And now for something completely different.

If anyone above a kindergarten pay-grade has figured out America’s vital interest in the Ukraine, it has not been reported — or even leaked from the foundering vessel that is the US State Department. In fact, when you consider the results, it’s hard to understand the rationale behind any recent US foreign policy endeavor. Mr. Putin of Russia summed it up last week, saying, “Anything the US touches turns to Libya or Iraq.” Vlad has a point there, and what he left off the list, of course, was Ukraine, which entered the zone of failing states a few months ago when the US lubricated the overthrow of its previously-elected government.

What complicates things is that Ukraine is right next door to Russia. . . . The casual observer from Mars might easily discern that Russia has a range of real interests in Ukraine. Especially if the central government of Ukraine can’t control its own economic affairs.

The US claims to have interests in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and Libya. These nations are respectively 11,925, 11,129, 10,745, and 10,072, miles away from America — not exactly neighbors of ours.^[1]

Mr. Kunstler archly makes a good point. There isn’t a single foreign policy initiative of ours worth the bones of an Arkansas grenadier since William Jefferson Clinton "saved" Bosnia to obviate a too-close examination of his DNA and habits of sexually harassing White House interns. Female interns as it turns out, for which I personally am grateful. Little did we know.

Of course, just because a country is a long way away does not mean, ipso facto, that we might not have a vital interest there worth defending. However, when we don’t defend our own door step [hint: Bienvenido queridos jóvenes, trafficantes y terroristas islámicos], it's, um, hard to give any credence to anything detectable only by over-the-horizon radar. Looked at from this vantage point, our foreign policy "team" isn’t exactly wearing our particular colors get down to it.

The current full court press to paint Vladimir Putin as The Handmaiden of Beelzebub (THB) and sound the tocsin for The Russian Neo-Soviet Recrudesence^TM rings very hollow to me given the legit Russian interest in its only warm water naval port in Crimea – yet to be acknowledged by any Western leader to my knowledge – and our inexplicable, well-funded efforts to bring down the previous Ukrainian government. Yes, there was an earlier agreement involving Ukraine's giving up its nuclear arsenal but that Russian access was an implicit part of that deal, if not more. In the too-clever-by-half department, we successfully destabilize the previous Ukrainian government and . . . several sniper deaths, one shameful massacre of Ukrainian troops, thousands (I think) of wounded and dead Ukrainians, one downed civilian aircraft, one Russian armored incursion (permanent), one Russian-controlled Crimea, and ten tons of Western/Obamanian posturing, sanctioning, and dressing up in mom's dress and high heels later, who is to say that the status quo ante isn’t something that could be said to have been tolerable according to a certain way of looking at things, if not something to be embraced with alacronism.^[2]

Shades of Gaddafi's Libya, Mubarak's Egypt, and Hussein's Iraq.

This isn’t to say that Mr. Putin is without blemish. Even terrible actions laid at his feet, however, pale in comparison -- back here in the real world of tradeoffs and relative evils -- to the wholesale betrayal of Western populations by loathsome Western politicians who have connived at the abandonment and evisceration of constitution, law, and tradition; attacked religion; undermined free markets; destroyed the family; humiliated and perverted their police forces; rejoiced over the advance of socialism; embraced multiculturalism; made a joke out of representative institutions; made taxpayers yearn for mere fiscal profligacy; and guaranteed either (1) a humiliating subjection of their own people to jeering, revengeful blacks and/or insufferable and savage Muslims or (2) a salutary and correcting bloody uprising of Western abos. Choose only one.

President Twinkletoes and his European fellow clown car passengers have created utter chaos in the Middle East and Messaptomania and no sane person not in the grip of some lunatic, leftist, utopian, redistributionist, constitution- and logic-free fantasy – but I repeat myself – should pay any heed to what these wallah kahuna bwanas have to say about "the national bleeping interest."

God save us from the love child of someone or other, the U.S. Congress, the U.S. Supreme Court, the U.S. State Department, U.S. government employee unions, the U.S. Democrat and Republican Parties, U.S. state bar associations, the main-stream media everywhere, the European Union, and satanic Islam and its gutless enablers!

Pending that, well, enjoy today’s versions of the Great Game that make a demolition derby or lesbian mud wrestling a profound intellectual experience in comparison.

Notes
^[1]  "Busybody Nation." By Jim Kunstler, Clusterfuck Nation, 9/1/14.
^[2]  I acknowledge legitimate Ukrainian desires to rid themselves of their previous kleptocrats and the tragic experience of those people at the hands of the predecessor Russian government. I don’t pretend to understand what forms Ukrainian thinking and do not dismiss it in the least. I focus here only on the competence and loyalties of putative Western leaders whose reckless actions in Ukraine and elsewhere are the cause of so much misery and waste.

Revised 9/7/14.