Oswald in the doorway: the blog of the Oswald Innocence Campaign, by Ralph Cinque

I am shocked and appalled at what Putin has done, and I don't grant anyone the right to do such a thing. I thought he would just go into the Donbas region, where he was welcome, and where the populace supports him, as they do in Crimea. I never thought he would overrun and attack the whole of Ukraine in a determined effort to take over the whole country. 

Of course, that's what the U.S. did in Afghanistan and Iraq, and it was every bit as bad. Maybe he took his cue from us. 

I think he had every right to object to Ukraine being in NATO and to the American intrusion into Ukrainian politics, going back to 2014 with the so-called Orange Revolution. We fomented it and paid for it. Even though we've had the Monroe Doctrine in place since 1823, which forbids intrusion in the politics of any nation in the Americas, we don't think it applies to us. We get to intrude anywhere on Earth. That's the true meaning of American Exceptionalism.

Until now, Putin had the moral high ground. But now, he's lost it and is committing an abomination. Russia was not in danger from Ukraine. There was no chance that Ukraine was about to attack Russia. There was plenty of time to keep working diplomatically to secure a neutral Ukraine. That he sunk to doing this reckless thing makes me wonder about his state of mind, whether he is losing it. He is almost 70 years old. 

But, we knew that he was serious, and we also knew that we weren't going to actively defend Ukraine- that we weren't going to send the U.S. Military in to fight the Russians.  So, we should have had the good sense to quash the idea of Ukraine being in NATO. That's all we had to do to prevent this. But, we wouldn't do it. We'd rather have this- and we got it. 

And we got something for it, which is Russia being seen as a pariah nation the world over. But, at what cost? Everyone on Earth is being hurt by this. The sanctions against Russia are going to hurt the whole world. And the repercussions are going to endure. The Cold War is back in full force, and it's staying- certainly for the rest of my life, but maybe for the rest of our children's lives as well. This is an immeasurable catastrophe.