Ron Paul's MH17 Theories Are Crazy Even for Ron Paul

Ron Paul's MH17 Theories Are Crazy Even for Ron Paul

Actually, Paul's original premise is right. The United States and Europe did support a street mob in Kiev over a democratically elected government, and thus helped to start the problems in Ukraine. And Russia considers the city of Sevastopol absolutely integral to its national security, and could not let it fall into hostile hands, so it's possible to defend the Russian takeover of Crimea. Furthermore, their lease on the naval base in Crimea was to expire in 2017, and they could not take the slightest chance that it would not be renewed by an antagonistic government in Kiev.

After that, however, Paul just gets batty, and turns to the old "domestic abuse is the fault of the abused, because the abuser was provoked" theory. Russia gave a surface-to-air missile capability to a bunch of radical crazies, and those crazies pulled the trigger. As John Oliver asked on his show, how did they expect that to turn out? Is there some conceivable scenario where wild-eyed radicals are supplied with SAM missiles and always use them responsibly?

Furthermore, just about any chain of events can be traced backward just far enough to blame somebody. The desired "spin" determines when the time-travel adventure ends. It is possible to blame the whole mess on Khrushchev, who transferred Crimea from Russia to Ukraine in 1954 because they were geographically and economically linked. At the time that didn't seem crazy because it was impossible to see a time when Ukraine and Russia would be separate nations. Within the Russian Empire, then within the Soviet state, Ukrainians rose to the highest Russian state and church offices. The countries have essentially been together on and off since 882 AD, when Kiev was actually the capital of the Russia that existed then. The people of Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia all claim Kievan Rus as their historical foundation.

Or, you could blame the Budapest memorandum of 1994 which made Crimea part of a newly independent Ukraine instead of establishing it as an independent country or re-establishing it as part of Russia. This probably would not have happened if Putin had called the shots, but the leader at the time was Yeltsin, who was more interested in downing shots than calling them.

If you go back even farther in time, you can probably find some Tsars or Khans or Hetmans or Caliphs to blame, but I get lost in that whole wacky Mongol-Tatar-Slav-Cossack struggle. Suffice it to say it is complicated and, in plainer terms, totally fucked-up.