IS PUTIN THE NEW JFK?

Comparisons are fun. Everyone loves them. David Cameron, for example, compared himself (yesterday) to Margaret Thatcher and Benjamin Disraeli. John Prescott compared Gordon Brown to Al Gore, the other week. This summer has often been compared to shit, as has the European Union (for no real reason!). But there is another comparison, I would like to write about. Carl Bildt, Swedens foreign secretary, compared Vladimir Putin to Adolf Hitler (quite indirectly, but still...). Mr Bildt has been right about quite a few things during this awful war between Georgia and Russia in the last few weeks. However, this comparison is quite over the top. Hitler was a vegetarian and Putin eats meat. No, honestly, I read a comment by Gabor Steingart, the internationally relatively well known author and correspondent of Germany's "Der Spiegel" news magazine. Mr Steingart argues that Putin should not be compared to Hitler (or Stalin), but instead to John F. Kennedy. - Yeah, i admit that sounds shocking, but there is some logic behind it. Georgia is for Putin what Cuba was for Kennedy. JFK wanted to keep his backyard "American", in the same way as Putin wants to keep his backyard "Russian".
Also, Putin represents the new Russia, as Kennedy represented the new America. Putin is loved by his people, as was JFK.
(This might be bad news for Mr Obama, who tries so hard to be the new JFK... ) I am not too sure if I agree with Mr Steingart, but his remarks definitively made me think very differently about Mr Putin's brutality in the Caucasus. Schreiber