia is in violation of its international obligations. Russia is in violation of its obligations under the U.N. charter, under the Helsinki Final Act. It’s in violation of its obligations under the 1994 Budapest agreement. You just don’t in the 21st century behave in 19th century fashion by invading another country on completely trumped up pretext.”

Golly, can we take this as your definitive apology for that October 2002 vote on the Authorization to Use Military Force in Iraq?

John Kerry as Winter Soldier, via Jonathan Rosenbaum.

This is not in any way to condone the Russian conquest of Crimea, which I regard as an indisputably Bad Thing, but merely by way of noting that being evil, in addition to simply not being good, can sometimes come around and bite you in the ass. The overwhelming reason why the United States is now without moral authority is that Iraq adventure, upon which Kerry's vote allowed the then president George W. Bush to embark. Along with the various forms of torture, unconstitutional detention, illegal surveillance, and so forth from which President Obama has been unable to dissociate himself, though I always give him the benefit of the doubt personally*.

Indeed, so far the conquest of Crimea seems to have been remarkably blood-free, unlike the conquests of Trans-Dniestr, South Ossetia, and Abkhazia, through which two Bush and one Clinton administrations peacefully slept. And Iraq too, as you were probably just saying to yourself. The murders of protesters in the Maidan which gave rise to the overthrow of Yanukovych were pretty bad, but I doubt they were Russia's idea.

What causes me the most grief in Crimea at the moment is the situation of the Crimean Tatars, abused and oppressed and finally tossed into Central Asian diaspora by Russians until finally in 1990 their homeland became distinctly not-Russia (that it was Ukraine was of secondary importance: not-Russia, not-Soviet was what counted), and they moved back by the hundreds of thousands. Now that it seems to be sort of Russia again, I really hate to think what will happen to them. I'd just like to point out that this is an extremely urbane and easy-going Muslim population, but there is bad unemployment among young men in the community and Wahabi preachers from the Middle East stirring up trouble, and we all know the recent research showing that the most significant factor in predicting whether somebody is going to become a suicide terrorist is living in a home country under foreign military occupation.

It's as if Vladimir Vladimirovich were planning to create another population he could label as terrorists, isn't it? And it won't bite him in the ass, because that's impervious.

Two Crimean Tatars. Uncredited image (late 18th c.?) from The Peremech Lounge.

*I actually supported authorizing Obama to attack Syria on grounds quite like the ex-post-facto reasons Kerry gave for voting for the 2002 AUMF, that the resolution was meant to give Obama not a war but a diplomatic tool, and Obama's previous conduct, starting with his denunciation of the Iraq war, showed he could be trusted on this; and I think the subsequent developments show my judgment of Obama's intentions (he really didn't want a war, and Bush in 2002 really did) was correct. Not that anybody else seems to recognize it. Emos and Obots seem to agree that bombing Syria was the plan, and at least one "centrist" tweep who regards himself as an Obama supporter has recently broken off relations with me over my insistence that Syria is being bombed enough already and the US cannot contribute anything positive by that route. :-(... Sad, but I'll carry on.