re: #718 iossarian

They’re not there to “protect a population” - that’s a pretext. They are there to preserve their access to the Black Sea (number one) and to potentially retain the entire Ukraine in their sphere of influence (more of a stretch).

I agree.

But what *is* our “legitimate part in this”? Are you, in fact, saying that America’s foreign policy should be predicated on helping people in foreign lands, and not on maximizing our ability to maintain access to global resources such as (mostly) oil?

Our legit interests include Euro/NATO/ ASEAN in a nutshell, historic relationships etc. Obviously to the degree we have greedy/corporate motives instead of good policy that would suck.

As for “playing into Putin’s hands”, I think we’re going to act in a certain way on this regardless of what people think about Iraq, Central America or anything else. My point is simply that, if you want to use words like “legitimate” you have to also admit that in the past we have acted less than legitimately.

Agreed here too. :-)