When the Cold War officially ended and the Soviet Union officially fell apart, a lot of us hoped for a “peace dividend,” a reduction in military spending. But that didn’t happen, and NATO, an organization supposedly developed to defend Western Europe against a possible Soviet invasion, never disbanded. The US remained a member, and kept troops in places like Germany, a country fully capable of defending itself even if it faced some real threat. In a move that would naturally alarm the Russians, we even expanded NATO into Eastern Europe, and have now hit the Russians with economic sanctions because they supposedly threaten the Ukraine. We have re-ignited the Cold War, driven Russia into an unnatural alliance with a very aggressive China (with whom the Russians have long-standing territorial disputes) and increased the risk of the nuclear holocaust that may yet destroy civilization. Think about it: how would we feel if Russia ringed us with bases and entered into an alliance with Mexico?

We are told that Vladimir Putin is another Hitler, bent on world conquest, but the facts do not support this assumption. Putin is a ruthless strong man (actually, as we will see, a benevolent dictator), but there is no evidence that he wants anything more than for Russia once more to be a respected great power, and to have friendly or neutral nations on Russia’s borders, and to have influence in the region.

Putin was born 10/7/52 and was Prime Minister of Russia 1999-2000, President from 2000-2008, PM again 2008-2012, and now President again since 5/7/12. He was a KGB officer for sixteen years, gathering foreign intelligence, and retired as a Lt. Colonel. As President he greatly improved the economy and increased energy production (contrast that with our King Hussein Obama’s dismal record on the economy and his direct attack on our energy production). Putin instituted a flat 13% income tax and cut taxes on corporate profits; Hussein has done nothing to reform our tax code, and has used IRS to attack his political opponents and critics, and has kept corporate taxes high, discouraging investment. In the US, the radical pervert agenda is being forced on us, and children are bombarded with pro-homosexual propaganda in the indoctrination centers formerly known as “schools.” Nothing like this happened even in Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia — and it is not happening in Putin’s Russia, either. Attacks on Christianity are mounting here in our former Republic, but not in Putin’s Russia. Our borders are wide open to foreign invaders, including drug gang members, rapists, murderers, drunk drivers, and Islamic terrorists. Not so in Putin’s Russia. Home schooling is beginning to be attacked here but is encouraged there. Our EPA routinely destroys businesses and lives, legislating by bureaucratic decree; Russia has no equivalent. Despite Putin’s ruthlessness and the serious economic problems and corruption in Russia, Russian citizens have more real freedom and suffer from less government meddling and control.

In 2008 Georgia sent troops into its restive province of South Ossetia, where many ethnic Russians live, so Russia invaded Georgia, overrunning and defeating that nation, and, to this day, Russia still occupies South Ossetia and the neighboring province Abkhazia. But, unlike Hitler, who took the Sudetenland and then all of Czechoslovakia, Putin withdrew from the remainder of Georgia. No cities were bombed; no civilians were murdered. Georgia (save for those two provinces) is still independent.

Our fierce and mighty neocons, ever-eager to send other men’s sons to die in battle, claim that Putin is about (any day now) to invade the Ukraine. On 3/18/14 Putin re-annexed the Crimean Peninsula, which had been part of Imperial Russia since 1783, and then the Soviet Union, until the Soviets handed the peninsula to the Ukraine (then a Soviet state) in 1954. It seems that the Russians have a better claim to Crimea than does the Ukraine, where an elected government was overthrown in February, 2014. Some say that the current Ukraine regime is neo-Nazi and was installed due to Western intrigues; this may or may not be true. In over a year, the dreaded Russians have yet to attempt to conquer the rest of the Ukraine.

During the Cold War, some America leftists fantasized that the US would evolve to the left and the Soviets to the right until they both became democratic socialist republics. But what has happened is that Russia is now relatively free and the US is an increasingly tyrannical nation where crony capitalism is evolving into fascism. We, not Putin, have reignited the Cold War. And the sad thing is that we would be better off if our President was an American version of Putin rather than the (probably Kenyan) dictator now squatting in the White House.