There's a really big difference between the Russian government and those extreme nut-job groups to whom you compare. If you look objectively at the issues that Washington war hawks are using to keep the chill frosty between the US and the Russians, the real story is a lot different than they would try to make you believe.
Most of the anti-Russia feeling in Washington has to do with the Russian actions in Ukraine and Crimea, as the Russians sent their army into that former Soviet Republic in an act of war several years ago. Most everyone knows that as a fact but few understand the reasons for the invasion.
The Ukraine is home to a large number of Russians, most of whom live in the eastern half of the country, .Crimea, a peninsula within the Ukranian borders, is the host to a major Russian naval base dating back to the Soviet Union, and is the main if not only access that Russia has to the warm water of the Meditaranean. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the independent government of Ukraine came to power, there has been one corrupt government after another. The US has meddled with elections there to help install governments friendly to the US, in large part to have a friendly government in Kiev that will support the US and NATO attempts to bring Ukraine into the NATO alliance. The governments of Ukraine have been especially favorable to the native Ukranian population at the expense of the Russians in the east of the country.,
So imagine how the leadership of the Kremlin and the Russian military felt when their own people were under assault by corrupt and unfriendly governments in Kiev. Imagine how threatened they felt to have a former republic considering becoming a member of the opposite side of the Cold War, and what the implications would be to the Russian naval base in Crimea should such an alliance with NATO occur., The Russians have not set foot in Western Europe since Berlin in 1945, and their behavior since the fall of the Soviet Union with respect to their neighbors surely has not been that of an irresistible force that wants to conquor Europe. Yet here and in other places in Eastern Europe, they see their former alliances being courted by NATO to turn against them. For a country whose history of the last several hundred years includes several attacks by foreign entities, completely unprovoked, it set off all kinds of alarm bells. So they took action to protect against the worst case : they secured their naval base in Crimea and they sent their troops to protect the Russian nationals living in Eastern Ukraine while the Western half of the country was engaged in civil war. This is hardly the kinds of actions that the West should see as threatening, but of course, if it helps some Congressman from Iowa or a Senator from Arizona defend their long held kushy political jobs in Washington, why not portray it as the second coming of the Bolsheviks.
Remember you are not talking about some pansy ***** big mouth dictatorship in the Middle East here, you're dealing with one of the two legitimate super powers, the relations between which can easily turn dangerously ominous if the wrong signals are sent. They may be a third world economy, but they are a first world military power and should be respected as such.In my mind - and mind you I am no apologist for the Russians - the American government has misplayed the Russia hand for quite some time, especially under Bush the Second, when the NATO extension plans were hatched.
As I see it, the Russians are no angels, but neither are we. The last thing we should be doing is stoking Russian paranoia, especially if we want their significant influence in Iran and North Korea to help us achieve peaceful settlement of the issues that divide the US with those countries.
So, I think you're analogy is way off the mark, and if you spend a little time pretending you are a Russian citizen rather than an American, you will see why the Russians have acted as they have and why they actually may be right in what they have done.
