Has it come to this? Seriously?
The president of Russia took to the pages of The New York Times this week to lecture the government of the United States of America on the spectacular failure of its interventionist foreign policy. And guess what … he’s absolutely right.
“It is alarming that military intervention in internal conflicts in foreign countries has become commonplace for the United States,” Russian President Vladimir Putin wrote. “Is it in America’s long-term interest? I doubt it. Millions around the world increasingly see America not as a model of democracy but as relying solely on brute force, cobbling coalitions together under the slogan ‘you’re either with us or against us.'”
Wow … them’s fightin’ words.
“But force has proved ineffective and pointless,” Putin continued. “Afghanistan is reeling, and no one can say what will happen after international forces withdraw. Libya is divided into tribes and clans. In Iraq the civil war continues, with dozens killed each day.”
He’s right. America’s “War on Terror” has been a disaster costing thousands of lives and trillions of dollars – yet it continues absent a compelling national interest (or an exit strategy).
In specifically referencing the contemplated American military action against Syria, Putin once again hit the nail on the head.
“The potential strike by the United States against Syria, despite strong opposition from many countries and major political and religious leaders, including the pope, will result in more innocent victims and escalation, potentially spreading the conflict far beyond Syria’s borders,” he wrote. “A strike would increase violence and unleash a new wave of terrorism. It could undermine multilateral efforts to resolve the Iranian nuclear problem and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and further destabilize the Middle East and North Africa. It could throw the entire system of international law and order out of balance.”
Again … he gets no argument from us.
Finally, Putin addressed a fundamental point we referenced recently (but which most American media have ignored) – namely the legitimate debate over the true origin of the chemical weapons strike in Syria.
“No one doubts that poison gas was used in Syria,” Putin wrote. “But there is every reason to believe it was used not by the Syrian Army, but by opposition forces, to provoke intervention by their powerful foreign patrons, who would be siding with the fundamentalists.”
Ah yes the fundamentalists (a.k.a. our terrorist allies).
It’s painful to watch America get put in its place like this, but it was also painful to watch Putin offer protection to National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden, who is being hunted down by the United States government for having the audacity to expose our government’s massive domestic spying network.
You know … the one our government created to advance its “War on Terror.”
What a world we live in, right?
“U.S.A.!!! U.S.A.!!! U.S. errrrr …”
Anyway, Putin closed his column with a swipe against the notion of “American exceptionalism,” which U.S. President Barack Obama invoked in making the case for military action against Syria.
“For nearly seven decades the United States has been the anchor of global security,” Obama said in his speech to the nation this week. “This has meant doing more than forging international agreements. It has meant enforcing them. The burdens of leadership are often heavy, but the world’s a better place because we have borne them.”
Obama later added that this burden extended to “our leadership of a world where we seek to ensure that the worst weapons will never be used,” saying our intervention in such situations is “what makes America different” and “what makes America exceptional.”
Putin was having none of that.
“It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation,” Putin wrote. “There are big countries and small countries, rich and poor, those with long democratic traditions and those still finding their way to democracy. Their policies differ, too. We are all different, but when we ask for the Lord’s blessings, we must not forget that God created us equal.”
23 comments
I do not support intervening in Syria. We should stop arming the “rebels” as they are worse than anything the Syrian govt has done. It is none of our business.
Also, be reminded that if US intervention is inevitable, the delay also gives Russia more time to prepare a response, even if it is an indirect one.
It is obvious in the MSM that whoever owns them is pushing really hard to get the American people to believe the big lie. It is sickening to see the “talking heads” trot out expert after expert giving breathless commentary regarding the immediate danger to the US and how we must not delay in a military response. It is the same with our “elected” officials. They are being pushed or blackmailed into this, constituency be damned.
A sad situation for us.
Hey, the 80’s called – they want their cold war back.
Who cares – if we can secure the chemical weapons and not have to again waste US treasure (borrowed) and US lives – let Putin preen like the botoxed ex-KGR hack that he is
PUTIN’S “MODERN LOVE”
TO: Jill Abramson, Executive Editor, the New York Times
FROM: Vladimir Putin
Dear Jill,
Thanks for your kind words about my Op-Ed in today’s Times. I’ve been checking your Web site every five minutes and I see it’s the second most popular story, right after the Science Times article about middle-aged men and estrogen.
Since my writing seems to be such a big hit with your readers, I thought I’d submit a “Modern Love.” Let me know what you think! :)
Yours,
Vlad
* * * * * * *
Modern Love
by Vladimir V. Putin
They say love is like a polar bear. If you want to take it in your arms and hug it, first you must be sure that it is properly drugged. Or perhaps love is like a tiger. If it escapes from the zoo and starts charging at you, you must shoot it with a tranquilizer dart. Whether it is a polar bear or a tiger, though, one thing is true: you must make love drop to the ground, preferably with some kind of drug, or it will maul you to death and eat you.
I was lonely, vulnerable. I had just come off a relationship that had seemed so promising, but now she was far away, in Siberia. It is true that I had sent her there, but the fact remained: I was alone.
Did I mention that love is like Siberia? I should have, because love can be quite cold sometimes. And it also can seem very far away, which Siberia is. (Unless you are in Siberia yourself.)
So there I was, lonely and vulnerable, the tranquilized polar bear of my heart lying in an unconscious white furry heap at my feet.
And that’s when I saw her. On TV.
I had never seen such a beautiful face, such a lithe and lissome frame. I had never seen such a delicate and precious creature as this, and I have hang-glided with endangered cranes.
I summoned my houseboy, Dmitri, who joined me in front of the TV. We watched in silent wonder for a minute or so, and then I asked him, “What is she doing?”
“I believe in America that is called ‘twerking.’”
“I must have her.”
Days passed. With Dmitri’s aid I sought her out. We tried Twitter, Facebook, Instagram. I sent her a Vine video of me kickboxing a tranquilized shark. No response.
I went to St. Petersburg for the G20. All around me, people were speaking of Syria, but all I could think about was my goddess with the foot-long tongue.
Love is like a flock of endangered cranes. It will take you soaring into the clouds, but if you are not careful it will send you hang-gliding into the side of a mountain, your brains falling to the earth in tiny gray jelly bits.
I excused myself from the G20, saying that I was trying to solve the crisis in Syria. In actuality, I was calling Dmitri to see if she had Vined me back.
“Have you heard anything from her?” I asked.
“No, but I have some … discouraging news. From TMZ.”
“TMZ? What is TMZ?”
“It is like KGB. They seem to have information on everyone.”
“Well?”
“It seems that she has a boyfriend. Someone named Liam.”
I put down the phone and looked out the window, at the gray skies of St. Petersburg. My heart suddenly felt like frozen tundra, and my love, a drugged polar bear, was about to fall to that tundra with the bear-like thud that bears make when they fall down suddenly. It was as if all the endangered cranes had suddenly tumbled from the sky, shot down by the antiballistic missiles of cruel fate. Love was a lot of things, it seemed to me, and all of them were pretty bad.
But then it occurred to me: a love such as the one I had for the one who twerked so majestically might come around only once in a lifetime. Who was I to give up on such a love? Who was this Liam to stand in my way?
I picked up the phone again and spoke to Dmitri.
“I want Liam shot with a tranquilizer dart.”
I put down the phone. Love is a lot of things, I have learned — bears, tigers, cranes — but why try to define it? When all is said and done, love means shooting at something and making it fall down. That, I have learned, is the most modern love of all.
Too long. Please moderate.
You put the balm on? Who told you to put the balm on? I didn’t tell you to put the balm on. Why’d you put the balm on? You haven’t even been to see the doctor. If your gonna put a balm on, let a doctor put a balm on.
yes and more yes
Ridiculous that it has come to this, but someone needed to point out that the emperor has no clothes. He was actually pretty diplomatic, considering, IMO. Of course the people that need to hear it most won’t listen.
You might not like the messenger and there’s certainly good reason not to…but it doesn’t make him “wrong” on his points…even if he has his own country’s interests in mind.
You have to take his points solely on their merit and debate them.
Putin has a higher approval rating in the US than the community organizer.
Are you sure? It looks like Marx beats them both:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0azojPPRhw#t=147
:)
He did manage to win an election twice.
Definitely did. Putin has no respect for Obama. Obama is a nerdy professor getting pwned by an alpha male jock at his own game. Pathetic.
instead of PWNED, it should read PWNING, because he continuously bitchslaps Obama right in the mouth. Pretty soon, he will be saying… errr… telling him, “Bitch betta have mah money”
Perhaps the benevolent dictator is the ideal form of government in the middle east.
Imagine, the United Sates of America being lectured on foreign intrigue by the former head of the K fricking GB! Unbelievable, in 25 or so years, the “Evil Empire” has positioned themselves as the “bastions of good order and discipline” in the world. Course nobody buys Ol’Vlad’s bovine excreta any more than they buy the double talk and hyperbole coming out of the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Now Assad has gone on Russian TV to “knob polish” Vlad. and claim that he’ll only turn over the chem weapons if we back off.
Two words – Yeah, Right.
Assad will never turn over all of his chemical weapons, that’s part of how he gets street cred in a tough neighborhood. Even if he did, he has much of the chemical weapons making technology that Saddam Hussien moved to the Beqaa Valley in the opening days of the recent unpleasantness and he can recreate his stock almost over night without any special help or materials. Trusting this turd is an exercise in futility – that said, screw him and the whole country of Syria, we don’t have a dog in the fight and need to stay the hell out of it. My day will be here soon, I don’t want my children fighting wars my generation started and didn’t have the good sense to end decisively. Should we decide to go in, let’s go all in and turn Damascus into a “glass paved parking lot”.
Comrade Popov got up at the meeting and asked, “Why do we have so many shortages? Why do all our products break down? Why is everything so expensive?”
The council chairman said, “I’ll answer your questions at the next meeting.”
At the next meeting, Comrade Bulgov go up and said, “I only have one question — whatever happened to Comrade Popov?”
[1] I can understand why the Russians are getting ahead of us. They don’t spend half their time fighting communism.
[2] A Russian magazine ran a contest for the funniest antigovernment joke. The first prize was thirty years.
Who gives a rats anal area how it comes about as long as no more lives are lost and arms and legs remain with the ones that brung them……Easy to armchair QB when the decision isn’t slapping you in the face.
I read Putin’s op-ed. It was self-serving and disingenuous — almost like he was an American politician. Nevertheless, in some ways it was more reasonable than most of what I’ve heard from our geniuses in DC. Having lived abroad for many years, I may say from experience not everyone views us as the fair and benevolent saints we think we are.
Putin has done a good thing and should be congratulated and praised for it. He gave our so-called “leaders” such as McCain, Graham, and Obama, an out from starting WWIII as they were so eager to do, to save face and their petty little egos.
So do you really think Putin wrote the piece? Don’t expect to see any American op-Ed pieces to appear in Soviet papers anytime soon. Because of such freedoms we are exceptional.
More than 9000 comments on the following story, and in flipping through a few pages of them, found that most agree with Putin.
U.S. lawmakers unite in fury over Putin’s op-ed in New York Times
http://news.yahoo.com/washington-lawmakers-furious-after-putin-opinion-piece-in-the-new-york-times-165601848.html
The Russians are getting smarter. Gorbachev was the first educated Russian leader since Lenin. Putin has shown restraint and some common sense. On the other hand: Obama is an absolute FUBAR.