Otis Redding first sang IT. Aretha Franklin rearranged and immortalized IT. What was “IT”? The !970 hit soul song, “Respect.” For those who forget the classic lines:
“R-E-S-P-E-C-T, Find out what it means to me. R-E-S-P-E-C-T, Take care, TCB. (Where “TCB” means, “Taking Care of Business” if you know what that means.)
Now, what does a 1970’s soul song have to do with stopping any possible Putin/Russian invasion of Ukraine? Everything! For the one thing, Putin demands, and, more importantly, deserves it: R-E-S-P-E-C-T! Whether the Western elites like it or not, Putin commands the second greatest military power on earth, and leads a great and historic country, culture, and civilization. Russia, by the way, is not a country that prosecutes a Member of its own Parliament for “incitement” for merely quoting the from the Bible because quoting from the Bible was allegedly “likely to cause intolerance, contempt, and hatred towards homosexuals.”
But, the deck has been dealt, and Putin is President of Russia and the address to resolve issues.
Instead of a little respect, what have these people who run our lives done? Escalated, threatened, sanctioned, and blustered. “He’s going to invade tomorrow.” “No, no, he going to invade Thursday.” “We will wage economic warfare on Putin like he’s never seen.” Or the latest ridiculous statement by Mircea Geoana, the Deputy Secretary General of NATO, that “A Russian cyber-attack will invoke the Article 5 war trigger of the NATO Pact.”
One can only say that the people who are in charge of diplomacy with Putin are either rank idiots, or they want a nuclear World War 3 to usher in the Great Reset or something like that. Either way, the current European and American leaders should be locked away somewhere where they can’t hurt anyone, far away from negotiating with President Putin.
But, unfortunately, the only sane people engaged in military policy are being fired for telling the obvious truth: Putin deserves respect. A month ago, the chief of Germany’s Navy, Vice-Admiral Kay-Achim Schonbach,was fired for publicly saying: "What he (Putin) really wants is respect. And my God, giving someone respect is low cost, even no cost... It is easy to give him the respect he really demands - and probably also deserves." What is the fired Vice-Admiral Schonbach saying? Simple, Respect Putin, and respect his demands.
Respecting doesn’t mean caving to his every whim, but listening to demands and attempting to reasonably compromise with them. Instead, Biden has done every last thing in the world to provoke Putin into occupying the eastern half of Ukraine up to the Danube and to the south to the Russian-speaking Transnistria.
What is a “reasonable Putin demand”? Well how would the United States like it, if Russia entered into a military pact with Mexico in which Mexico continued to openly demand New Mexico and Texas back as “occupied territories”? The United States actually went to war in World War 1 in no small part because the British intercepted German Foreign Minister Zimmerman’s secret coded telegram to Mexico saying that Germany would supply Mexico with weapons if Mexico attacked the United States, this to keep the US out the European War.
Russia and the West deserve and require sensible diplomatic and military protocols that mandate a neutral zone between Russia and NATO. That means designating and promising Putin that Ukraine will not be allowed to join NATO, and the Russian-speaking residents of Eastern Ukraine remain protected. That's all, folks.
But what do we get instead? The idiotic talking heads that compare Putin to Hitler. This isn’t a valid critique, this is pure blood libel against Putin and Russia.
-Putin loves Russian Jews and Israel, whereas Hitler and the Palestinian Mufti wanted to genocidally murder millions of Jews.
-Putin’s red line does not include invading Eastern Ukraine as Hitler’s was to occupy Czechoslovakia’s strategic Sudetenland Mountains which enabled Hitler to protect his Russian invasion route supply line eastwards from aerial attack from the Sudeten Mountain Allied stronghold. The last thing Putin wants is for his county of 144 million people to try to occupy a hostile county of 44 million people.
-Putin wants to absorb the Russian-speaking peoples into his fold and capitalize on East Ukraine’s and the Black Sea's mineral wealth.
-Putin want to do business and make money, not murder and forcibly occupy millions of people with a racial genocidal blood lust.
Biden should be outright rejecting any comparison of Putin to Hitler. Instead, Biden and his Russophobic Secretary of State and National Security Advisor fulminate with obvious contempt for Putin and everything he and Russia stand for.
Which brings us to the other part of what Vice-Admiral Schonbach said that got him unceremoniously fired. Vice-Admiral Schonbach had the “temerity” to tell the truth and said, “The annexed territories of Crimea were “gone” and would “never come back” to Kyiv.” He also argued in favor of closer economic ties with Russia to contain China’s rise. Schonbach advised that “Having this big country[Russia], even if it is not a democracy, as a bilateral partner … probably keeps Russia away from China.” Perhaps Schonbach’s greatest sin against the Biden/EU woke mobocracy was Schonbach’s “describing himself as “a very radical Roman Catholic”, where Russia was also a “Christian country, [and] even if Putin is an atheist, it doesn’t matter.”
Vice-Admiral Schonbach neatly summed up everything I’ve been saying about Russia for years. Russia is the West’s natural, but imperfect, ally against China and extremist Islam. Russia is not our enemy today. Russia is our greatest ally. Biden and Hillary’s crime-of-the-millennium, Russia-gate, have turned Russia into a fake enemy for their own Machavellian political reasons. The Democrats’ petty political lurid use of their Russo-phobia narrative has inured us to the great strategic detriment of the United States and the West, and will in hindsight be seen as de facto treason against America.
If you cite rational, sensible, military and national security reasons for détente with Russia, you get fired from being the head of the German Navy, or called traitor to America, a Putin Stooge, or a white supremacist. So much for rational discourse in the age of the Democrats’ mobacratic woke cultism.
In fact, the Biden Administration, i.e. the lunatics - and nuclear-arsonists - have taken over the asylum. And, if they continue on their path of escalation and threats, instead of evincing simple respect for Putin and his reasonable demands, G-d help us all.
Mark Langfan is Chairman of Americans for a Safe Israel (AFSI) and specializes in security issues, has created an original educational 3d Topographic Map System of Israel to facilitate clear understanding of the dangers facing Israel and its water supply. It has been studied by US lawmakers and can be seen at www.marklangfan.com.