Vladimir Putin, speaking to the UN General Assembly, addresses the West’s “export…of so-called democratic (revolutions)” in the Middle East:
“Instead of the triumph of democracy and progress, we got violence, poverty and social disaster….I cannot help asking those who have forced that situation: Do you realize what you have done?”
On Syrian President Bashar al-Assad:
“We think it is an enormous mistake to refuse to cooperate with the Syrian government and its armed forces, who are valiantly fighting terrorism face to face. We should finally acknowledge that no one but President Assad’s armed forces and Kurdish militias are truly fighting the Islamic State and other terrorist organizations in Syria.”
No sane and moral human being could have sympathy for the Assad regime, but if it was toppled, only to have Islamist barbarians fill the resulting power vacuum, would the humanitarian situation in Syria be any better?
Another power vacuum in the ME? No problem. After the Shah in Iran, Carter invited the Ayatolla back from exile in France. And then the Iraq incursion, tossing Saddam and after an hiatus, the withdrawal of US troops on an announced schedule. And overthrowing Ghaddafi in Libya? Well there’s 3. They’ve all worked out swimmingly, right? No doubt Syria will be another shining example of US foreign policy.
I don’t normally agree with Putin – on anything – but he’s the only leader in this discussion with any balls. He certainly outclasses Obama – but then who doesn’t?
EBD, we have real-world experience to tell us what will happen: Libya.
Why do we even have to ask ourselves if Assad should be removed?
Assad has his problems, without a doubt, but his removal would turn that area of the Middle East into a hell-hole ten times worse than it is now.
It would be another genocide like the Armenian genocide but this time going after anyone who is not a Muslim or isn’t orthodox enough.
I suspect Putin is trying to protect Russia from that kind of situation. If I am right, then good for him.
I don’t think anyone believes the Muslim Middle East will evolve into secular, pluralistic democracies that can live in peace amongst themselves and their neighbors. Since that is an impossible dream, we should support strong men (like Mubarek, Saddam Hussein, Khadaffy, and Assad) who will keep their boot on the throats of their restive populations. Khadaffy was paid bribes by the EU to prevent refugees from fleeing to Europe from Lybian shores. There’s no reason the EU couldn’t pay bribes to other warlords to sequester their hordes.
Here is a little nugget of wisdom for Obambam that seems to have become lost to the world’s intelligentsia elite, and he and they should have figured out after Libya and Egypt, you cannot, with all your best intensions, grant democracy to a people or nation. Democracy evolves over time and through a multitude of blood, sweat and tears, (apologies to W. S. Churchill). The sooner you learn that fact the sooner we can advance the Western way of life without sacrificing our young men and women on a cause that is as lost as ‘pearls are in front of pigs’!
“Instead of the triumph of democracy and progress, we got violence, poverty and social disaster….I cannot help asking those who have forced that situation: Do you realize what you have done?”
What a crock. Putin is a blood thirsty oligarch stone killer who doesn’t give a fig about democracy and progress, violence, poverty or social disaster. Look at what he did to north Georgia, Crimea, and is doing in east Ukraine.
If ISIS could credibly promise Putin Russia’s continued use of the port of Tartus, Putin would let ISIS eat Assad for breakfast and then let them order up Iran for lunch.
EBD, when you write, “No sane and moral human being could have sympathy for the Assad regime, but if it was toppled, only to have Islamist barbarians fill the resulting power vacuum, would the humanitarian situation in Syria be any better?” are you agreeing with V. Putin? Your argument does, but it seems to be set up as a disagreement.
“Between Scylla and Charybdis” be damned. It is like Libya; choice between a ruthless dictator and vicious Islamist fundamentalists.
Just remember, little people: we supported Russia under Stalin – supported him to the limit of our capabilities – because we wanted to beat Hitler and Germany, and Russia was killing a lot of Germans.
And the fact that the Soviet government had tortured and killed a lot of Russians, and a lot of Poles. was immaterial.
Remember that after Spring 1943 the Western governments knew all about the Katyn massacres.
I agree. I have not much use for Putin, particularly in regards to Ukraine and Crimea, but he stands head and should above Obama. Putin is very right about the mess the west has made in North African and in the ME in general. Better the dictator that rules his people with an iron hand than a terrorist that wants to kill everybody in the country he takes over that does not submit as well as export his murderous ideology.
I do not think Putin is an ideologue in any way, and just wants to make Russia great again even if he runs over a few countries along the way. Obama on the other hand is a died in the wool 24/7 Marxist, and has screwed up everything he has touched.
In the winter of 1939/40 the Allies were about to send something like 40,000 French and British troops to help the Finns fight the Russians during the winter war. To the Allies – at that time following the invasion and partition of Poland – the Russians and Nazis were two sides of the same coin. Then the Nazi invasion of Norway prevented the Allied troop reinforcement of Finland and the invasion of France the next spring brought home how screwed the remaining Allies were in their fight with the Nazis.
The Nazi invasion of Russia in 1941 was a godsend and the Allies were quite happy to facilitate the mutual slaughter of national socialists from Germany and international socialists from Russia. The only reason the communists survived was because they had more bodies to toss into the inferno than the Nazis. Unfortunately our “support” of these Russian communist Allies legitimized our own home-grown lefties when we should have been treating them no differently than the Nazis.
We should be facilitating the same mutual slaughter between muslim terrorists and muslim dictators. It’s time to stop dancing to the taquiya.
Everything Obama’s touched has turned into shit.
Well, I agree with you that in practical terms one particular outcome in Syria — western-style stability, as opposed to an Islamist hell — is better than another. The Scylla and Charybdis metaphor is a reference to the fact that in strictly moral terms, as opposed to practical, geo-political board game terms, there’s no high ground in choosing sides between a ruthless dictator and ruthless Islamists. Putin and Assad are thugs who have tortured, jailed, and assassinated a lot of their opponents who — it must be pointed out — weren’t terrorists or barbarians a la ISIS, but were rather western-leaning, highly conscientious individuals who want the same freedoms that we enjoy, including a free press. Assad and Putin’s thuggery would be an indisputable fact if ISIS didn’t exist, and it remains a fact in the face of the Islamist threat.
It’s hard to make a moral case for supporting a ruthless dictator on a case-by-case basis (“jailing his critics, and poisoning Alexander Litvinenko, is despicable and disgusting, whereas helping Assad crush his opponents, including a number of western-leaning, freedom-oriented people, is good, because he’s also trying to crush ISIS, so the good people he’s also trying to crush are just collateral damage.”) I certainly couldn’t bring myself to deign to tell the family of a western-minded, decent Syrian who’d been imprisoned and tortured by Assad that Assad has my support because he’s also going after ISIS.
That’s the kind of ugly grey area I was referring to in the title of the post.
You mention Libya, which is an instructive example: The fact that in retrospect the country was vastly more stable for the majority of Libyans when Gaddafi was in power and was torturing, imprisoning, and murdering his critics and opponents, doesn’t mean that we — the west — should have, or even could have, taken military action against his opponents during the uprising, because a lot of his opponents at the time were western-leaning, often anti-Islamist pro-democracy activists. Hindsight is 20-20, and all that, but you can’t act on unknown consequences.
We know more now, and I think it speaks volumes that there’s been little or no appetite among western governments for using military action to overthrow Assad. I think that behind the scenes hey know what you and I and most people know: sometimes there’s no moral high ground, only difficult choices that have to be made — or in some cases, not made.
Agree Ken although, unfortunately, Ukrainian situation has quite a bit to do with US incompetence as well. Putin is pro-Russian and a reincarnation of the expansionism Russian policy that existed in the 1800’s. There’s also a strong connection to the Russian Orthodox church which has undergone a reneissance in Russia under Putin. There’s a rejection of what is percieved as western decadence and Putin has strong support in Russia. The people around Obozo seem to think that Putin’s reasonable limitations on homosexuality in Russia are examples of “oppression”, but seem to overlook the islamofascist way of dealing with homosexuals when it comes to US “allies” in the ME who routinely behead more people than ISIS in any given year.
There are also strong geopolitical interests at play in Syria. The US wants Assad deposed and a western friendly government installed that will go along with the proposed Qatar-Mediterranean gas pipeline which will allow Qatari natural gas to be shipped to Europe. Coincidentally, this will also significantly affect Gazprom which will no longer be able to shut off natural gas to Europe during cold winters. Israel wants a very weak Syria which won’t have time to demand the Golan Heights back and which will be too busy trying to rebuild instead of militarily threatening Israel. There appears to have been a deliberate effort by the US to do nothing for as long as possible while hyping up the danger posed by ISIS. Of course, ISIS is also a great excuse for statist governments to impose new “anti-terrorist” legislation bringing western countries much closer to a totalitarian state.
As far as Putin and Assad murdering and torturing their citizens, that type of behavior is now the norm for Obozo and the USSA. Obozo has killed US citizens with drone strikes when US special forces had the option to arrest the individuals and bring them home for trial. Such actions are a clear violation of the US Bill of Rights (Section 5 does allow exceptions in time of war, but no declaration of war has been made in any of the countries in which Obozo’s drone assasinations have occurred). Thus, Obozo has violated his oath of office and should be impeached, although likely any individual who attempted such an action would “disappear” just as quickly as Putin’s or Assads opponents in Russia or Syria. This is a longstanding element of presidential governance in the USSA. Clinton killed the Branch Dividians in Waco and any people in his life with embarrasing information had a mysterious habit of dying in unusual “accidents”. Right now I don’t see much difference between the various forms of totalitarianism that occur in the USSA and Russia.
Obozo is an incompetent imbecile who serves primarily as a figurehead for the banksters who pull his strings. Putin, on the other hand, is intelligent, ruthless and a patriotic Russian who long ago sized up Obozo and found him severely lacking. Someone like Reagan would be able to deal with Putin on a basis of mutual respect, but the following cartoon best sums up how Putin and most world leaders see Obozo:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-09-30/want-hear-joke