Imagine my surprise when I opened the New York Times and read Vladimir Putin's Op-ed [first item in the post to which this is a reply]. I didn't know what I was reading for a few minutes. Sometime's my Chief of Staff will put The Onion in front of me just to shake things up so it took me a moment to realize this was not a joke.
First off, let me say I had a very nice time at the G20. The food was good, although a bit heavy for my taste, and the weather was pleasant. Certainly you can see the sky sometimes, which you can never do in China.
As I continued to read the Op-ed, I really couldn't understand whether we were being insulted or praised. Mr. Putin seemed to respect the United States for one paragraph, and then blast us in another. Now understand, I admire Mr. Putin. For his age he seems to be in great physical shape and even though I could kick his ass in basketball I do believe that if a bear were to attack the both of us, he would be the one to shoo it away.
But let's make one thing perfectly clear: this is written by a man who is the head of Russia. Russia, where the air conditioning in the room conked out even though I was in the Presidential Suite. Russia, where no one smiles and where people actually look disappointed that they are white.
Mr. Putin, we put a man on the moon and you barely got a monkey home safely. We invented the computer and you invented the way to steal it. Your country is filled with our fast food businesses and yet there is not one Russian take out place in the whole United States.
You are known for Siberia, we are known for Big Sur. We make Cadillacs and Lincolns and God knows what you call those little square deathtraps. It's one thing to put down exceptionalism, but before you do that, you at least have to produce one Broadway show, or make one commercial airliner, or invent one type of salad.
Having said that, your people are wonderful and I know that you care about them deeply, except, of course, for the gay ones. As a matter of fact, you care about them so much that you hate to see them argue, especially with you, so you graciously offer them the solace of prison.
In any case, I enjoyed your editorial and I am very impressed that it was printed in the New York Times. If only there was a newspaper in your country that would print this.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, left, and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov deliver statements to the press during meetings to discuss the Syrian conflict in Geneva, Switzerland, on Thursday. European Pressphoto Agency
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad during an interview with Russian State broadcaster Rossia 24 in Damascus, in this handout photo made available by Syrian Arab News Agency. EPA
Syrian Leader States Conditions as Envoys Convene in Geneva
By JAY SOLOMONin Geneva and GREGORY L. WHITEin Moscow Updated September 12, 2013, 4:10 p.m. ET
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad insisted that the U.S. give up its "policy of threats" and halt arms shipments to rebels before his government turns over its chemical weapons, as U.S. and Russian delegations began talks in Geneva aimed at forging a road map for the shutdown of the weapons program.
Mr. Assad's comments, in his first public statement on the Russian proposal that Syria hand over its chemical weapons to an international monitors, underlined the distance between Syria and its backers in Moscow on one side and the U.S. and its allies on the other.
Before starting their discussions, Secretary of State John Kerry and his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, pledged to closely cooperate in seeking to disarm Syria. But differences between the two diplomats were evident, with Mr. Lavrov saying military force against Syria was unnecessary and Mr. Kerry stressing that the threat of force was the only reason Mr. Assad has made pledges to give up his chemical-weapons arsenal.
"There ought to be consequences if [disarmament] doesn't take place," Mr. Kerry said at a joint press appearance with Mr. Lavrov. "Only the credible use of force…has brought the Assad regime to acknowledge for the first time that it even has chemical weapons." Mr. Kerry also warned Mr. Assad against using the diplomatic process to stall.
Mr. Kerry said Mr. Assad's stated expectation that his regime will be given 30 days to provide a declaration of its chemical-weapons stockpile to the international body that oversees the destruction of such armaments, The Hague-based Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, was unrealistic.
The Russian proposal, approved by the Syrian government on Monday, led the U.S. to delay plans for a congressional vote on military strikes against Syria. President Barack Obama seeks to punish the Assad regime for what Washington said was an Aug. 21 chemical-weapons attack by the regime outside Damascus that killed more than 1,400.
Many in the U.S. see the threat of military action as the reason for Syria's agreement on Monday to join the Russian plan. The Pentagon said on Thursday—after Mr. Assad demanded an end to U.S. threats—that two U.S. warships deployed in the Mediterranean Sea and Red Sea would stay beyond their scheduled deployments to maintain pressure on Syria while negotiations over its chemical weapons continue.
The USS Barry, one of four destroyers in the eastern Mediterranean, originally was scheduled to return home early this month, but will be kept in place. The USS Nimitz, an aircraft carrier in the Red Sea that was to leave the Middle East for the Pacific region, also will remain. While the Nimitz has been formally extended for two weeks, a Pentagon official said both ships would remain in the area for the foreseeable future.
Mr. Assad, in an interview on Russian state television, said it wasn't U.S. pressure, but Russian diplomacy that convinced his regime to discuss giving up the weapons.
"Without the Russian initiative we would not have discussed this matter at all with any other country," he said.
Mr. Assad, again denying any involvement in the chemical attack, said that his government would submit documents in the next few days to sign the Chemical Weapons Convention, which bans the manufacture, storage and use of such arms.
The treaty would take effect a month after signing, at which time the government would disclose the locations of its stockpiles to international inspectors, he said.
The United Nations acknowledged receipt on Thursday of a document from Syria that is a first step toward joining the chemical-weapons treaty.
The Syrian leader said Damascus wouldn't fulfill the agreement "unilaterally," but would require reciprocal steps from the U.S. to stop threats against his government and halt arms supplies to "terrorists," the Assad regime's term for the rebels who are backed by the U.S. and its allies.
"There is no trust between us and the Americans and no contacts between us, Russia is the only state capable of performing this role," Mr. Assad said.
It wasn't clear if the Syrian leader was putting forward conditions for a deal or trying to project defiance to a domestic audience. Since Monday, the Syrian regime has sought to portray the Russian initiative as a diplomatic coup and tactical victory for Damascus and Moscow.
Mr. Assad's conditions are unlikely to be acceptable in Washington. Mr. Kerry, accompanied by U.S. intelligence officials, was set to present Mr. Lavrov with Washington's assessment of the size and location of Syria's chemical-weapons stockpile, said U.S. officials traveling with Mr. Kerry. The Obama administration estimates Syria to have 1,000 tons of chemical-weapons agents.
This assessment includes Syria's store of the unmixed chemicals used to make weapons, the weapons themselves, and some of the munitions and delivery systems the Syrian regime has allegedly used to attack rebel forces and civilians over the past year.
"We have to share the scope of this program" with the Russians, said a senior U.S. official. "We will talk about monitoring and enforcement."
Messrs. Kerry and Lavrov weren't slated to discuss the drafting of a U.N. Security Council resolution calling for the destruction of Syria's chemical weapons.
The resolution has emerged as a contentious issue between Russia and the West. Moscow has balked at a French proposal that Mr. Assad face the threat of immediate military strikes if he doesn't fulfill his disarmament commitments, through the establishment of a so-called Chapter 7 resolution at the U.N.
Instead, the U.S. and Russian delegations during two days of talks aimed to put in place a timeline for the disbanding of Syria's chemicals weapons and establish benchmarks that would be used to judge the progress and success. The two sides also face the question of how to put in place inspection teams and to provide them with security in a Syrian state consumed by civil war.
"We have to be able to monitor and verify what is happening," said the senior U.S. official. "Our interest is that the international community has a stake in what's done here."
Mr. Kerry also planned to meet the U.N. special envoy for Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, on Thursday
Mr. Brahimi has been working with Washington and Moscow to arrange an international conference in Geneva aimed at putting in place a political transition in Syria.
The conference was intended to bring together representatives of the Syrian opposition and Mr. Assad's government. But months of conference planning have failed to gain the approval of either side.
Sam Dagher in Damascus, Julian E. Barnes in Washington and Joe Lauria at the United Nations contributed to this article.
Here's What Went Unmentioned in Putin's New York Times Op-Ed
BY JULIA IOFFE
It takes some balls for a man who started two wars to reach out to the American people on 9/11 and plead for peace. But since President Obama can't seem to find his way out of the corner he's painted himself into and since nature hates a vacuum, Vladimir Putin has done just that.
Putin addresses the American people over the head of their president, which is fine except for that time when it infuriated him when then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton launched a similar initiative, encouraging American diplomats to engage Russians on social media, and over the head of Putin.
Putin begins by addressing the vicissitudes of the Russo-American relationship, adding, "But we were also allies once, and defeated the Nazis together." Besides implying that we are no longer allies, it's also a platitude: every Russian knows that the Soviet Union defeated the Nazis and that the Americans pitched in a little at the end. It also ignores one of the chief reasons for the relationship's deterioration, which is that Putin's propaganda machine has been in overdrive fomenting anti-Americanism in Russia for the last two years, mostly to hold on to power at home.
"No one wants the United Nations to suffer the fate of the League of Nations, which collapsed because it lacked real leverage." The League of Nations? You mean that international body from which newly Soviet Russia was excluded, and then, later, expelled when the U.S.S.R. invaded Finland?
"This [marginalization of the U.N.] is possible if influential countries bypass the United Nations and take military action without Security Council authorization." Or if certain countries use their veto to gum up its works on even the most negligible of resolutions. "Three times the Security Council took up resolutions to condemn lesser violence by the Syrian regime," said former U.N. ambassador Susan Rice on Monday. "Three times we negotiated for weeks over the most watered-down language imaginable. And three times, Russia and China double vetoed almost meaningless resolutions. Similarly, in the past two months, Russia has blocked two resolutions condemning the use of chemical weapons that did not even ascribe blame to any party. Russia opposed two mere press statements expressing concern about their use."
"From the outset, Russia .. http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/russiaandtheformersovietunion/index.html?inline=nyt-geo .. has advocated peaceful dialogue enabling Syrians to develop a compromise plan for their own future." No, from the outset, Russia has done everything in its power to maintain Putin's favorite thing: the status quo. And that took a lot of effort on Russia's part, and is in no small way responsible for Syria's devolution from protests calling for reform to an increasingly vicious civil war.
"We are not protecting the Syrian government, but international law." I don't know what Putin means by "protecting," but I think that providing arms .. http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSBRE97S0WW20130829?irpc=932 , diplomatic cover and financial support qualify as "protecting."
"The law is still the law, and we must follow it whether we like it or not." This is probably my favorite line in the whole damn thing. There's a Russian saying that goes, "the severity of the law is mitigated by the need to get around it." Russians, from a grocery cashier up to President Putin, know that there's a way around every law should the will to get around it exist. This is probably because in Russia, the law is not a framework to enforce rights and order; the law is seen as a bludgeon which can be used to selectively punish people. This understanding of the law has flowered most fragrantly under Putin.
"No one doubts that poison gas was used in Syria. 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." This is another wonderful Russian habit, one of looking facts in the face and then subjecting them to an adolescent epistemological artillery strike until nothing is anything and nothing is knowable. It goes beyond conspirological thinking to a kind of warped post-post-post-modernism, where words and things disintegrate into sand but somehow, in a Russian's hands, come together to form what could maybe, possibly be a cogent argument that looks suspiciously like a sand castle. This is one reason why Putin, presented with evidence of Assad's chemical attack on August 21, called it .. http://lenta.ru/news/2013/08/31/putinobama/ .. "otherworldly idiocy," before constructing his own theorem based on some pretty otherworldly assumptions.
"It is alarming that military intervention in internal conflicts in foreign countries has become commonplace for the United States. Is it in America’s long-term interest?" Thanks, Vlad.
"The world reacts by asking: if you cannot count on international law, then you must find other ways to ensure your security. Thus a growing number of countries seek to acquire weapons of mass destruction." That is, Assad's chemical weapons are for national defense?
"I welcome the president’s interest in continuing the dialogue with Russia on Syria. We must work together to keep this hope alive, as we agreed to at the Group of 8 meeting in Lough Erne in Northern Ireland in June, and steer the discussion back toward negotiations." Steer the discussion back toward negotiations. Schedule a meeting to schedule a meeting. In case it wasn't apparent that Russia is helping Assad play for time, we should talk about having a discussion.
"My working and personal relationship with President Obama is marked by growing trust." It's been, what, five years they've been working together? Putin is a cautious man.
"I carefully studied his address to the nation on Tuesday. And I would rather disagree with a case he made on American exceptionalism, stating that the United States’ policy is 'what makes America different. It's what makes us exceptional.' It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation." Except for when Russia does it. Remember the term "sovereign democracy .. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_democracy "? It was a term coined during Putin's second presidential term to describe the disappearance of democracy as the rest of the world defines it, and it was rooted in the premise that Russia is different and that it will take its own, unique path to democracy. (This was also the thrust of a Washington Post op-ed .. http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2012-02-08/opinions/35444971_1_civil-society-democracy-demands .. he wrote in February 2012, at the height of the anti-Putin protests in Moscow.) This is also at the core of the anti-Western, anti-gay wave in Russia: Russia is unique and will not be corrupted by the influences of the corrupt West.
"We are all different, but when we ask for the Lord’s blessings, we must not forget that God created us equal." Unless you are gay or you have come out as against Putin and his government. Then all bets are off.
"Vladimir V. Putin is the president of Russia."
All that said, I have to add this: Putin's op-ed is quite an elegant play to an American public weary of fixing unfixable problems abroad—Putin mentions the strange and useless fruit borne of the escapades in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya—and a country that, for most of its history, treasured its isolation from the rest of the world. Invoking the dangers of aiding those already aided by al-Qaeda and their ilk and the threat posed to Israel is a nice chord to strike with a country already confused and nervous about getting involved in a tangled, exotic mess. Moreover, by leaning on international law, Putin reappropriates the very crux of Obama's argument for hitting Assad. Not using chemical weapons is part of international law, in other words, but so is going through the Security Council and not attacking countries that haven't attacked you.
The fact that Putin is not the most credible messenger when it comes to the rule of law or pacificism is one thing, but this has always been his strength: taking words and concepts with generally agreed upon meanings—laws, elections, constitutions—and redefining them for his own strategic benefit, and then cloaking himself in their legitimizing powers.
And if the last week has shown us anything, it is that there is one man in the game who has a strategy, and it is not Obama. So far, Putin has played it all right, and accomplished two goals: standing up to U.S. aggression, which will play nicely at home, and keeping Assad in power. Obama will maybe accomplish one—getting Assad to give up his chemical weapons—if he's lucky. The other one—getting Assad out—well, we'll just walk that one back, won't we. And in terms of addressing the people, well, Putin's now addressing yours, Mr. President.
So if you're keeping score this week, here's the tally: Putin 2, Obama 0.
.. i'm not keeping score, this isn't futbol .. and Vlad .. big on international law are you .. whatever happened to your bit about the perpetrator of the violation of international law being judged before the International Criminal Court? .. did it really get edited out? .. and why are you opposed to the use of force if Assad does not comply? .. after all you do know that force is sanctioned in international law ..
UN Chapter 7 allows ‘use of force’
June 07, 2012 AFP
UNITED NATIONS - The United States said Wednesday that it would back tough UN sanctions against Syria, but the UN Security Council is far from agreeing such a move.
Chapter 7 of the UN charter which allows for sanctions ranging from economic measures to an arms embargo, and if necessary military force, was last used against Libya last year. The 15-member council is still licking its wounds from the episode. Russia, China, India, South Africa and others say Nato forces went beyond the UN mandate for a no-fly zone and protection of civilians in the campaign against late Libyan leader Moamar Gaddafi. Russia and China say they will not allow a repeat of such a move in Syria, and have already twice used their powers as permanent members of the Security Council to veto resolutions on Syria which had only hinted at sanctions. A Chapter 7 resolution is invoked to take: “Action with respect to threats to the peace, breaches of the peace, and acts of aggression.” This was the basis for UN action in the 1950-53 Korean War and to back coalition forces in Iraq and Kuwait in 1991. Several Security Council resolutions against Iraq were taken under Chapter 7, before the March 2003 US-led invasion.
The resolutions are binding on all UN member states. The Security Council first determines that there is a threat to peace or a breach of council decisions.
So far the council has not described Syria as a threat to international peace and security. Russia, Syria’s key ally, has refused to allow any such descriptions in the resolutions on Syria which sent UN observers there.
Article 41 of Chapter 7 allows for sanctions, including economic and transport measures or the severance of diplomatic relations.
If the council decides that measures under Article 41 have failed, then Article 42 states “it may take such action by air, sea, or land forces as may be necessary to maintain or restore international peace and security.
.. you attack the US for it's position on Syria, yet you have blocked three attempts at diplomacy in the UN .. you say any resolution blaming Assad's mob for the chemical attack is not acceptable .. sorry Vlad .. can't have it both ways ..
=====
Syria Is a Mess. But Every Other Crisis Has Been a Mess Too.
—By Kevin Drum - Tue Sep. 10, 2013 9:10 AM PDT
First Read reports today that attitudes toward military action often depend on whether your guy is sitting in the White House:
----- However, both Democrats and Republican can probably agree on this: The entire process here hasn’t been pretty. It’s something that Politico writes about today. “Barack Obama’s unsteady handling of the Syria crisis has been an avert-your-gaze moment in the history of the modern presidency — highlighting his unsettled views and unattractive options in a way that has caused his enemies to cackle and supporters to cringe.”
But here’s our question: Has the process been messy because of Obama, or because this is just the reality of a more-transparent world where information — and opinion — travels so quickly? The fact is, this does appear to be the new normal. (Ask yourself: How would have today’s media covered Bay of Pigs or even the Cuban Missile Crisis?) No longer can presidents hand-wring BEHIND the scenes; every incremental development is debated in the media. It’s not just U.S. politicians who conduct themselves this way; it’s world leaders, too.
Clearly, the Washington establishment is uncomfortable with how the president has looked so wobbly and haphazard in some of his decision making process. After all, every major development on Syria has looked, at times, as if the administration was “winging it” — from the initial “red line” declaration to the decision to seek congressional authorization to yesterday’s Kerry answer on Syria giving up chemical weapons. But given the media climate, and the automatic public skepticism that is built in these days with anything a politician says, is it possible that this is the new normal? It certainly appears so. Then again, this doesn’t excuse the White House for what has been a muddled case against Syria from the get-go. -----
I think this dynamic is worth a lot more attention than it usually gets. We tend to think of current controversies as a lot messier than past ones, but that's mostly an illusion. Part of the reason for this illusion is that we have a rose-colored view of the past. Partly it's because we all know how past crises turned out, and that automatically makes them look a little more predictable than they seemed at the time. Partly it's because we learn about them from books and magazines that provide telescoped accounts. And partly, as First Read points out, it's because the media environment of the past allowed a lot of the confusion and turmoil to remain behind the scenes.
Obama hasn't handled Syria very well. But guess what? George Bush didn't handle Iraq very well. Bill Clinton didn't handle Kosovo very well. Ronald Reagan didn't handle Iran-Contra very well. LBJ didn't handle Vietnam very well. Kennedy didn't handle the Bay of Pigs very well. And even the crises that were handled reasonably well—the Cuban Missile Crisis, for example, or the Gulf War—look that way more in retrospect than they did at the time.
There are lots of things about our modern media environment that I like. But one thing I don't like is the value it puts on responding instantly to every possible provocation and then jumping on those responses like a pack of ravening beasts—for a few hours, anyway, until it's been chewed into an unrecognizable pulp and the next demand for an instant response comes along. Generally speaking, we'd all be better off if we got it through our heads that taking a few weeks to respond to a crisis is usually OK. Not every utterance is important, and not every delay is a sign of spineless leadership. Sometimes you just have to let things play out.
.. personally i'm still thinking that Obama is taking a lot of undeserved flack over Syria .. fact is that he would have been soundly castigated whichever route he had taken .. for Putin to say he is a protector of international law in this case is a bit much, as it could be read that he, in fact, is preventing international law from being adhered to .. and, lol, the fact that Putin is all of a sudden a hero of so many who have forever been nothing but critical of Obama .. well, that is laughable .. it's repugnant to me ..
By Frida Ghitis, Special to CNN September 12, 2013 -- Updated 1742 GMT (0142 HKT) ..
.. yes .. Obama's strong stance (putting aside he could have bombed the shit out of Assad a long time ago) 'has Putin exactly where the US wants him' .. 'he owns this peace initiative' .. 'he believes all of the Syrian opposition are extreme jihadists, he is wrong' .. [YT of embed]
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
* Frida Ghitis: In op-ed, Putin poses as champion of peace and chastises U.S. on Syria * On contrary, Russia sold arms to al-Assad regime, which has killed tens of thousands, she says 8 She says he touts diplomacy, yet Russia, China subverted peace efforts on U.N. Security Council * Ghitis: Putin wants to raise stock (not peace) in world and keep Russian foothold in Mideast
Editor's note: Frida Ghitis is a world affairs columnist for The Miami Herald and World Politics Review. A former CNN producer and correspondent, she is the author of "The End of Revolution: A Changing World in the Age of Live Television." Follow her on Twitter @FridaGhitis.
(CNN) -- There he goes again -- Russian President Vladimir Putin, portraying himself as the world's champion of peace and democracy. And, of course, doing it at America's expense.
When it comes to massacres of civilians, it is the Russian (and Iranian)-armed Syrian government and its allies who have done most of the killing. Some of the rebels also have blood on their hands, clearly a reason for concern. But Putin's one-sided portrayal is false. A report .. http://tiny.cc/t1bc3w .. by a U.N. commission released Wednesday showed eight massacres committed by al-Assad supporters and one by rebels over the last year and a half.
Putin has provided al-Assad with weapons, planeloads of cash .. http://www.propublica.org/article/flight-records-list-russia-sending-tons-of-cash-to-syria .. and diplomatic cover to carry out his assaults against an uprising that started peacefully and was forced into violence by al-Assad's uncompromising response. And yet in his op-ed Putin cynically describes the Syrian war as conflict "fueled by foreign weapons supplied to the opposition."
The Russian president tries to come across as the great defender of international institutions, peace through compromise and global consensus. "No one wants the United Nations to suffer the fate of the League of Nations," he warns, which would happen if the United States chooses to bypass the U.N. Security Council.
[VIDEOS] World reaction mixed on Putin column Can Putin be trusted? Putin's call for peace
The truth, whatever Putin claims, is that the United States and other countries have tried desperately to go through the Security Council to stop the carnage in Syria. No country has obstructed those efforts more persistently than Russia. Early last year, when al-Assad's forces carried out what was until then the worst massacre of the war .. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/05/world/middleeast/syria-homs-death-toll-said-to-rise.html?pagewanted=all , in the city of Homs, the United States, France, Britain -- in fact, 13 out of the Security Council's 15 members -- voted in favor of a resolution backing an Arab peace plan for Syria. Russia and China vetoed it.
Russia has obstructed even the most watered-down efforts to send a message from the international community, vetoing three separate resolutions. It's no wonder Samantha Power, America's ambassador to the United Nations, said .. http://tiny.cc/r9bc3w .. Russia has held the Security Council "hostage."
In his column, Putin disingenuously claims "there is every reason to believe" the rebels launched the August 21 chemical attack that killed hundreds of Syrian civilians. Precisely the opposite is true.
A U.N. inspection team investigated the massacre in Syria but was not tasked with assigning blame. Still, leaked information says .. http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/09/11/un_report_will_finger_assad_for_massive_chemical_attack .. its report next week will show "a wealth of evidence" pointing strongly to the Syrian regime as perpetrator of the attack, even if that doesn't fit neatly with Putin's reality distortion objectives.
Nothing could be more deliciously absurd than Putin accusing America of not being a "model of democracy," except perhaps for his closing line in which he chastises President Barack Obama for speaking of American exceptionalism. Obama shouldn't have said that, Putin humbly explains, because "We are all different, but when we ask for the Lord's blessings, we must not forget that God created us equal."
Right. All equal. That coming from the man who has presided over the introduction of law after law turning gays and lesbians into second-class citizens in Russia, with the latest allowing police .. http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/02/opinion/ghitis-anti-gay-russia-games/index.html .. to arrest anyone suspected of being "pro-gay."
Putin would do well to avoid the topic of democracy and human rights altogether. Just ask the nonpartisan Freedom House what has happened to the country since Putin came to dominate the political scene .. http://www.freedomhouse.org/country/russia .. more than a decade ago.
Incidentally, Putin rose to power by cracking down violently against Chechnya. Here's an op-ed he published in The New York Times in 1999 explaining why force was needed against brutality .. http://www.nytimes.com/1999/11/14/opinion/why-we-must-act.html .
In this latest newspaper column, Putin extends to the United States his image-building campaign from Russia, where he has appeared hunting tigers .. http://tiny.cc/zicc3w .. in Siberia. In Russia he is the hyper-macho president. In America and in the rest of the world, he wants the public to see him as the indispensable foil to an out-of-control America.
Putin wants to raise not only his own but also Russia's profile and prestige. It's not so much that he dislikes American exceptionalism. He wants Russia to share in the limelight and in the power. The former KGB man is trying to maximize the influence of a country that once shared the title of superpower only with the United States.
To do that, he wants to save al-Assad, the man who holds the key to Russia's foothold in the Arab Middle East.
No, Putin's actions are not driven by a passion for peace and democracy. They are an example of cold calculation -- a quest for power and a bold display of hypocrisy.
Follow us on Twitter @CNNOpinion.
Join us on Facebook/CNNOpinion.
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Frida Ghitis.
Sarah Palin sued for using 9/11 photo to raise funds September 13, 2013 A northern New Jersey media company on Friday sued Sarah Palin and her political action committee for copyright infringement for using an iconic Sept. 11 picture to raise money without permission. [...] http://www.newsday.com/news/nation/sarah-palin-sued-for-using-9-11-photo-to-raise-funds-1.6071590 [with comments]
The regime Putin fears we'll change isn't Assads. It's his own.
By Michael Crowley @CrowleyTIMESept. 13, 2013 148 Comments
lliya Pitalev / handout / Getty Images
President Putin at the G20 Summit on Sep. 6, 2013 in St. Petersburg.
Why is Vladimir Putin so hostile towards the United States? His Thursday New York Times op-ed struck a superficially friendly tone, but it had the overall effect of undermining Barack Obama and chastising .. http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/2013/09/11/putin-says-american-exceptionalism-dangerous/yOhRgGOtUr3Br4lyIvrPTO/story.html .. America’s sense of itself. But that was no shock, coming from the man who enraged Washington by granting asylum to Edward Snowden and who recently barred American adoptions of Russian children, among other affronts.
There’s likely another, potentially more important factor driving Putin’s animus, however. He thinks we’re out to get him. And in a sense, he’s right.
To understand why, start with the Russian president’s belief that America has a general habit of meddling in the affairs of other countries and trying to change their governments. Iraq is just the most obvious example, but Putin sees many others. He was furious that a United Nations military mission in Libya sold by Washington as a limited humanitarian mission became an extended bombing campaign to topple Moammar Gaddafi. Putin fumed that Russia’s then-president, Dmitry Medvedev, had supported the resolution: “It allows anyone to do anything they want—to take any actions against a sovereign state,” Putin said .. http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/europe/03/21/russia.leaders.libya/index.html .. in March 2011.
Putin has also argued .. http://rt.com/politics/putin-regime-iran-usa-175/ .. that America’s confrontation with Iran over its nuclear program is the pretext for a grander plan. ”Under the guise of trying to prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction,” Putin said early last year, “they are attempting something else entirely and setting different goals—regime change.”
Sound familiar? Putin sees much the same in Syria, which is why he has adamantly refused to support a U.N. authorization of force against Assad. It’s not a totally unreasonable suspicion. Barack Obama has called for Bashar Assad to leave power, prominent members of Congress like John McCain are urging regime change, and although the White House denies it .. http://www.theguardian.com/world/middle-east-live/2013/aug/27/syria-crisis-military-intervention-un-inspectors .. officially, there have been hints that any U.S. military strikes could indirectly serve that purpose.
Less widely understood than Putin’s concerns about Iraq, Syria and Libya is his anger over U.S. actions closer to his borders. Putin believes America helped defeat a Moscow-backed candidate in Ukraine’s 2004 presidential election, partly by sending millions .. http://www.foxnews.com/story/2004/12/13/us-denies-meddling-in-ukraine-election/ .. of dollars to pro-democracy activists there. He hated George W. Bush’s courting .. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64106-2005Mar24.html .. of the former Soviet republic of Georgia, where a U.S.-backed president was defying Moscow’s longtime influence. (After a 2008 military clash between Russia and Georgia, McCain declared .. http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2008/08/mccain-to-georgian-president-t.html .. that “today, we are all Georgians.”) And he surely remembers well the U.S.-led NATO bombing campaign in the 1990s—which Russia also bitterly opposed—that led to the ouster of Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic.
“If you look at events over the past 20 years from the Kremlin’s perspective, you see a consistent pattern of U.S. and western behavior amounting to a policy of regime change across Eurasia,” says Matthew Rojanksy, director of the Kennan Institute at the Woodrow Wilson Center. “Putin asks, if Washington can use force to topple regimes in Iraq, Afghanistan, or Libya, and can sponsor regime change by other means in Serbia, Georgia, and Ukraine, why wouldn’t Belarus or Kazakhstan or even Russia itself be next? Putin has to draw his own red line, and Syria is a good place to start doing so.”
“It’s not the whole story,” says Rojansky. “But it’s a big part.”
Most galling for Putin is evidence that America’s regime change agenda has crept into his own country. When mass anti-Putin demonstrations erupted in Moscow in late 2011, Putin quickly accused the U.S. of encouraging the protests. He lashed out specifically at Hillary Clinton for encouraging pro-democracy activists. “She set the tone, gave the signal,” Putin said in December 2011, charging .. http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2011/12/08/9294038-war-of-words-putin-clinton-clash-over-election-protests?lite .. that the U.S. was spending tens of millions of dollars “to influence our internal political process.”
Soon after, Russian state media accused .. http://tiny.cc/kwch3w .. the new U.S. Ambassador to Moscow, Michael McFaul, of being a subversive revolutionary agent. Pro-Putin commentators noted that McFaul is a longtime democracy advocate who has written of “Russia’s Unfinished Revolution,” and argued in a 2007 article that “even while working closely with Putin on matters of mutual interest, Western leaders must recommit to the objective of creating the conditions for a democratic leader to emerge in the long term.”
Putin is undoubtedly posturing some—playing the old autocrat’s trick of blaming foreigners for internal problems. But he also clearly feels that Obama has, at a minimum, tried to undermine him within Russia. His Times op-ed may have been a small way of returning the favor.
Sargent's piece to me looks a decent reality check of past practice and now, so in itself some evidence that any suggestion of 'Obama being afraid of Putin' is in fact a stupid opinion .. lol .. i would appreciate other opinion on that .. :)
WAR is in the air. Sad to say, there’s nothing new about this. Nor is there anything new about the claim that war has always been with us, and always will be.
What is new, it seems, is the degree to which this claim is wrapped in the apparent acquiescence of science, especially the findings of evolutionary biology with respect to a war-prone “human nature.”
This year, an article in The National Interest titled “What Our Primate Relatives Say About War [ http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/what-our-primate-relatives-say-about-war-7996 ]” answered the question “Why war?” with “Because we are human.” In recent years, a piece in New Scientist asserted that warfare has “played an integral part in our evolution” and an article in the journal Science claimed that “death in warfare is so common in hunter-gatherer societies that it was an important evolutionary pressure on early Homo sapiens.”
The emerging popular consensus about our biological predisposition to warfare is troubling. It is not just scientifically weak; it is also morally unfortunate, as it fosters an unjustifiably limited vision of human potential.
Although there is considerable reason to think that at least some of our hominin ancestors engaged in warlike activities, there is also comparable evidence that others did not. While it is plausible that Homo sapiens owed much of its rapid brain evolution to natural selection’s favoring individuals that were smart enough to defeat their human rivals in violent competition, it is also plausible that we became highly intelligent because selection favored those of our ancestors who were especially adroit at communicating and cooperating.
Conflict avoidance, reconciliation and cooperative problem solving could also have been altogether “biological” and positively selected for.
Chimpanzees, we now know, engage in something distressingly akin to human warfare, but bonobos, whose evolutionary lineage makes them no more distant from us than chimps, are justly renowned for making love instead. For many anthropologists, “man the hunter” remains a potent trope, yet at the same time, other anthropologists embrace “woman the gatherer,” not to mention the cooperator, peacemaker and child rearer.
When, in the 1960s and ’70s, the anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon began reporting his findings concerning the Yanomamo people of the Amazon, whom he claimed lived in a state of persistent warfare, his data were eagerly embraced by many — including myself — because they represented such a beguilingly close fit to our predictions about the likely positive correlation between early human violence and evolutionary fitness.
In retrospect, even though I have no reason to doubt Yanomamo ferocity, at least under certain circumstances, I seriously question the penchant of observers (scientific and lay alike) to generalize from small samples of our unquestionably diverse species, especially about something as complex as war.
I have little doubt that the perspective of many evolutionary biologists and some biological anthropologists has been distorted by the seductive drama of “primitive human war.” Conflict avoidance and reconciliation — although no less “natural” or important — are considerably less attention-grabbing.
Yet peacemaking is, if anything, more pronounced and widely distributed, especially among groups of nomadic foragers who are probably closest in ecological circumstance to our hominin ancestors. The Hadza people of Tanzania have interpersonal conflicts, get angry and sometimes fight, but they assuredly don’t make war and apparently never have. The Moriori people, original inhabitants of the Chatham Islands off the coast of New Zealand, employed several methods (including social ridicule) that prevented individual disputes from escalating into group-versus-group killings. The Batek of peninsular Malaysia consider overt violence and even aggressive coercion to be utterly unacceptable, viewing themselves and their larger social unit as inherently and necessarily peaceful.
The problem with envisioning Homo sapiens as inherently and irrevocably warlike isn’t simply that it is wrong, but also that it threatens to constrain our sense of whether peacemaking is possible and, accordingly, worth trying.
I am counseling neither greater nor lesser involvement in specific wars. But I urge that any such decisions not be based on a fatalistic, empirically invalid assumption about humanity’s warlike nature.
There is a story, believed to be of Cherokee origin, in which a girl is troubled by a recurring dream in which two wolves fight viciously. Seeking an explanation, she goes to her grandfather, highly regarded for his wisdom, who explains that there are two forces within each of us, struggling for supremacy, one embodying peace and the other, war. At this, the girl is even more distressed, and asks her grandfather who wins. His answer: “The one you feed.”
News 
Market Data 
Discover 
AI
