RECENT events surrounding Syria have prompted me to speak directly to the American people and their political leaders.
It is important to do so at a time of insufficient communication between our societies.Normally, I wouldn't be going over one of the bosses head to talk to his people directly like this, but, your president is busy working on his golf swing, or something. I got no choice here. He wont give me a sit down.
Relations between us have passed through different stages. We stood against each other during the cold war. But we were also allies once, and defeated the Nazis together. The universal international organization — the United Nations — was then established to prevent such devastation from ever happening again.There is a right way of doing it and there is a wrong way of doing it. Obama's idea of unilaterally taking out Syria is universally rejected as a bad idea. I talked to all the bosses, in private, they told me they don't want anything to do with it. They are paying lip service to Obama out of respect for me. In the end, Obama is probably going to cost me money.
The United Nations’ founders understood that decisions affecting war and peace should happen only by consensus, and with America’s consent the veto by Security Council permanent members was enshrined in the United Nations Charter. The profound wisdom of this has underpinned the stability of international relations for decades.
If Obama insists on doing this, he has to do it the way his predecessor Bush did it. Obama needs to respect tradition. Bush collected sanctions for the go ahead on Saddam from his own people. Bush put in the hours, he lined up all the bosses behind him. He personally visited all the families that stood with him including one where he spoke in the rain w/o an umbrella.
No one wants the United Nations to suffer the fate of the League of Nations, which collapsed because it lacked real leverage. This is possible if influential countries bypass the United Nations and take military action without Security Council authorization.
The potential strike by the United States against Syria, despite strong opposition from many countries and major political and religious leaders, including the pope, will result in more innocent victims and escalation, potentially spreading the conflict far beyond Syria’s borders. A strike would increase violence and unleash a new wave of terrorism.
If Obama insists on bombing, if he persists in this path to war, w/o authorization from the big families, he has to talk to me first. I'm running this operation, Obama cant make a move w/o my say so.
Read the whole humiliation galore.
It could undermine multilateral efforts to resolve the Iranian nuclear problem and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and further destabilize the Middle East and North Africa. It could throw the entire system of international law and order out of balance.Obama thinks he's got problems now.
Read the whole humiliation galore.
29 comments:
We are all different, but when we ask for the Lord’s blessings, we must not forget that God created us equal.
Ouch.
Putin knows how to really hurt a guy.
Has Putin gone over the line with this Op-ed?
No one wants the United Nations to suffer the fate of the League of Nations, which collapsed because it lacked real leverage.
Check your premises.
He's speaking to liberals, using their language. He should know over half the country doesn't believe that kind of talk.
Most of us believe if an urgent move was in need of busting most Americans, not all, not the media, but most, would appreciate a decisive president who ordered an operation then explained to a concerned nation what just occurred and why.
But no, not here.
That is why COs of large corporations get the big bucks, they are decisive and by experience tend to make right decisions regularly, not always, but most always They're worth it. Or they wouldn't be paid it.
Not so in politics. People and organizations will be willing to pay this dummkopf just to hear him blabber and bask in the glow they impart to him, more than I could possibly earn through hard tedious work, long after he's outlived his usefulness.
Not over the line politically. He wants to be in Obama's hed eating his branes.
I bet Putin voted for Obama using Eric Holder's ballot...twice.
Oh man, that is rich stuff. Putin you magnificent bastard. This is like having a man crush on your girlfriend's new lover. You know you're losing something, but you understand completely, because you know you are such a putz.
Vlad must have been chortling as he wrote this:
"We are not protecting the Syrian government, but international law. We need to use the United Nations Security Council and believe that preserving law and order in today’s complex and turbulent world is one of the few ways to keep international relations from sliding into chaos. The law is still the law, and we must follow it whether we like it or not."
Such a fine, upstanding, law-abiding man. This is a cat toying with an injured parrot.
Chip is talking about this audience... wait a bit after the video starts.
Putin knows how to set the hook...ouch.
Obama just got out bullshitted, and that's his strongest skill. Putin just needs to post a video of himself sinking 20 jump shots in a row, and we're done here.
"It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional..."
It's really only dangerous when it's not true.
But the other guy had binders full of women, and that's just wrong.
Will restarting the cold war mean we don't have to worry about global warming? I bet it does.
From the archives:
At a news conference in Strasbourg, France, in April 2009, a British reporter had asked the new president whether he subscribed to the idea that the United States is uniquely qualified to lead the world. "I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism," Obama had replied.
Putin really is good at this game.
Putin you magnificent bastard.
This is a cat toying with an injured parrot.
Putin really is good at this game.
Yep. Putin has outmaneuvered Obama in this way too-- out-Obama'd Obama, "using words."
Using Obama's own words. Everything O ever said to denounce or distance himself from Bush & Bush's America (much of it false & unfair, of course), re American exceptionalism and so much else-- what O won a Nobel Peace Prize for-- Putin's lobbing back, to bite O in the ass.
But it is flabbergasting, surreal, to witness this. I do believe it's unprecedented. Obama now appears so diminished, that Putin-- fuckin' Vladimir Putin!!!-- feels he must, feels he can, address not just the international community, but the American people, right over Obama's head.
Reagan once had the power and gravitas, speaking in Berlin, to address the Soviet leader and say: "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall."
Putin, writing in the New York Times, is addressing the American people, rolling his eyes and gesturing his thumb at Obama: "can you believe this guy?"
I still remember: "Tell Vladimir I'll be more flexible after the election." Selling out our allies, tail ducked under him.
Well, Barack now has his head up his ass, that's for sure.
"After my election, I have more flexibility."
Well, Obama addressed Putin over the American people's heads (or more accurately, behind their backs); seems fitting for Putin to address the American people over Obama's head.
Of course, he would be writing for the Gray Lady, it's the Commies' home away from home.
But, if Choom, Lurch, and the rest of the Keystone Kops think Vlad bailed them out, he's just telling them today is the first day of the rest of their lives.
He's Lucy, they're Charlie Brown.
PS Look who always said Syria's WMDs came from Iraq.
IT'S A COOKBOOK!!!1!!!!!!!!
bagoh20 said ...
Obama just got out bullshitted, ...
Why yes he did, and three cheers for that!
No country is exceptional? Sounds like Vlad is still pissed about the Marshall Plan saving Europe after Russia tried to kill it during WWII.
In fairness, though, I though I'd do a little research. heck, Putin sounds like a rational guy so he's probably quite the benevolent leader.
Not.
Here's interesting reading. Its the State Department Russia 2012 Human Rights Report. Human rights are a sometimes thing in Putin's Russia.
Inferring that Russia can be called exceptional is a sucker play. And the suckers on the far left are falling for it.
Look, I really dislike Obama. I believe the has ruined the American economy and governed without regard for the constitution by issuing executive orders. At the same time, I fully respect the office of the president, and hate the idea that some kleptocrat oligarch can so easily push the Obama administration around. And the NYT is full complicit in this humiliation by publishing Putin's screed.
Love him or hate him, the American president's hands are on the tiller of the ship of state. His weakness, and the weaknesses of his navigators are steering this ship onto the shoals of failure.
Remember, this is the guy who describes himself at heart as a Chekist.
I think Putin's ultimate goal is to save Mother Russia.
The thing is that Putin has the best interest of his nation in his mind and heart. Obama does not.
He has a different agenda. It is that simple.
But it is flabbergasting, surreal, to witness this. I do believe it's unprecedented. Obama now appears so diminished, that Putin-- fuckin' Vladimir Putin!!!-- feels he must, feels he can, address not just the international community, but the American people, right over Obama's head.
Why wouldn't he go over Obama's head? When you're dealing with an ineffectual nitwit in a work environment, the only thing you can do sometimes is go to the person above them.
Of course, the problem here is that going over Obama means going to the people that elected Obama and then RE-ELECTED him, so Putin's going from dumb to dumber....
Love him or hate him, the American president's hands are on the tiller of the ship of state. His weakness, and the weaknesses of his navigators are steering this ship onto the shoals of failure.
Yes, but in this case I do believe that by humiliating Obama and showing him to be an ineffectual clown to the rest of the international community, Putin has done the US some good, too. And yes, I realize that wasn't and isn't his concern, nor his goal.
Still, Kerry's total fuck-up (the proposal on the table NOW should have been a starting point on this issue, diplomatically, months ago), and Obama's complete flip-flop, as exploited by Putin, has hopefully kept us out of a war, and hopefully at least helped slow down the process of the US aiding and abetting al Qaeda. (Saw a story somewhere today that apparently the rebels are now fighting amongst themselves, and that al Qaeda-affiliated groups are rising in prominence.)
In this sense, a win for Putin is a win for the people of the United States, checking their incompetent ruler and preventing a reckless war with no clear goals and no good way to achieve them in a VERY dangerous neighborhood.
...
Incidentally, can someone explain to me why arming the Turks to the teeth and telling them to go re-take the Arab lands into a Turkish empire is a BAD thing?
The great irony is that it is American exceptionalism that made it possible for Putin's op-ed to be published in the NYT without censorship.
No country is exceptional? Sounds like Vlad is still pissed about the Marshall Plan saving Europe after Russia tried to kill it during WWII.
The great irony is that it is American exceptionalism that made it possible for Putin's op-ed to be published in the NYT without censorship.
This is all very true, of course. I'm a big believer in American exceptionalism. Just to start with, the miracle of the American Revolution-- so utterly unlike any revolution before & after (particularly the bloody insane totalitarian killing machines of the French & Russian revolutions); and our Founding Fathers, establishing a Constitution which radically limited their own, the government's, power! It's like some kind of political miracle. Once, in the history of the world.
But you missed a salient point. Lydia's quote from the archives hit the nail on the head. It was newly-elected POTUS Obama who mocked, poo-pooed the idea of American exceptionalism, long before Putin's philosophical critique of it here.
Putin only said what Obama believes, and declared, himself.
I don't think you'd ever catch Putin mocking or repudiating the idea of Russian exceptionalism.
Putin's an evil bastard, no question. But (as deb & Troop point out) he does love Mother Russia. As well as himself.
Obama loves himself.
It pains me to see this too, a POTUS's humiliation. I don't like it. My love for the USA exceeds, a thousandfold thousandfold, my loathing for Obama-- though the two are related.
The only upside (besides possibly avoiding an incoherent war, the point of which: ?) is that for Obama to appear so weakened might limit further damage he might do to the USA domestically. Maybe contribute to an eventual dismantling of Obamacare.
Internationally, it's much harder to discern a silver lining.
You guys are all on drugs.
Who cares who claims credit for what? We're well on our way to getting our interests served, and if a Russian tyrant claims that serves his interests too, who gives a flying fuck.
You think this is all a show and obsess like little girls over who "looks" better.
Comparing Obama to Bush, I'd say the one who "looks" better is the one who gets a problematic country to disarm without spending $6,000,000,000,000 (yep, that's six trillion) and a good number of lives to remove arms that didn't exist there.
So yammer on about pageantry all you want. This is the resolution that the administration had been working toward for a good year. Read up, for chrissakes, children.
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