And Visions of Missiles Danced in Ted Cruz's Head

By Charles Pierce, Esquire

18 March 14

epublican presidential aspirant Tailgunner Ted Cruz made a little foray into foreign policy and stumps everywhere suddenly felt themselves intellectually validated. It seems that the Tailgunner has aligned himself that the best way to respond to Vladimir Putin's forced annexation of Crimea is to make sure that Poland is sufficiently boondoggling up its countryside with a missile defense system that doesn't work.

"Beyond sanctions and aid to Ukraine, the most important thing we could be doing right now, with respect to Russia, is installing anti-ballistic missiles in Eastern Europe," Cruz said in an interview. "Appeasement has not worked," he added. "After more than five years of being unwilling to stand up to Putin and Russian aggression, it is time for the United States to honor our commitments to our friends." Cruz said an expanded military presence in Poland and the Czech Republic, similar to a missile-defense plan proposed by President George W. Bush and scrapped by the Obama administration in 2009, would provide a counterbalance to Putin's regional power.

(Here it should be noted that, speaking of aggression, back in the fall, when the president went to Congress for a resolution allowing him to make boom-boom war in Syria, the Tailgunner opposed it, being too busy misunderstanding Dr. Seuss at the time.)

Is it becoming an article of faith on the Republican side that what Putin is really doing is re-establishing the entire Soviet bloc, from Uzbekistan to Latvia, or that he's seriously threatening Europe with his nuclear aresenal? Otherwise, Cruz is making less sense than usual. And let's look at what he said in the context of what I think has been the most overlooked analysis of all -- Angela Merkel's notion that Putin may have gone off his trolley. (Perhaps from being thrown on his head in judo competition, or from unacknowledged 'Roid rage, or as the result of hypothermia from riding shirtless across the taiga.) If that is the case, even a little bit, ringing Russia with missiles of any kind seems to me to be a rather reckless exercise in geopolitical dick-swinging. That John McCain and Dick Cheney both agree with Cruz on this is another very good reason not to do it.