There are big countries and small countries, rich and poor, those with long democratic traditions and those still finding their way to democracy. Their policies differ, too. We are all different, but when we ask for the Lord’s blessings, we must not forget that God created us equal.What a fine time Putin is having, repurposing American pieties and slapping our President around!
That's the very end of the op-ed, and here's a line from the top of the column: "But we were also allies once, and defeated the Nazis together." Putin is sly enough not to be explicit, but the inference is there: Remember when the Nazis encouraged the Germans to see themselves as exceptional?
Poor Obama! Righties have been pummeling him for years for failing to manifest a belief in American exceptionalism. He throws them a sop and Putin hits him over the head.
Posts
86 comments:
Putin is doing us a favor. We need our noses rubbed in the mistake that is Obama.
I read this last night. What struck me was the lack of style or fancy expressions and embellishments. May be it read better in Russian.
And on the substance, what Chutzpah! He is telling the Nobel Peace Prize winner not to take the route of military intervention but to solve differences using diplomatic means and the UN. He IS having a grand time. Good for him (because we all did warn everyone here about Obama before he became President). It is one thing to hoodwink low information voters but another thing to play in the big leagues with real game players.
I'm certainly exceptional come income tax time. I pay plenty.
Following up on my "flaming bag of dog poop on the porch" reference, the NYT op-ed is Putin running up and ringing the doorbell again while Obama is scraping off his shoe.
I recently saw video of the handshake between Obama and Putin when the President arrived in Russia, and it went on for about ten seconds. I wondered when I saw it how hard Putin was squeezing Obama's hand. Apparently, hard enough to take the measure of the man, and find him wanting.
I think one of the commenters here said something to the effect of "What were you expecting when an affirmative action hire goes up against the former head of the Russian FSB (successor to the KGB)?" And the answer, of course, is a colossal mismatch on the order of Alabama vs. Little Sisters of the Poor.
And we have three more years of this to look forward to. By the end, we may need an electron microscope to find our incredible shrinking president.
Though Putin is odious, he is a smart, wily operator. Obama is not. This makes for dangerous times.
Our allies after Russia was allies with Hitler. Poland remembers.
It isn't so much America itself that is exceptional as it is that the idea of America allows Americans so to be.
Vlad the Putin best check himself! Saint Barry the Moral will give him another stern lecture and warning regarding the upcoming Olympic Games! If Vlad is not careful, our extraordinarysexuals will embarrass his justordinarysexuals on the international stage! Then that evil Russian will "own it!"
Didn't he read about Jesse Owens and the 1936 Games?
September 12, 2013
"It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation."
The perfect explanation for why our ancestors left Europe and came here for a new start.
American exceptionalism is not about people, it is about our government. Well, it is about what our government used to be. Rather than centralized power in the hands of an entrenched ruling class, such as you find in the rest of the world, we had a democratically elected republic where normal people held the reigns of power for a short time, then they relinquished them to their fellow citizens. That is what American exceptionalism was.
Trey
I'm certainly exceptional come income tax time. I pay plenty.
Amen Bro! April 15th is the one time of the year I wish I wasn't exceptional.
I must be suffering from memory loss. I can't recall Putin writing a similar Op Ed piece when that dumb warmongering cowboy Chimpy McHalliburton Bush was president.
This guy is a master of adding insult to injury.
Once again, The Times shows which side it's on.
The brilliant, creative, worldly sophisticates decided on 9/11 to print this, they couldn't have waited a few hours until midnight.
I am anxiously awaiting Barack Obama's Op-Ed in Pravda, telling Putin what's what.
American exceptionalism is not about our people, but our system. A republic formed out of a revolution.
Nobel Peace Prize for Vladimir Putin! For punking war-mongering Nobel Laureate Barrack Hussein Obama.
Always, Wretchard:
...No, the man known as President Obama left the building after his Syria speech. What’s left in the White House is Barry Soetoro or whatever he goes by now; a shrunken, confused husk surrounded by court jesters, second-rate ideologues and sycophants. And while it may be tempting to gloat at his reversal of fortune, the truth is that the collapse of the Presidency represents the most dangerous moment in America since the September 11, 2001 attacks.
Olympus has fallen. America’s leadership is functionally impaired in the face of a thrusting, fast-moving and possibly brilliant opponent. Of course, the fact that Putin was up against a broken reed made it easier for him. Yet however one may admire Putin’s skills it must be an admiration tempered by fear; of the kind felt by the British 8th Army in the face of Rommel; of the sort with which Gamelin regarded Guderian. Nothing can disguise the fact that Putin is the enemy and America is less than competently led in its contest against him. Something must be done to stem the tide. But by what?
As Lee Smith put it in the Weekly Standard, “Putin didn’t save Obama. He beat him. The United States is being escorted out of the Middle East.” Assad may have just won the civil war against the rebels. And the Iranian nuclear weapon is now probably unstoppable. Alan Dershowitz, that most loyal of Obama’s supporters now understands the truth: Israel is alone.
“I think the Israelis have basically lost trust in the Americans when it comes to Iran. I think this increases the likelihood that Israel will have to go to it alone. What it says to the Israelis is that the president can’t declare red lines and can’t respond to the crossing of red lines.”
He might have added that America is everywhere wide-open. Unless people are prepared to see everything go over the cliff then some means of recovery must be found. In 1940 very few people — including Winston Churchill — understood how Blitzkrieg worked. Churchill, watching in disbelief as France literally fell apart, broadcast this reassuring speech:
It would be foolish, however, to disguise the gravity of the hour. It would be still more foolish to lose heart and courage or to suppose that well-trained, well-equipped armies numbering three or four millions of men can be overcome in the space of a few weeks, or even months, by a scoop, or raid of mechanized vehicles, however formidable. We may look with confidence to the stabilization of the Front in France…
Not long after the armies “of three and four millions” capitulated. But France was not being defeated in the flesh. It was being wiped out in the mind. The Germans were moving faster than the sclerotic French high command could comprehend. Their responses were outdated before they were begun. The Blitzkrieg was inside their OODA loop. And thus France fell faster than even Churchill could imagine. And Obama is no Winston. He even sent back his bust to England as one of his first acts in office.
Putin has taken Barack Obama’s Narrative apart and handed him the smoking pieces in a bucket. Barry doesn’t even know how it happened, nor are his advisers any the wiser. Maybe it was a video. And anyway “what difference does it make?” Obama may emerge from time to time, blinking in the unaccustomed light, seeking to respond in the only ways he knows how: with a speech; as a guest on Leno; to fire a few desultory cruise missiles here or there at targets chosen not to matter; or to offer increasingly unaffordable amounts of money for “deals” that won’t last. And none of it will work.
It remains to be seen whether Washington has the institutional depth to reconstitute itself in a crisis. But reconstitute it must. The current team in the White House is broken. Change must come if there is to be hope....
Time to refresh on his "The 3 Conjectures" again. Make sure you have a tall stiff drink handy.
Once Iran gets the bomb, they might be able to hit Florida from Venzuela.
Barry wanted Star Wars and the umbrella gone.
OTOH, who needs Venezuela when you have Cuba and the Russian fleet using it as a port?
For you young'uns welcome to the boomer world of our childhood.
The Commies contained Castro, used him as their attack dog. He wanted to lob the nukes at US, they sat on him.
Now we're dealing with the Iranians.
House of War it is, are we up to it?
Post Cold War reality opened the Russian's eyes to the immense power of American propaganda over the world .
Our CIA and our Hollywood world view was totally dominating the world, both friend and foe.
So After surrendering to a Hollywood actor, the Russians have bided their time waiting for Russia's Pr story to be told too.
Obama has set Putin up to be seen as the man the world needs now. That sets up all focus to be on Russia and the EU dealing with the issue of Jerusalem, The USA is now irrelevant in that unstoppable war , which has been Rand Paul's goal too.
IMO that is what Putin is saying to the American people with the help of the propaganda leader NYT.
It has certainly been proven quite dangerous for people (sooooo many people for soooooo long) to have encouraged barack Obama to see himself as exceptional.
In fact, it is quite clear from his actual record and his demeanor that Obama's sense of his own exceptionalism far far far exceeds his actual quite minimal and non-exceptional ordinariness.
But that's probably racist.
There are big countries and small countries, rich and poor, those with long democratic traditions and those still finding their way to democracy. Their policies differ, too. We are all different, but when we ask for the Lord’s blessings, we must not forget that God created us equal."
In light of the recent discovery regarding relative testicle sizes apparently not.
American exceptionalism is not people, or government. It is our culture. By no means perfect, but actively trying to improve since the 17th century.
Examples? Fighting a civil war, half million or more dead, essentially all of them white, so that black people would no longer be slaves. Treating defeated Japan and Germany as we did after WWII, when we would have enslaved them if we had followed historical examples.
Acting as the world's policeman for the past half century.
Accepting immigrants from all over the world, and making them Americans within a generation.
Not to say that no other nation has ever done these types of things- but that in America it's expected and accepted. The world counts on us for good, and is usually correct on this. Nobody counts on Russia for good. They count on Russia for Russia.
"What a fine time Putin is having, repurposing American pieties and slapping our President around!"
No, not "our" President, he is The President, schlub that he is.
And Little Zero, having indulged his petulance over Vlad not paying due homage, is going to have 3 1/4 years of this to which he can look forward.
By then, even the most corrupt Democrat may wish they hadn't stolen the election.
Payback, it's what's for breakfast.
Also lunch and supper.
I think Putin is reading Rules for Radicals by Saul Alinsky. He's doing it quite well. Remember, this guy is a thug and probably a sociopath. While is may be entertaining to watch him smack around our lackluster president, perceived weakness is never a good thing for America.
I don't particularly thing our president has wise policies -- but at what point do we have to root for him because he's the only president we have?
Mark wrote:
Putin is doing us a favor. We need our noses rubbed in the mistake that is Obama.
not if its Putin whos rubbing out nose in it. Sorry. You sound like the liberals suggesting the same thing when they were rooting for the Insurgency in Iraq to teach Bush a lesson.
Cubanbob wrote:
I must be suffering from memory loss. I can't recall Putin writing a similar Op Ed piece when that dumb warmongering cowboy Chimpy McHalliburton Bush was president.
if he did would "conservatives" like Markbe saying it was a good thing, and that we needed our noses rubbed in shit because of Bush McHitler? by Putin? Our number one geopolitical foe?
Putin's day-job is to take care of business for the Russian Federation. He is not an American politician.
And he was a colonel in the KGB; he never was head of it.
"Exceptionalism" is a word that can have many meanings. Reagan used it in the context of America as "a shining city on the hill," but if you are into college debating, it is quite easy to twist it around to suit whatever your game is.
Also lets not forget that before Russia helped us with the nazis they also signed the Stalin Hitler Pact and only came around to our side when Hit.er stabbed them in the back.
And once the war was over went back to opposing us around the world at every turn for more than half a century.
So fuck Putin. And if you're going to say that make Putin has a point then my if get goes in your direction too. Even if you're a republican. ESPECIALLY if you're a republican.
The American people, up to December 7, 1941 were overwhelmingly (70-80%) against the US getting into another European adventure.
We wound up supporting Russia against Germany. International socialism vs national socialism. Both thoroughly odious. Both with blood dripping from their fingers. Final score, for those who see body count as important 12mm in Hitler's death camps, 20-30mm in Stalin's Gulags.
How has that worked out for us?
Are we better off because Stalin's Russia came out victorious? Or would we have been better off had Hitler's Germany won?
Truman said, in 1941: "If Russia was winning, we should give arms to Germany. If Germany was winning, we should give arms to Russia. Let them both kill as many of each other as possible" (Quoting from memory)
We, the US, certainly have much more in common with German people than we do with Russian people.
This note was brought on by Putin's comment that we were allies. I think this is an eternal mark of shame for the US. We had no business getting involved in Russia vs Germany.
John Henry
When Putin says its dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, perhaps he's making a veiled reference to Obama.
After all, Putin has just pulled a gasping, sputtering, US President out of the deep end of the pool in front of the world. This letter is Putin telling the parents not to let their son get in over his head.
Say what you will about Putin, the man has payed his dues to get where he is. Obama not so much.
Have we heard from Lena Dunham and Ezra Klein yet? I will know what to think when the wunderkinds comment! With youth comes wisdom!
Maybe Katy Perry can have a very tight dress made celebrating "smart diplomacy" by the Obama administration.
The weekyY standard wrote:
“Putin didn’t save Obama. He beat him. The United States is being escorted out of the Middle East.” Assad may have just won the civil war against the rebels. And the Iranian nuclear weapon is now probably unstoppable. Alan Dershowitz, that most loyal of Obama’s supporters now understands the truth: Israel is alone.
“I think the Israelis have basically lost trust in the Americans when it comes to Iran. I think this increases the likelihood that Israel will have to go to it alone. What it says to the Israelis is that the president can’t declare red lines and can’t respond to the crossing of red lines.”
That is an indictment of Obama, assuredly. But its also an indictment of libertarians.
@ Hagar
"On 25 July 1998, Yeltsin appointed Vladimir Putin head of the FSB (one of the successor agencies to the KGB), the position Putin occupied until August 1999."
From Putin's Wikipedia article.
Jackie Robinson, Frederick Douglass, MLK, are all pretty unexceptional.
We've heard a lot about how exceptional Obama is. Like Lincoln, FDR etc. Now, they were exceptional, but clearly, they shouldn't have been so exceptional.
Exceptionalism is something those other people have and withhold over there. Not whitey, per se, but definitely the 1%. It's the rich. The greedy. The self-interested. It's the larger group of oblivious people passing on institutionalized privilege, wisdom, and opportunity layer upon layer.
They have blissful unexceptionality and the belief in the exceptional. It's high time these folks join in a new vision for America where we will all be bound up together exceptionally well.
It's a good thing we have Vlad Putin to remind us of all this...
jr565: "if he did would "conservatives" like Markbe saying it was a good thing, and that we needed our noses rubbed in shit because of Bush McHitler? by Putin? Our number one geopolitical foe?"
Strawman.
No one is saying we "need" our noses rubbed in shit by Putin.
We are simply making note of the fact we are.
Further, we are making note that the usual suspects are all claiming, before the throngs of our low information voters, that this as a victory for obama even while the entire world watches and laughs at us.
There's a certain amount of magical thinking going on here in regards to this diplomatic effort. If Russia says that any force to hold Syria accountable if they were to renege is off the table then what president would ever agree to thrat. What other leverage would we have, and if we won't attack them if they stop cooperating, wont they know they don't have to cooperate? Maybe if we toldRussia that the only way we'd agree to such a deal is that force would be on the table and Russia had to give up its veto power over Syria would it even be possible.
But would Russia agree to THAT?
Lets say though that we were to agree to all of this. How easy is it going to be for Inspectors to even get information of where the chemicals are let alone secure them or remove them. Tis would not be a quick u der taking but one that took YEARS. A d this would be in the middle of a civil war.
And it would require us to put boots on the ground anyway. Are we not going to have to protect the Inspectors while they perform an impossible task. Right in the middle of a civil war.
And suppose the rebels do have chemical weapons. How will this deal impact THOSE weapons? Are al qada bound by this treaty?
Why are people suggesting diplomacy will handle this when the diplomatic solution is so obviously non workable. You want to talk about us getting involved in a quagmire. There's your quagmire.
Amd it serves nobody but the regime that used the chemical weapons in the first place.
Rand Paul likes to talk about all the possible ramifications of what might happen if we bombed Syria. But what about the ramifications of what might happen if we get bogged down In a ridiculous containment strategy. Will Rand Paul say such containment is none of our business and we shouldn't get involved in it either? Willl our red lines about containment be as worthless as our red lines about chemical use?
"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."
Putin hits pretty hard doesn't he?
"There are big countries and small countries, rich and poor, those with long democratic traditions and those still finding their way to democracy."
which suggests that democracy is better than non democracy to Putin. So then people may be equa in gods eyes in that they re all made up of the same chemicals and share the same biology, l, but values are not equal. And this point is made from someone who thinks that democracy is better.
Note the non democratic nations haven't quite evolved yet to the better way of doing things, but they're slowly getting there. That is expressing that democratic principles are an example of exceptionalism.
His argument is that no one should be involved in other countries civil wars. But what is he doing but involved in other countries civics waR.
AnD his entire presidency has been predicated on the argument that the reason that Russia stands alone is because Russia s role in the world is unique.in other words Russia is exceptional.
He's a complete hypocrite.
He's a racist
Yes, we need a President that is an equal to Putin in cunning, viciousness and strength.... Romney! I bet Romney would handle this whole Syria thing so differently.
jr565 said...
Cubanbob wrote:
I must be suffering from memory loss. I can't recall Putin writing a similar Op Ed piece when that dumb warmongering cowboy Chimpy McHalliburton Bush was president.
if he did would "conservatives" like Markbe saying it was a good thing, and that we needed our noses rubbed in shit because of Bush McHitler? by Putin? Our number one geopolitical foe?
9/12/13, 10:03 AM
You are missing the point. What the Markebe's say is irrelevant. We are getting our noses rubbed in shit because we allow it. And we allow it because we elected and reelected a donkey who happens to be the CiC of lions. Obama in of himself isn't the problem. The problem is that we have an electorate capable of electing an Obama and a political party that you can always count on to ultimately sandbag an American military victory-snatching defeat out of the jaws of victory. Vietnam. Iraq. Afghanistan. Is it any wonder the public isn't sold on air strikes on Syria? How is Libya turning out?
Our military forces even in their currently diminished state are so far beyond the capabilities of any potential adversary that no one in their right mind and that includes Putin is crazy enough to take us on. However our adversaries know our leadership is quite capable of putting rules-of-engagement that handicaps us to the extent that we get bogged down. Its not the enemy that bogs us down, its us doing so to ourselves.
Putin is playing like chumps because we allow ourselves to be chumps. Russia is really nothing more than an African resource rich country with nuclear weapons. That we don't take the opportunity and get serious about domestic energy production and get serious with our allies to do the same we put ourselves at the mercy of the likes of the Russians and the Arabs. Would anyone care about the Muslim world or Russia if the Western world and Japan were largely energy independent from the Arab/Muslim and Russian suppliers?
The Russians aren't our number one foe. Neither are the Arabs-Muslims-Iranians or the Chinese for that matter. Our number one foe is the Red-Green faction of our population.
Look on the bright side: Putin maybe doing us a favor although that certainly isn't his intention. The Russians need to keep Syria intact for various reasons. A Syria that dissolves like the former Yugoslavia can be a very destabilizing catalyst in the Middle East and beyond. Putin understands this. Russia can't afford that. That is probably why among other reasons Putin is glad the US appears to preemptively bugging out of Syria at this time.
Putin is the new hero of the right now? Perhaps he can convince someone he is really American, that he was secretly born here, and is eligible to run for office!
Seeing Red wrote:
It would be foolish, however, to disguise the gravity of the hour. It would be still more foolish to lose heart and courage or to suppose that well-trained, well-equipped armies numbering three or four millions of men can be overcome in the space of a few weeks, or even months, by a scoop, or raid of mechanized vehicles, however formidable. We may look with confidence to the stabilization of the Front in France…
Not long after the armies “of three and four millions” capitulated. But France was not being defeated in the flesh. It was being wiped out in the mind. The Germans were moving faster than the sclerotic French high command could comprehend. Their responses were outdated before they were begun. The Blitzkrieg was inside their OODA loop. And thus France fell faster than even Churchill could imagine. And Obama is no Winston. He even sent back his bust to England as one of his first acts in office.
who ultimately won that war though? the Germans? You l Talking about germany being inside France's OODA loop and Churchill talking "the gravity of the hour" implies an immediate situation, but not the course of history. Wasn't Churchill ultimately right though in how to deal with a germany, even if France fell at that hour? So, if Germany was in France's or our OODA loop, the best course of action wasn't to give up, or adopt policies that allowGermany to get further. I to our OODA loop in the next hour. just because France fell before the blitzkrieg did that mean that we should fall too, or that this must be the course of action going forward? That because Germany's blitzkrieg was effective once that it must be effective always? But isn't that kind of what the people arguing that Russia is inside our OODA loop now arguing? So what if Russia has the upper hand now? f it does its because Obama has been acting the way he's been acting. When the way to stop giving the Russians the upper hand is to stop giving the Russians the upper hand. And its not that complicated.
West Texas Intermediate Crude said...
American exceptionalism is not people, or government. It is our culture. By no means perfect, but actively trying to improve since the 17th century.
(Our 300+ black run cities, collapsing into ruinous decay, crime, bankruptcy, and general squalor contradict the "active improvement. Same with the forces that have ruined US industry and nearly bankrupted the whole nation.
PS - The rest of the world sees our rotting schools, our bridges decayed such that 2/3rds are now rated as structually unsound, our nasty dirty airports as "African-level" disgraces. )
Examples? Fighting a civil war, half million or more dead, essentially all of them white, so that black people would no longer be slaves.
(Being the only country other than Haiti stupid enough to have a mass slaughter over it is nothing to brag about. Other nations lacking America's huge Constitutional flaws ended it peacefully and through legislation.)
Treating defeated Japan and Germany as we did after WWII, when we would have enslaved them if we had followed historical examples.
(Cold War Realpolitiks. Had we treated them as bad as Morgenthau and others wanted or how we behaved after WWI and in Southern Reconstruction - the populace of Germany and Japan would have become ferociously committed communists.)
Acting as the world's policeman for the past half century.
Yes, and the gratitude for being the Enforcer of the American Way is well known. From all the statues of the Hero US soldiers built through goodwill in those "policed lands".. The difficulty of any American visiting places like Vietnam, Haiti, Bosnia, Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan to be free of the constant gratitude of the locals we showed the right way to go, with bombings and firepower and "nation-building" largess. Not to mention the gratitude of those Europeans, Asians, Latin Americans that sat back for the last 70 years and watched the US blow its treasure and shed its blood.)
Accepting immigrants from all over the world, and making them Americans within a generation.
Not to say that no other nation has ever done these types of things- but that in America it's expected and accepted. (For the most part, the rest of the world watched with wonder as powerful American Ruling Elites for the last 50 years opened our Borders to a mass flood of the most unskilled, parasitic, and violent dregs of the 3rd world. In return for new voters and destruction of wages and jobs for Americans. Other nations saw it as Americas slow national suicide. That and the archaic US constitution giving "Insta-Citizenship" to the dregs pouring into the USA. At least the Euros stopped laughing when their own American Way-inspired imported dregs from Africa and Muslim lands started with the city burnings and gang rapes of Belgians and Swedes and whole cities full of angry brown skinned folks on the dole and breeding for a demographic takeover.)
The world counts on us for good, and is usually correct on this. No, the rest of the world counts on America being unable to resist sticking it's nose into everybody's business as the wastrel, indebted "Global Hegemon"...and see the best outcome is the adroit manipulation of America to give them a free ride on "globalpolicing" and a place they can dump their unwanted refuse.)
Nobody counts on Russia for good. They count on Russia for Russia.
(Nobody sees Russia or China as stupid.)
Obama writing an Op-Ed piece for Pravda?
Won't happen: he doesn't have a competent Russian speaker anywhere on his staff. Remember Hillary's famous "Reset" gaffe?
Hey, hasn't Syria denied up till now that it even HAD chemical weapons! Now suddenly though Assad I guess is finally obliquely admitting that he was lying all,along, since of course he's saying that Assad will turn over his chemical weapons to the I ternstional commipunity if we don't bomb them. "It was the rebels! They took the weapons that I always said I never had, and they targeted all the regions that my army is not."
But yet, I'm sure Robert Cooke and Cedarford would argue that it was the Ameircans acting like war mothers for suggesting that Syria had chemical weapons in the first place.
Back when we were dealing with Iraq and its weapons programmes we were also saying that Syria had chemical weapons.
And Syria said:
"Of course Syria has no chemical weapons. They (Americans) have been talking for years about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. But so far, the presence of these weapons has not been confirmed."
"I would like to say that there are biological, chemical and nuclear weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East region. They are in Israel, not in Syria,"
Of course. Of course. Of course. The anti war crowd has been saying that the warmongers have been lying all allong, and yet as soon as the dictator faces war he says he will turn over his programs (with conditions of course). Why does the anti war crowd think they can get away with supporting outright lies in defense of horrible dictators and that no one will even notice the implications.
Robert cook gets on these boards and defends the regime. It was the rebels. They can't prove that the Assad regime gassed its people. Robert cook said we lied when the question was if it had its weapons at all!
The goal posts are Always moved and its always the US that are the liars, and never the dictators that are gassing their people.
If Syria didnt have chemical weapons would we be threatening to wage war on it? So then who's fault is it if the war ongers want to bomb Syria (because they have and use their chemical weapons)? Why isn't it Syria's.
And I'll note the only solution that seems to get Syria to even acknowledge that it has chemical weapons after all is the threat of war.not diplomacy. Not the peaceniks saying that the neocons are mean or the Cedarfords saying that the neocons are in the employ of THE JEWS.
Syria denies chemical weapons
Putin is doing the job of an American President for us. He is speaking in our own all men are created equal truth to expose the empty posturing of an inept Aristocracy of Affirmative Action King Obama, and his Courtiors the Baron and Baroness Clinton and Sir John Kerry.
As noted on Instapundit: What's the chance Putin will next tell us the truth about Benghazi's connection to the AlQaeda army in Syria that King Obama has been secretly supporting?
Tom,
There is no point at which I will support this president's policies. Not one of his policies will strengthen America. Not economically. Not morally or ethically. Not internationally.
Given that position, why would I ever decide otherwise?
Pm317 wrote:
What chutzpah!He is telling the Nobel Peace Prize winner not to take the route of military intervention but to solve differences using diplomatic means and the UN
its worse than that considering it was Russia arming the Assad regime against the rebels in the first place..
We are somehow wrong in getting involved in another countries civil war. But Russia can pick sides, arm one side against another and then veto us if we say we need to deal with that regime.
Perkies!
American exceptionalism is derived from a national charter which recognizes an individual's intrinsic value and the unalienable rights which it confers, among which are the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and a constitution which establishes and enforces those rights as legal benefits. It is not inherent to an individual by virtue of their citizenship, but is ascribed to the character of those individuals who act in accordance to the founding principles.
God may have created us equal, but you become much less so when you gas civilians, strap bombs to children, murder religious minorities, and treat women like cattle and/or concubines. Same goes for those that sponsor and equip those people.
If Obama was not so deeply steeped in moral relativity, this would be any easy one to smack back up the middle.
American Exceptionalism died an exceptionally fast death when exceptionally delusional voters re-elected an exceptionally incompetent man to lead the country from the exceptionally biased journolista Candy's behind.
Pootin makes Napoleon look tall. He's got all the classical tells of a macho man on the down-low. No wonder his antics impress teabagging chickenhawks... not that there is anything wrong with that.
Is Mr. Nipples and Snakes seriously implying that he hasn't always seen himself as exceptional?
Still, freaking anything to get us not to go into Syria.
Ah John Henry; we actually got into the European part of WW II when Hitler declared war on the USA. I know that just because you're invited to a war doesn't mean that you have to come--not when you've got the Atlantic between you and Nazi Germany. Hitler was giving the Japanese an "attaboy" from the European sidelines immediately after Pearl Harbor.
Still while FDR--an exceptional politician, unlike the current Boy Wonder In The White House--wanted to get the United States into the European war, he could not have done so but for the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor--followed by Hitler's declaration of war on the US. Actually Hitler was keeping a promise among the Tripartite group of Japan/Italy/Germany. When Japan got all impetuous and made that ill advised attack on Pearl Harbor, old Adolf had to go along.
After I saw the Putin photo at the end of this post, I immediately thought: Forget this debate. Let's stick boxing gloves on the two of them and toss them into the ring. Now THAT would be something to see.
America. An exceptional country currently run by an unexceptional man.
Obama will have to satisfy his bloodlust with the sacrificial rites that too many Americans hold dear. The people with voices to protest and arms to resist will not be such easy victims.
Anyway, democracy is not the goal. It can't be. Neither a tyranny of the minority nor a majority are desirable. American exceptionalism was established, if perhaps not realized, at its founding. America is not a democracy and should never devolve into an abusive regime.
If the underlying issue was not so serious, this would be hilarious.
Putin is largely mocking Obama. The vast majority of gullible NY Times comments seem to agree with Putin, without realizing the mockery.
Ann is right that Obama threw in exceptionalism as a SOP and here Putin swats it away citing the principles of Thomas Jefferson and God.
Putin has a very adept and knowledgable American advisor/writer. No one is noticing, but he also mocks Obama on the "hope" crap: "we must work together to keep this hope alive . . ."
I've reluctantly concluded that Putin protecting Assad and playing Obama may be a good thing. The Syrian rebels are awful. An Assad victory may preserve stability. And I think anything that keeps Obama from doing anything has some value. Obama was headed for disaster with Congress and then further disaster with whatever he did next.
Inga, Howard and the rest have real reading comprehension problems, so let's clarify:
The very dark humor that we teabagging chickenhawks glean from the whole situation is due entirely to the fact that our bootless and facile president has put himself - and our country - in the pitiable position where Vladya can smack him, and by extenion us, down.
Both men are at their root vain, odious and devious. It's just that where Obama's vain, odious, devious, and quite plainly now, stupid, Putin's vain, odious, devious, and quite plainly smart. Sad, and dangerous, but undeniable.
Perhaps Mr. Putin has a career ahead in US politics. President maybe? His is every bit as natural born American as the Kenyan Wonder.
"God created us as equals, but once out of the womb, he starts playing favorites."
Vic Mackey
Unknown wrote:
God may have created us equal, but you become much less so when you gas civilians, strap bombs to children, murder religious minorities, and treat women like cattle and/or concubines. Same goes for those that sponsor and equip those people.
If Obama was not so deeply steeped in moral relativity, this would be any easy one to smack back up the middle.
moral relativity? Obama? When he's the one saying that Syria should pay for gassing the population with chemical weapons? wouldn't that be the people making the argument that what happens there is none of our business?
"Robert cook gets on these boards and defends the regime. It was the rebels. They can't prove that the Assad regime gassed its people. Robert cook said we lied when the question was if it had its weapons at all!"
jr565, I can't figure out if you really believe everything you post and are so sloppy in your reading comprehension, or whether you intentionally misrepresent the arguments of others.
Nowhere do I defend the Assad regime, and neither did I assert the rebels set off the chemical weapons. I only point out that our government has not proved the Assad government set off the weapons (or even provided evidence), and there are suggestions by various sources that the rebels may have set them off, either on purpose or simply by accident. The claim by the administration in response to Putin's NYTimes op-ed that no one denies the guilt of the Assad regime or suggests the rebels may be responsible is a blunt lie.
In discussing justifications for war, one must deal in the facts as they are known, and always remain conscious of how little we may actually know.
Again, given how easily we were conned by the Bush administration only 10 years ago, can we still be so heedless of even our recent past?
C4-
I agree with much of what you wrote in response to my post on American Exceptionalism. Assuming arguendo that your points are all accurate, it does not change my position.
I did not say that the USA is Exceptional and particularly good at it, only that the USA is Exceptional. We do things that few if any other nations in the history of civilization have done, and we have been recognized for it. I agree with your point that much of what we do today is suicidal (e.g, allow essentially free immigration).
Some of your points are just not so- eastern Europeans did not become ferociously committed Communists while being abused for decades by the USSR- why would West Germans or Japanese do that if we had abused them similarly? While it is true that American intervention often results in counterproductive meddling, it is common for our lack of intervention to be viewed resentfully as failure to act as expected and hoped for (e.g., present day Egypt, S Vietnam in the 70s).
And, yes, I'll take American Muslims over Swedish or French Muslims any day. You and I agree that PC is a form of suicide by stupidity, but it would not take a major adjustment to take appropriate action against the Maj Hasans and similar who have infiltrated us- they could be weeded out and dealt with appropriately if we just pulled our collective heads our of our a$$es and paid attention to what is crossing our borders and infiltrated our institutions.
Clyde,
"On 25 July 1998, Yeltsin appointed Vladimir Putin head of the FSB (one of the successor agencies to the KGB), the position Putin occupied until August 1999."
"one of the successor agencies to the KGB" can be read as another of the name changes the Cheka has frequently gone through in the past, but I expect that with the fall of the Soviet Union, Boris Yeltsin would have taken care to have the agency broken up and dispersed; I know I would have.
And a piece of the old KGB, in 1999called the FSB, would not have been the same as the whole bad old KGB.
I would like to know what part(s) of the KGB became the FSB. Do you know?
Birkel wrote:
There is no point at which I will support this president's policies. Not one of his policies will strengthen America. Not economically. Not morally or ethically. Not internationally.
but that's a stupid argument. Because what if he changed his policies to ones you would normally favor? hen all of a sudden you are against those policies?
this might actually explain why those who supported Bush's war policies are suddenly turning into anti war libertarians. But its really dumb.
Obama ran like an anti war candidate, but then coopts Bush's war policies. Meaning Bush was right all along. Obama is a hypocrite but does that mean we have to be hypocrites because he's suddenly on our side?
I take it as a victory that it took the threat of war to get Syria to admit that it had chemical weapons all along. The people at the time who said it were called warmongers by the usual crowd. But now that Obama is faced with tht reality and acts accordingly, suddenly Syria having and using chemical weapons is not even a foreign policy concern to former pro defense hawks. Who were previously the ones screaming about how Syria having chemical weapons was something to scream about.
As a postscript to my comment at 4:27pm, it may be true that the Assad government did, in fact, set off the chemical weapons. However, we have seen no evidence to support, much less prove, that accusation. If the government is so ardent to win support for their war, one would think they are withholding whatever they claim to have because it either does not exist or is so flimsy that it does not support their claims.
Even if it is true the Assad government set off the weapons, it does not suffice to justify our starting a war with Syria.
I read on the Fox site an interesting observation that Putin is using the old Soviet Union/KGB playbook of throwing out leftist bromides to the gullible left in America, while promoting its own interests. It seems right. Putin is using tactics he learned in the 1970's with the KGB.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/09/12/putin-makes-obama-pay-high-price-for-syria-escape/
JR, cool down. It's not like I like it that Putin is pimp-slapping our President, or that the New York Times is providing the platform. But these things have happened, and if there's any upside it may be in having some squishes in the middle finding a moment of clarity in this mess.
Inga said...
"Yes, we need a President that is an equal to Putin in cunning, viciousness and strength.... Romney! I bet Romney would handle this whole Syria thing so differently." Yes, Inga I think you are right. Romney at least recognized that Putin is a dangerous character. Obama made a joke of it. At least Romney is smarter than Putin, so we wouldn't be at a disadvantage, as we are now. And buffoon John Kerry wouldn't be Sec State.
Before this is all over, lefties will be blaming Bush for causing them to vote for Obama.
I think one of the commenters here said something to the effect of "What were you expecting when an affirmative action hire goes up against the former head of the Russian FSB (successor to the KGB)?"
That would be me. May God help us.
I don't think of the affirmative action aspect of President Obama very often, because he is an impressive guy. But it is true that he led a life of favoratism (after early childhood) based on affirmative action and, combined with his own ability, catapalted him to president. So now we have as president a guy who benefited from affirmative action and now is against a former KGB guy. It does provide some cause for concern. He has to stand entirely on his own against Putin. But would the AA beneficiary always be weaker than a Putin? Would Romney, the child of privilege, necessarily be any better? Or, for that metter, the fast talking slick Willie, who earned his way up, warts and all?
Who would you pick to battle Putin __ Obama, Clinton or Romney? Not Obama. Probably Romney, but not with great confidence.
There's no way the right could have supported Obama because what did Obama want? Support for an unbelievably-small-but-larger-than-a-pinprick lesson carefully calibrated to have no effect except to prevent Iran from nuking Israel by a strike which would not affect Assad in any way and that will show them all. Meaning? what?
And the left did not support him either.
And the American public was totally opposed.
But the man has made this into a thing all about him again. Come on, the republic is not going to fail because the world begins to see Obama as he is. America is bigger than one man.
And anyhow nothing can happen in this election cycle unless Washington liberals see the truth. They have the Senate and the Presidency just the way the Detroit City Council had Detroit. Yes, they have just "detroited" our foreign policy. Don't keep staring at the wreck. Go back to Tara.
How's that go?
"All men were created equal,
But differ greatly in the sequel."
New conditions about when Syria will start complying:
“When we see the United States really wants stability in our region and stops threatening, striving to attack, and also ceases arms deliveries to terrorists, then we will believe that the necessary processes can be finalized,”
no talk of Russia stopping to arm the regime, no talk about how force is off the able. No brokering the idea that Russia has to give up its veto.
In short, the diplomatic solution went nowhere. It didnt help of cours that Putin had to get his digs in the day before Keery had a diplomatic mission in Russia.
Not even this president is stupid enough to fall for this bogus proposal (I hope). So I guess the diplomatic solution is dead.
Is the solution for war back on the able or is Obama going to bury dealing with the Assad regime under the bus. If so, he will go down as the worst foreign policy leader.mand will make George Bush look like George Washinton. And Carter like Ronald Reagan.
Kansas City, the interesting thing is that you don't offer the one option that most Americans (even left-wing Democrats in their heart of hearts) would pick. Who would Americans prefer to see go up against Putin on behalf of America: Obama, Clinton, or Romney? None of the above: we pick George W. Bush.
He wasn't the most articulate of Presidents, but he loved America, had a pair, refused to lose, and could tell when the other guy was trying to bluff pocket 2's like they were pocket King's.
Put another way, Obama is the President who sat down with the Joint Chiefs of Staff on Afghanistan and said, "I don't hear an exit strategy." Dubya is the President who sat down with the Joint Chiefs on Iraq and said, "Boys, we're not playing for a tie."
History will judge them both. I've got a hunch how she'll come down (despite the best efforts of leftist historians).
All I know is I seriously doubt Romney would be foolish enough to lay down a red line without thinking through what that meant and what it means to lose prestige if he backed down. His success in the business world tells me he fully understands the danger of being caught in a bluff. We've seen 5 years of how Obama operates. He is very inexperienced and it will cost our country dearly.
"Once Iran gets the bomb, they might be able to hit Florida from Venzuela."
After the death of Chavez I was hoping the Tom Clancyite masturbatory fantasies of Iran converting Venezuela to radical Islam and bringing about the end of the world would fade away. No such luck, since I presupposed a semblance of sense from the peddlars.
"Or would we have been better off had Hitler's Germany won?"
What a terrifyingly ignorant and pernicious question.
"Obama is the President who sat down with the Joint Chiefs of Staff on Afghanistan and said, 'I don't hear an exit strategy.' Dubya is the President who sat down with the Joint Chiefs on Iraq and said, 'Boys, we're not playing for a tie.'"
Hero worship and belief in comic book or action movie scenarios may be understandable or even cute in a 10 year old, but to display such naivete as an adult is unseemly, to say the least.
George Bush was not John Wayne or Bruce Willis and Omama is not whoever their opposite may be. They are mere functionaries serving the interests of the military-industrial-financial state.
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