Punished in Space

America should not have given up the Space Shuttle program, if the US thought it was going to try and dictate to Russia, who after all, is currently the only country able to carry US astronauts up into space. The US is now dependent upon Russia to transport American personnel up to the International Space Station. Russia obviously is also responsible for bringing them back safely to earth. Is now a good time to chastise Putin for protecting ethnic Russians and unarguable Russian interests in the Crimea and the Eastern Ukraine, particularly when we think how George W. Bush gratuitously attacked Iraq with the rationale that Saddam Hussein was backing al-Qaeda which is demonstrably false and that Iraq was producing weapons of mass destruction which where never found in any quantity even after American forces occupied Iraq? As the war against Iraq demonstrated, the United States was willing to use any pretext to attack a country thousands of miles away, but Russia must now watch the oppression and slaughter of ethnic Russians right over the western border. Putin has shown remarkable restraint after the Trade Unions Building massacre by keeping Russian nationalists in check and not crushing the Ukraine. With such a weakling as Obama considered the leader of the Western world, it is good that a mature responsible adult like Vladimir Putin is carefully assessing the steps that Russia should take next.