It’s not what Vladimir Putin’s New York Times op-ed says that’s so worrisome; it’s what it doesn’t say…. There is not a single mention in Putin’s article, addressed to the American people, of the egregious crimes committed by the Syrian government and extensively documented by the UN Commission of Inquiry, local and international human rights groups, and numerous journalists: deliberate and indiscriminate killings of tens of thousands of civilians, executions, torture, enforced disappearances and arbitrary arrests. His op-ed also makes no mention of Russia’s ongoing transfer of arms to Assad throughout the past two and a half years.
If you read Putin’s simplistic and one-dimensional op-ed, you may well have had the same reaction I did when I finished: “Well, that’s five minutes of my life I’ll never get back.” I was struck by how selectively judgmental it was of American efforts to reign in Syria’s use of chemical weapons. Crafted in to present himself as a beacon of reason and caution, Putin manages to be simultaneously hypocritical AND willfully ignorant of the full scope of the situation. Even if he’s not ignorant of the details, Putin cherry-picked facts to buttress his argument…even though a trained chimp with a rudimentary knowledge of the situation in Syria could debunk it. And I’m not the only person who found Putin’s effort to be weak, self-serving, and selectively focused…sort of like Fox News Channel if it was headquartered in Moscow. There have been a number of good responses to Putin’s op-ed, but this one in particular stood out for me.
The truly sad thing about Putin’s effort at literary persuasion is that he seems incapable of understanding the hypocrisy and double standard that drive his argument. The end result is something truly comical in its effort at presenting Putin as a statesman.
If you believe that Putin actually wrote his op-ed, I’ve got a bridge in Arizona you might be interested in. I suspect that Putin’s involvement in crafting this cheesy piece of propaganda was limited to signing his name to it. Perhaps he thought it would establish him on the international stage as a statesman, or perhaps Putin really did feel justified in criticizing the U.S. Whatever the case, I’d submit that he who calls a gas tank home may want to refrain from striking matches while occupying said domicile.
Putin elevates the role of religious extremists in the Syrian opposition while soft-pedaling those rebelling against the Assad regime for other than religious reasons. Their are religious extremists on both side; evidently Putin sees no problem with Hezbollah fighting with Syrian government troops.
Putin blows past the reality that the Syrian government was shooting peaceful protesters before the civil war even began. While atrocities have been committed by both sides, it’s the government which has detained and tortured leaders of the opposition, and it’s the government which is responsible for the August 21st chemical attack in Damascus. To claim otherwise flies in the facts of all available evidence.
Putin cynically trumpets the role of the UN Security Council in resolving the conflict in Syria. What he conveniently ignores is the role Russia plays in ensuring that nothing of substance concerning Syria comes out of the Security Council. By using its veto, the Russians have ensured that their Syrian clients will incur nothing punitive from the UN. Of course he wants the Syria debate shuffled off to the Security Council; it’s dancing to the tune he’s playing.
Without absolute transparency, cooperation, and openness on the part of the Assad regime, Russia’s offer to help monitor the destruction of Syrian chemical weapons is doomed to failure. Is it just a stalling tactic, a Potemkin village designed to provide cover for the Syrian government? I find it difficult to feel confident about the integrity of the Russian proposal. Russia’s the largest supplier of military hardware to Syria…and Putin is proposing, with no sense of irony, to be the one in charge of destroying some of the same weapons it sold to Syria? And the international community is supposed to be OK with the idea of the fox guarding the hen house?
Putin’s talk of democratic values and international law is as laughable as it is hypocritical. Russian continues to harass and jail dissidents, pass harsh discriminatory laws directed at homosexuals, and suppress free speech and expression. Putin has no credibility when it comes to lecturing on human rights.
It would be easier to take Putin’s observations and criticisms seriously if he was walking the walk and not just talking the talk. Given the state of Russian “democracy,” Vladimir Putin has no room or reason to criticize the U.S. for anything. If his Russia was a place where freedom, tolerance, and democracy flourished, he might have some credibility in this arena. All he’s done with yesterday’s op-ed is demonstrate himself to be a self-serving hypocrite with an astonishing lack of self-awareness.
Same as he ever was.
