Please, God, Deaden the Pain of the Idiocy I Endured

Russia paints NATO as a threat, supports thugs around the world who try to kill us, stakes claims in the Arctic, insists NATO remain helpless in the face of Iran's looming missile threat, and has said it might strike NATO first. Obviously, this problem can be solved by inviting Russia to join NATO as a "reward":

It is time to recognize how much Russia has accomplished in less than a generation, how much it could contribute to the military capacity of NATO, and how much its full cooperation could enhance global security if it were rewarded, finally, with membership in NATO.

With all due disrespect, the woman is an idiot.

And I offer my sincerest apologies to idiots everywhere for lumping this monumental idiocy in with their garden variety and mostly harmless idiocy.

Russian hostility is unrelenting yet we should reward them by bringing them into a defense alliance that many former Soviet colonies have joined because they want collective defense from Russian efforts to regain territory they lost between 1989 and 1991?

And even if you can make an argument for letting a hostile and paranoid Russia into our defensive alliance, has the author looked at a map recently? Does this writer really want to extend NATO's defense perimeter all the way to the borders of China and North Korea? Seriously?

At moments like this, I wish I was the type of person to swill cheap gin early in the morning. After all, it's stupid somewhere, right?

UPDATE: Oh, one more quick update on the idiocy. Membership in NATO for the ex-Soviet colonies has been a sort of graduation ceremony where they had proven their commitment to democracy and rule of law. How do we explain to existing new members that our standards applied to them but not to their former slave masters who insist on the unfettered right to nuke them while sliding back into czarist authoritarianism?

Idiocy is an understatement for this idea.