Sometime, there'll be some downtime for personal philosophy...

...but it doesn't look like that time is anytime at hand. I was starting to write an entry talking about why the utopia planned for us by our selfless leaders was a bad idea, but then this happened. It doesn't look like Putin & comrades are planning on stopping with Ostia. Georgia's calling for help. We're airlifting their people home from Iraq, where they've provided the third largest troop support, behind the UK, for us. Does this ring any bells, historically? Dick Morris thinks it does.

In an article (or opinion column, depending on how one views it) posted today on conservative site Townhall.com, Morris compares this attack to Hitler's attack on the Czechoslovakia province of Sudetenland in 1938. Indeed, there are some...unnerving parallels.

Germany said it was responding to separatist demands from the large German population that lived there and that she was merely honoring their desire for reunion with Germany. Hitler's tanks took over a vital part of an independent country that had largely rejected his overtures and allied itself with the West.

...

Russia said it was responding to separatist demands from the large Russian population that lived there and that she was merely honoring their desire for reunion with Russia. Putin's tanks took over a vital part of an independent country that had largely rejected his overtures and allied itself with the West.

Neither time did the West, specifically the US and UK, do anything to stop either. A few months after he took Sutendenland, Hitler took the rest of Czechoslovakia, because the Western Allies that won WWI did nothing to stop him. From the stories I linked to earlier, it doesn't appear that Putin will even wait months because he is sure that we will do no more to stop him than we did in 1938 with Hitler.

We may be missing a chance to avoid another world war by not responding here, now, to this provocation.

Update: Here's another take on the situation.