Putin the Peacemaker

[BridgeTheGap]

The Washington know-it-alls are all atwitter over Vladimir Putin’s New York Times op ed: their outrage is the best endorsement.

All the Very Serious People are up in arms over the "hypocrisy" of the Russian leader for taking the US to task for rushing to war in Syria. It was the timing that rankled them: the foreign policy cognoscenti have only just barely gotten over their palpable disappointment when Congress and then the President backed down in the face of vocal outrage emanating from out in the cornfields. And now this!

If the revolt of the hoi polloi depresses them – how dare those un-lettered ruffians in flyover country interfere with their fun (and their career plans)! – the decision by the editors of the Times to publish Putin energized their moral preening instinct and reconfirmed their conviction that they represent humankind’s last best hope. They point to Putin’s 1999 Times op Ed – yes, this is his second – wherein he purported to explain Russian intervention in Chechnya – what hypocrisy, they cry! Of course, many on Twitter made the mistake of actually linking to this piece, in which Putin presciently speculated that Islamist radicals might one day attack the United States:

"I ask you to put aside for a moment the dramatic news reports from the Caucasus and imagine something more placid: ordinary New Yorkers or Washingtonians, asleep in their homes. Then, in a flash, hundreds perish in explosions at the Watergate, or at an apartment complex on Manhattan’s West Side. Thousands are injured, some horribly disfigured. Panic engulfs a neighborhood, then a nation."

http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2013/09/12/putin-the-peacemaker-2/

[groovedaddy]

1. I'm not a big Putin fan, but this is worth reading. n.t

[RC]

2. We don't listen. We think we are immune from response to our own actions. We think we are safe here.

9/11 was bushes fault and we showed the world what happens if someone fucks with us. Obama got bin Laden, so Justice was served. Only the rest of the world does not think so, not any more. Because we killed over a million people, most in innocent countries, in response to our less that 3000. And we are still killing in the name of 9/11, for fun and profit of the MIC. The blow-back is coming. The rest of the world will mount a defense to defend themselves against us, a brutal, murderous, bully, that the United States has become.
We US citizens, are every much the enemy, as any foreign national, in any other country, to the NSA. The CIA is a power unto themselves, beholden only to the MIC and the 1%. So they are no help to defend us. Our police are being militarized and are being used against us, whenever we protest our government's policies.
The day is coming for our turn at being a full fledged 3rd world country, with daily or weekly explosions in public places, just like those countries we have meddled in, whose governments we have toppled, in the Middle East and elsewhere for the last 60 years. Karma can be a real bitch, because of our arrogance in thinking we are the best and greatest. But that was 40 to 50 years ago.

[swilton]

8. Chalmers Johnson

would say that we have our rendez vous with Nemesis approaching.

The problem has become exacerbated over the last 9 years. With the end of the Shrub era, so many within and outside of the US believed that the war criminals would be punished and the US would once again adhere to international law and norms. But after January 2009, it became clear through US policies that the rule of law and international norms were for non-US states - American exceptionalism at its finest. Thus, the moral authority of the US is quickly losing its capital.

[Dash87]

3. Putin did good in averting war, but his domestic policies are authoritarian and bigoted.

His country is a mess because of his corrupt KGB-wannabe government.

And to those that say the US is bad or worse, and Putin is just doing what we do so he should get a free pass, when was the last time someone had to flee the US for mocking its leader?

Putin may be able to lecture us on our aggressive handling of the Syria crisis, but nothing else.

[BridgeTheGap]

4. Putin is only part of this piece. I wouldn't trust any further than I could throw him. That said

I pretty much agree with the case this op writer is making. U.S. foreign policy has far more to do with empire building than it does with keeping peace in the world.

[ProSense]

5. More

"Putin the Peacemaker"

...fantasy from Putin fans.

HRW dispatches : what Putin didn-t-tell american people
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023657858

Dear President Putin,
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023660320

[Cali_Democrat]

6. Isn't antiwar.com a right wing libertarian crazy site or something like that?

I remember a number of posts were locked or deleted on DU2 because they linked to that site.

Is it now OK to post editorials from that site?

[Catherina]

7. A most excellent read. Ilya Akmadov? No wonder we refused an extradition treaty

The Chechen rebels were and are supported by the West, and I’m not just talking about our Russophobic media: the US and British governments have granted asylum to the worst terrorists imaginable. When Ilya Akmadov, the Chechen rebels’ "foreign minister," applied for asylum in America, the Department of Homeland Security protested – the man, after all, was complicit in the slaughter of almost 200 schoolchildren at Beslan, alongside his leader, Chechen commander Shamil Basaeyev, when Chechen jihadists attacked a Russian school.

Ah, but "the children" don’t come into the conversation unless it serves the purposes of the foreign policy elite. That elite gave its ringing endorsement of Akmadov’s asylum application: Madeleine Albright, Frank Carlucci, Zbigniew Brzezkinski, Ted Kennedy, and of course John McCain – the jihadists’ best friend – all signed a letter appealing to Homeland Security, which promptly backed down. Akmadov was not only granted asylum but also a plum position with the misnamed "US Institute of Peace," a government-funded entity that does its best to justify America’s wars.

Rank hypocrisy.