Please read the March 6 addendum at the end and the subsequent post.  It changes the whole tone of this post.

It started with an email from a friend which I will detail below.  He sent me a link to the Washington Post article All of these people have compared Vladimir Putin to Hitler.  This article in turn pointed to Hillary Clinton says Putin’s actions are like ‘what Hitler did back in the ’30s’, which is the more substantive of the two article.

Former secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton on Tuesday compared Russian President Vladimir Putin’s aggression in Ukraine to actions taken by Nazi leader Adolf Hitler outside Germany in the run-up to World War II.
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Clinton, a potential 2016 presidential candidate,  said Putin “believes his mission is to restore Russian greatness,” including reasserting control of former Soviet Union countries, the Press-Telegram reported. “When he looks at Ukraine, he sees a place that he believes is by its very nature part of Mother Russia,” Clinton said, according to the Press-Telegram.

After reading this article, I wanted to find documentation for a comment that I had read about the connection between the USSR, Russia, and Clinton.  That is all detailed in my previous post Russia’s Revenge.

When Soviet Union collapsed, Russia agreed to dissolve the Warsaw Pact and let its allies go of the bind on assurance from US President George HW Bush that the NATO would not outreach to its borders. But President Bill Clinton broke this promise and pushed to expand the NATO alliance to the very borders of Russia. Though a weak Russia under Boris Yetsin was not in a position to oppose the NATO’s expansionary moves, including the ‘humanitarian’ bombing on Yugoslavia in 1998, this had left deep wounds in the Russo-American cooperation touted by Gorbachev and Bush in early 1990s.

Given this record of the Clinton family and the thought processes that may have been formative in Hillary’s view of foreign affairs, I don’t think she should be pontificating on what Vladimir Putin believes. It is always dangerous to speculate on other people’s motives, but when you have had such a bad record dealing with people in the past, you should be especially careful about telling us what they think.  Remember that I only said such speculation was dangerous.  There are many times when you are forced to speculate in order to form policy, but you need to have a healthy respect for how fallible your speculation might be.  Beating the drums of war is not showing that healthy skepticism about your own assessment.

When it comes to making comparisons of Putin and Hitler, I don’t think you can dismiss the help that Putin gave us in dealing with Syria and Iran.  That does not dismiss the reality of some of the things Putin has done which I consider to be very bad policy.

Now for the comments from my friend, LeonidG, with whom I worked and with whom I socialized in Oregon. He originally came from the USSR/Russia.  I’ll edit his email slightly so that  it makes more sense in this context.

Hi Steve,

If the elections were today, I would have voted for Hillary.

That is until I read this:

All of these people have compared Vladimir Putin to Hitler.

Now, I probably would vote for her opponent, whoever he/she might be.

Keep in mind that I do not like Putin, not even a little bit. In my ranking of the world leaders he probably would end up the 3d from the bottom, right above the Iranian ayatollahs and Kim Jong Un.

Nevertheless, comparing Putin to Hitler exposes her as a dumb-head looking for cheap scandalous statements.

Considering the situation in the Ukraine, if you ask me who is better, Putin or the new Ukrainian leadership, I could relate to the citation of comrade Stalin, in broken Russian: “Both are worse!”.

You can post my  opinion on your blog, if you would like.

Regards,
-L.

Of course, if you have been reading my blog, you will know that I have never been the fan of Hillary that Leon was.  She is just receding deeper and deeper down the list of people that I would want as my President.  She is just too prone to buy into, and be a proponent of, the conventional wisdom of the right-wing from foreign policy to economic policy.

March 6, 2014

I have since read the Media Matters article What CNN Left Out Of Their Report On Hillary Clinton’s Putin-Hitler Comments.

CNN’s Wolf Blitzer distorted comments by Hillary Clinton to criticize her for “compar[ing]” Russian President Vladimir Putin with Adolf Hitler, even though Putin is not engaged in genocide. But Blitzer ignored Clinton’s reported statement that while similarities to Hitler’s actions are “what’s gotten everybody so nervous” about Putin’s recent actions, she believes Putin isn’t “as irrational” as Hitler and that a diplomatic response is appropriate.

The article goes on to quote a reported Clinton comment:

“So everybody is hoping that there will be a negotiation but a negotiation that respects Ukraine and doesn’t ratify a reoccupation by Russia of Crimea,” she said. “So it’s a real nail-biter, right now, but nobody wants to up the rhetoric. Everybody wants to cool it in order to find a diplomatic solution and that’s what we should be trying to do.”

It is great to hear that Clinton is not trying to foment trouble, but is really trying to inject some reason into the discussion.

To emphasize the correction, I have made a subsequent post Hillary Clinton Compares – Examining the Similarities and the Differences.