Don’t you hate it when you agree with Vladimir Putin? It’s even worse than concurring with Charlie Krauthammer.
I read that New York Times op-ed piece that Putin authored–or authorized–and initially thought: What ironic chutzpah. That smirking, swaggering KGB punk who bullied his way into a third term as Russian president has the gall to lecture us on Syria–or anything else? And then, sure enough, this Cold War throwback lived down to expectations as I waded into a rhetorical morass of misrepresentation and disingenuousness. From his take on why the League of Nations failed to the unacknowledged Russian role in supplying weapons to its Syrian client.
“We are not protecting the Syrian government,” wrote Putin, “but international law.” Oh. And what about international law in Chechnya or Georgia?
“No one doubts that poison gas was used in Syria,” wrote Putin. “But there is every reason to believe it was used not by the Syrian Army, but by opposition forces to provoke intervention …” Nobody but Putin and Ayatollah Khamenei think Syria never tapped into its outsized tonnage of sarin and mustard gas.
And yet.
Putin’s heat-seeking missive made some uncomfortable points.
He pointed out that most of the world–including the pope and the U.S. Congress–had disagreed with America’s targeted, military-strike plans, however equivocating and “limited.” And how do you fire off cruise missiles without “inevitable civilian casualties”?
Sounding not unlike most American libertarians and liberals, Putin also questioned the seeming “commonplace” U.S. strategy of “military intervention” in “internal conflicts in foreign countries.” He called them “ineffective” and “pointless.” By “them,” he meant Afghanistan, Libya and Iraq.
He characterized Syria as an “armed conflict between government and opposition in a multi-religious country”–not as a “battle for democracy.” This frankly resonates with anyone who follows Middle East history, where contemporary countries are often arbitrarily bordered, post-colonial constructs steeped in tribal/religious enmities.
Then he added the zinger. Putin took exception, as it were, to “American exceptionalism” that President Barack Obama had referenced in his address to the American people last week.
“It is extremely dangerous,” Putin brazenly admonished, “to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation. … We are all different, but when we ask for the Lord’s blessings, we must not forget that God created us equal.”
There ought to be a red line for not feeding Putin straight lines that enable him to hypocritically mount a moral high ground. “American exceptionalism,” which requires serious, non-jingoistic context, is also the theme of every self-serving, self-congratulating Marco Rubio speech. Its connotation is as much American arrogance as it is American uniqueness. Enough of us know the difference at home. To many around the world, alas, it makes us look less than morally equal to that rhetorically duplicitous, 21st century Josef Stalin–Vladimir Putin.
Indeed, what ironic chutzpah, and we set him up for it.