“The attack on the plane and the subsequent treatment of the crime scene appear to be hardening European attitudes against Russia.” NY Times, July 20, 2014
When Americans tried to do something about this, thru both negotiations and sanctions, the Europeans were silent. They figured the we would bail them out, and that the American companies and banks would lose the business, and each one of their banks and companies would reap the benefits of lost American sales without shouldering any of the costs. I suspect they were cheering the “incoming” and laughing at us for being saps.
We Americans are quite familiar with wealthy moochers. These governments represent moocher countries. They have been laughing while we shouldered what was their burden, and not even bothering to cover their mouths while they did so.
The Europeans, who are geographically closer and who have more to lose, sat on their hands until bodies of their citizens started falling out of the sky. The kindest interpretation was that they were blinded by the thought of all that dough rolling in to enrich the already richest in their societies.
The more accurate interpretation of their failure to act is that their governments are controlled by amoral, money grubbing savages. All their governments actually cared about were
1. Cheap natural gas from Gazprom, the Russian state gas producer;
2. Billions of Russian oligarch pounds and euros flooding into the banks;
3. Sales of goods and services;
4. Russian oligarch pounds and euros undergirding the local real estate markets, especially in London.
Now, David Cameron’s UK government, Angela Merkel’s German government–she’s been particularly cozy with former KGB Colonel Putin–and the Dutch, all of which spurned US government requests to join in sanctions, among others, have the temerity to claim that the are shocked. The former KGB colonel is doing bad things. Who would have thought it? Surprise, surprise, we tried to tell you so. We told our airlines to stay away, even though it meant burning more fuel, and might add 15 minutes to the flight times. The EU cared more about saving the fuel. Now they have more “incoming'” in the form of bodies falling out of the sky, than they can handle.
Now maybe, they will pay attention. Too late to help the 298 dead innocents whose bodies, personal effects, and credit cards are now being spirited off to God knows where by the savages that Putin enabled, but then again, perhaps to the savages managing these governments, that’s just a cost of doing business. I’m not sure which is worse and on reflection, I think the families might agree.
Only one dual citizen Dutch American was on that flight, so if we looked it at the way the Europeans do–as penny counting savages– this isn’t our problem. We won’t, of course, because we aren’t savages.
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