Imagine

"Let us imagine that Chancellor Angela Merkel was a former officer of the SS rather than a former professor of physical chemistry. And let us imagine she went before her parliament and people and proclaimed the collapse of Nazi-occupied Europe the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the twentieth century. Such a remark would have produced a furious response from the German press, the German political opposition, and the German people. Germany’s neighbors would have twitched with anxiety. Ambassadors would have been recalled. Editorial writers would have wondered whether the Nazi beast was reawakening.
And imagine, too, that the SS and the Gestapo, under new, benign-sounding names, were still responsible for internal German security. And that they still worked from their old headquarters buildings. That scenario, as preposterous as it sounds, is exactly the situation in Russia today. The FSB, Russia’s Federal Security Service, occupies the KGB’s old headquarters building in Lubyanka Square. Many Russians don’t even bother to call the FSB by its new name. They still refer to it as the KGB".


This from a piece by novelist Daniel Silva ("Comrade Lenin Alive and Well"), whose visit to Moscow to research a new book brought forth this invitation to reflect on why Marxist-Leninists mass murderers are acceptable on the world stage, whereas their National Socialist brothers-under-the-skin have long since been made a by-word for political evil. Imagine, while you're at it, what a President Obama's stance vis-a-vis Putin and his newly resurgent Russia might be. Recall the elegant, sophisticated, well-intentioned JFK as he walked into the windmill that was Nikita Khrushchev. How'd that work out for us?