John Kennedy campaigned in 1960on a wrong idea that we faced a "missile gap" with USSR - when it proved to be false, as President, he quickly dropped the idea, something Bush would never do with his cockamamie campaign idea of "missile defense."  Not before 9/11 when his attention was needed on terrorism, nor even after 9/11 when we sorely needed Russia's help.   Still, Bush's trademark pigheadedness fails to explain his Administration's eyepopping delusions that ex-USSR Republics of Georgia and even more bizarrely, Ukraine, needed to be in NATO.   Every Russophone knows that the Russian nation-state was born in Kiev - to insert further bellicosity into that 1200-year old relationship hits Moscow right at the core.  And more so, when the promoter is a prior sworn enemy now posing as a friend.

Bush's last summit with Russia's "former" (ha-ha) President Putin was held in Russia's Sochi resort, where the Russian leadership's traditional "dacha" had to be humiliatingly relocated from Imperial Russia's Crimea. (Crimea was clumsily attached to Ukraine by Khrushchev in 1954 but its citizens don't know Ukrainian and never did, and no one understands why Khrushchev even did this; anyhow, it's part of Ukraine at present.).   As Bush looked out from Sochi over the Black Sea from Putin's deck chairs in, its Brackish waters washed its six littoral states of Romania, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Russia, Georgia, and Turkey.  Until the 1990s, all but Turkey were either part of USSR or among its closest military allies.  Except for Russia, by the April 2008 summit, the only remaining non-NATO members were Ukraine and Georgia both of whom have been in Russia's orbit for many centuries.  All that's tough enough for Putin to swallow, but Bush, the relentless antagonist much wanted them aligned against him as well.  While the American press gauzily depicted the summit as a nostalgic reflection by two old war horses, the exiting Bush's failures have nothing to do with the vital, dynamic Putin, who was so livid over Bush's pressing for Georgia to joint NATO, with two days to go he threatened not to show at all.  What if a bilateral summit is held, and the host doesn't attend?   How was the supine American press going to explain that one, an occasional just too sentimental for the old war horses to bear, maybe?

Don't we have enough trouble with two ruinous wars?  Well, not enough to keep Bush from refighting the Cold War, which we had already won by 1991.  Thank heaven above we now have leaders who are so dismayed with these disastrous policies, that nothing short of pushing the reset button is what they rightly pursue.  Here's a Valentine's gift from Obama to us all about scrapping that crazed, provocative missile defense:  http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/13/AR2009021303179.html   And here's hoping it works out!  

Only Bush could concoct a military misadventure even crazier than refighting the Cold War, which indeed, apart from the insanity of Iraq and the quagmire of Afghanistan, is another hideous mess he has left us with.

A very tall, muscular guy with a shaven head was asking me in a club (Eastern Europe) last night if I liked Obama.  I enthused (as always, when asked this question) that I not only liked him but was an active supporter.

This set him off ("Why?!"), and he explained that he had obtained information from Mein Kampf that blacks are bad.  Not knowing how to respond, I asked him if he thought Bush was better (that may have been the wrong tack, and I was surely unprepared).  He grabbed a knife and indicated that if Bush were present, he would stab him, flashing tattoos and thrusting the knife to his right while making inchoate references to military combat.  McCain, he said, was just an old man.  I tried to tell him to give Obama a year and he might see the good side, but to logic didn't help, and this was seeming diffused as he wanted to take pictures and I cheerily went along with that and he gave me pics on my flash.

Around an hour later, I realized he was demonstratively holding his hands as though training a pistol at my head for an extended time.  This is a low-security environment, and one is usually better off making nice than trying to involve guards, who won't offer much help (and who in this case, were no match for the skinhead).  I cheerily wished the chap a great weekend as I later exited, hoping he wouldn't follow me out and a bit relieved when he didn't.  Many/most in Eastern Europe/ex-USSR are howling racists anyway, though many are relieved to see somebody who appears well-qualified take away Bush's chair and some seem to be coming around.  First time I have heard Mein Kampf sourced as supposedly persuasive argumentation.