Obama sends flowers and chocolate to Putin, then apologises plane for flying over Russian territory!

It’s Finally Time for the West to Stand Up to Putin
The world is in shock at the Malaysia Airlines shoot-down, but it shouldn’t be. Moscow is at the root of the problem and it’s long past time that we confront the regime.
For months, Russia had been meddling in the affairs of its neighbor Ukraine without having to pay a serious cost. Thursday’s downing of a passenger airplane in eastern Ukraine is a result of Western fecklessness in the face of Russian aggression. This tragedy—the murder of scores of European citizens on European soil—has internationalized the conflict in a way that should fundamentally alter the civilized world’s relationship with the regime in Moscow.

According to U.S. intelligence sources, a Russian-made missile destroyed Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, which crashed over territory controlled by Moscow-backed separatists on its way from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur. All 298 passengers and crew were killed. Early evidence is pointing to Russian-backed separatists as responsible for firing the missile. This week alone, they downed two Ukrainian military planes in the same general area, and a Russian news agency reported last month that the rebels had obtained surface-to-air missiles capable of striking aircraft flying at 72,000 feet. (MH17 was reportedly hit at 32,000 feet.)

Russian President Vladimir Putin blamed the Ukrainian government for the crash, an absurd statement even by his own standards. “This tragedy would not have happened if there had been peace on that land, or in any case if military operations in southeastern Ukraine had not been renewed,” Putin said, the geopolitical equivalent of blaming the rape victim for her misfortune. The reason why there is no “peace” in Ukraine is because of the Russian government’s barely disguised strategy of funding and equipping a violent insurgency that has now gone on for months and taken hundreds of lives. Thursday’s horrific tragedy was the consequence of Russian war-mongering; if you give guns, missiles, training, and logistical support to a band of drunken thugs, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that something like this might happen.

[link to www.thedailybeast.com]