Vladimir Putin we have been told by our good president and his good friends is a buffoon on the wrong side of history.
It is quite evident to those with a couple of brain cells that eventually Western values will win out and the brutal theocracies, dictatorships and autocracies will vanish from the face of the earth and we will all become enlightened.
Maybe.
Hitler, Tojo and Mussolini were doomed to failure and defeat from the first shots of World War II. So says the history books and the historians. It just took six years and over 100 million deaths to prove history right.
Hitler, Tojo and Mussolini were also mocked by world leaders as half literate thugs and buffoons before they lit the world on fire.
The fact that we are not speaking German today is proof how right our side was and always will be, right?
That kind of talk makes us very nervous. We cringe with every time our president makes a joke about Vlad or makes a crack at ISIS or Iran.
In a confrontation with Russia the smart money should still be on the West to win eventually. But what will the butcher’s bill be?
How many will be slaughtered in the shadow of an evil empire and how many more will die on the battle ground before that shadow is lifted?
And that is only in the best case scenario that the West actually wins.
What if we don’t?
What if after decades of appeasement we find ourselves facing mad mullahs with nuclear weapons and a Russian bear hungry for another slice of Europe?
History always looks so neat and foreordained but it really isn’t.
We do know that in 50 or 100 years from now some pundit will say that a current future crisis reminds him of 2015 all over again.
Whether he says it in Russian or Persian or English really depends on us.