Yep, Pootie Poot was Chimpy's nickname for Vlad. Shrub said "I looked the man in the eye. I was able to get a sense of his soul." So the right wing fascinated adoration for the Pootster goes way back. Anyway, the invasion of Iraq by President Cheney and his stooge GW Bush was arguably as egregious as Putin invading Ukraine, but maybe not quite. They were lying about the Weapons of Mass Destruction™ but they weren't lying about the nature of the Saddam Hussein regime. It was also not dangerous on as large a scale. Saddam didn't have a friend in the world. While the invasion and occupation turned out to be catastrophic for the people of Iraq, and the catastrophe eventually metastasized to northern Syria, it never really threatened to go any further.
The current situation is so dangerous that hardly anyone is pointing to U.S. hypocrisy. Maybe that's fair enough anyway because while Joe Biden voted to authorize the Iraq war, he later said it was a mistake, although he also claimed, somewhat misleadingly, that he was against the war from the beginning. The linked NYT article tells the story of Biden's actions as chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 2002 at length. Essentially was he was saying at the time was that he didn't want the war to happen but he didn't want to deprive the "president" of the authority.
Be that as it may and whatever you may think about it, two wrongs don't make a right and it's deeply disturbing that a large segment of the Republican party, including its ultimate leader, is openly expressing admiration for Putin. The party has descended into the sewer, and it needs to be flushed away.
I commend to you attention the most excellent Brett Devereaux. It's a fairly long read but it tells you everything you need to know.
9 comments:
It doesn’t matter how the cesspool of the Republican Party dies, but it must die. Entirely. That doesn’t mean the people in it need to die, but if that’s what it takes, I’m good with that.
I’ll expand on what I wrote: cults are led by leaders who take their followers to death. It doesn’t matter if it’s Jim Jones or Marshall Applewhite. In the case of Donald shithead Trump, it is the same thing. He is on a mission to lead himself and followers to death. Why people follow anyone like this is not something that I understand, but if he told all of his followers to stick their heads up their asses and suffocate themselves, they would bend over backwards trying to do it.
So they are all functionally, or rather dysfunctionally, insane.
You're both so preciously naive. This is the normal operation of states. The strong ones do as they wish, the weak ones do as they must. There is no objective measure in which the US is "better" morally on the international stage. One can at least respect Putin (and Xi) for not being pathetic, passive aggressive hypocrites about the matter.
NB: Not an endorsement of this potentially world-ending bullshit.
Mo—
If what you’re saying is that, objectively speaking, there is no “good” or “bad,” then I agree with you. However, in mid-January of 1991, I was out in the streets — literally — demonstrating against our country’s first illegal, immoral invasion of Iraq. I have no particular love for my country, nor do I defend its murderous, genocidal proclivities.
But it sounds like what you’re saying is that Pyooteen (yes, since I read Cyrillic, that is how his disgusting name is pronounced in Russian) should be commended because he’s honest about his psychopathy. We might as well have commended Charlie Manson and Shitler himself.
And while we’re at it, I guess I should command RFK Jr. for his passionately insane diatribes about life-saving vaccinations.
Whose name is disgusting? How is a name disgusting?
The lack of hypocrisy is refreshing for a change. This is what powerful states do, our liberal euro allies did before, we do now. Ask anyone in latin america, we're an absolutely terrible neighbor. The larger point is that all this was utterly predictable: violate a state's security concerns long enough and war is always the result. The anarchic nature of international relations demands it.
Over on LGM the off-duty members of the blob are outgassing liberal world order talking points, reminding each other that NATO is a strictly defensive alliance with no designs on russian sovereignty. Tell that to Libya, Afghanistan, or Yugoslavia.
Powerful states are all the same. The stench of hypocrisy is nauseating.
Mo—
I was a musician for years. The very sound of the name “Pyooteen” Is disgusting from an aesthetic point of view. No accounting for taste, or lack of it.
As for the more important point, I still say that you’re writing as if realpolitik is fine and dandy. No one, least of all myself who, as I mentioned, was out protesting against my own government’s (first) invasion of Iraq in January 1991, is disputing the hypocrisy.
But since when is any of this shit okay?
Ah, the poets' problem. I understand. Linguists hear these things differently.
It's not "okay" in a moral sense, but it is the hard and fast reality. Morality and law can exist only within the context of legitimate authority. Once upon a time we created religion and the state so that individuals, families, and clans need not resort to violence. Until we develop an authority with enforcement powers, above that of the nation-state, this is literally the only way things like this can be resolved.
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