I'm going to make history here....praise for Bush

For those who've only read me over the past year, you all know that I don't like much about our President's politics. I'm not a frother, though, and I do have some good things to say about him sometimes. This is one of those times.

Basically, the praise today is for our President calling bullshit on Vladimir Putin. It's been obvious for the past two years that Putin was using Bush's support to do some very undemocratic things. Bush was kind of slow to adjust to this, but after the Georgian and Ukrainian revolutions, he picked up on it. I was critical that he was going to sit at a WWII memorial that basically praised Stalin, but he quickly made that moot by tearing Mr. Putin a new one.

The war on terror does have a few boundaries after all, and one of them seems to be that we're not going to see Russia become a crazy dictatorship again. I'm not sure that trashing Yalta was a good idea (I can see the President's point there, but at the same time, it was a different world and we had to stop the Germans first), but letting Putin know that we're not going to sit back and watch him trash fledgling democracy in his nation was a bold move, and worthy of applause. Even better, right after today's celebration, he flew straight to Georgia (republic, not state) for a public address tomorrow to their people. Between that and hitting Latvia before going to Russia, Bush has made it clear where we stand in this, and that should be more than enough to give Putin pause about trying to further his burgeoning dictatorship.

Congratulations, Mr. President, I applaud you for standing up for weaker nations.