When people consider themselves exceptional, they make themselves potentially dangerous. That’s the gist of what Vladmir Putin had to say in his N.Y.Times op-ed piece, and people of many different political stripes here in the United States seem to have taken exception to this. I happened to be at the dentist the morning of its publication; the flat-screen t.v. above my dental couch was playing Fox & Friends, and they were throwing Stalin in Putin’s face. No surprise there. (What else can you expect from a clown parade headed by Michele Malkin?) A lot of t.v. liberals didn’t like it either. Frankly, though, for all of his failings as a leader, it’s not hard to see what Putin was getting at.
We have, under the banner of American Exceptionalism, invaded any number of third-world countries over the past century and a quarter. The results have not been positive. (Just ask them.) Putin and others are approaching us as if conducting an intervention; trying to keep us from repeating the same bad behavior, over and over again. You know you have a problem when it takes Russia and China to talk you down. One can only hope that they succeed. This Syria intervention is just a crazy, bad idea, and one that the president seems very attached to. It’s a kind of madness, executive power, and it’s long since taken hold of old Barry-O.
What is kind of amazing is that the notion of striking Syria is really deeply unpopular from the get-go. This is so clearly the case that many conservative Republicans in congress really don’t know whether to shit or wind their watches. I heard one dancing around like a little wind-up toy on the radio a few days ago; they sooooo want to support an attack, but they sooooo need to undermine Obama, and their constituents are pushing them hard. This is the new pacifism: 20-25% of the country is opposed to war with Syria because they are against anything Obama wants, no matter what it is. Half of the centrist-liberal-left spectrum is firmly against it. That leaves neocon Republicans, “muscular” interventionist liberals, and other armchair bombardiers. I guess that means having a Democratic president makes us less likely to intervene in these polarized times.
Whatever keeps this disaster from happening can’t be all bad.
luv u,
jp
Obama, Kerry, and others have latched onto this trope about defending an international norm that goes back ninety years; one that only Hitler and Saddam Hussein violated. I am grateful for people like retired Col. Lawrence Wilkerson for blowing a hole in this line of attack. What, one might ask, is the distinction between using Sarin and using napalm, white phosphorus, agent orange, or depleted uranium? The short answer is that we have used all of the latter four, while our enemies have used the more garden variety poison gas. These are all indiscriminate, deadly weapons, based in chemistry, that can kill large numbers of people. Not that being blown up by fragmentation grenades is any walk in the park. You have to wonder how these people can make so measured a choice in these matters.