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| Presidents Obama & Putin |
Well the weekend is coming up and there's been a lot of news coming out about Syria, some of it bad and some of the news is good. However last night President Vladimir Putin of Russia wrote a opinion piece or Op-Ed in the New York Times (NYT) which was published last night on the NYT website. I heard about it on Twitter last night and I was reading some of the tweets from some of the people that I was following and I honestly did not understand the reaction towards President Putin's Op-Ed, most of the people I follow are progressives of course and like I said I don't understand the reaction, the reason why is because progressives start to attack Putin and don't get me wrong all of the attacks were valid, however I could be wrong and please let me know if I am but it seemed like to me that no one really read his piece and just started to criticize him. Like I said all of the attacks were valid but after reading Putin's Op-Ed I agree with most of what he had to say. Before I give my reasons on why I agree with President Putin, I'm going to talk about why I think President Putin motivation was when he wrote his Op-Ed. I don't think that President Putin is worried about American interests or the American people, hell I don't even think he cares about his own people. The reason why I think that President Putin wrote his Op-Ed is because he's worried about his own government's interests and he's worried about the United States possibly starting World War III over these chemical weapons. That's the Russian President main motivation.
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| Presidents Assad & Putin |
Now the first point that Putin made which I agree with is that "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. 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."This is a good point of Putin because most counties of the world do not agree with the action to bomb Syria, and if the United States bombs Syria without UN authorization, then we would lose even more credibility with the rest of the world, and we can't afford that at this point because thanks to President Bush we lost most of our credibility with the rest of the world. Also if we do attack Syria without the support of the rest of the world, then if Syria retaliates then this could lead to World War III and nobody wants that.
Another point that Putin made was "It is alarming that military intervention in internal conflicts in foreign countries has become commonplace for the United States. Is it in America's long-term interest? I doubt it. Millions around the world increasingly see America not as a model of democracy but as relying solely on brute force, cobbling coalitions together under the slogan “you're either with us or against us.” Putin is right because as a American I'm alarmed that the United States always think that military intervention is always the answer and no that is not in our best interests right now, and that's going to cost us more and more money which we don't have by the way because we won't raise taxes on the top 1% or the corporations. I'm glad that President Obama is allowing the Russians to try and get the Chemical Weapons from the Syrians that way the government would not have bomb Syria, because if Mitt Romney would've became President then we would have boots on the ground in Syria right now which would be a awful decision.
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| US forces in Iraq |
Putin also talked about American intervention in recent history "But force has proved ineffective and pointless. Afghanistan is reeling, and no one can say what will happen after international forces withdraw. Libya is divided into tribes and clans. In Iraq the civil war continues, with dozens killed each day. In the United States, many draw an analogy between Iraq and Syria, and ask why their government would want to repeat recent mistakes. I do agree that force is ineffective and pointless we started two wars and Afghanistan and in Iraq and more than a decade later neither of those counties are not stable and Iraq has slipped into civil war, so the United States policy of democracy by force did not work and it's a failure, and in my opinion we can't force feed democracy to the rest of the world, to me democracy has to manifest organically and not by force by another government, like in Egypt for example when they removed Mubarak from power a few years ago. It was organic that's my point but I digress.
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| Russian President Vladimir Putin |
Putin also said that "We must stop using the language of force and return to the path of civilized diplomatic and political settlement." He's 100% right about that and I would hope that the Syrian's would hand over their Chemical Weapons to the Russians because I've always been anti-war and I don't want to keep using the military in order to fix the internal problems of other countries, the United States should stay out of Syria and other countries internal problems. The last point that I would like to make is that I understand the frustration of progressives with President Putin, Putin has used the politics of fear in order to gain a firm hold on his power in Russia, he's blamed gay people for all of Russia's problems and it's worked unfortunately. Reminds me of what Hitler did with the Jewish people which lead to World War II but I digress, the final point that I'm trying to make is that Putin is not the ideal leader for Russia we can all agree to that, but we should not close our minds to what he has to say just because he's Vladimir Putin President of Russia, we as progressive should not be closed minded no matter who's making good points we need to listen and learn.
President Putin's Op-Ed in the NYT:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/12/opinion/putin-plea-for-caution-from-russia-on-syria.html
Update: I just came across a story from Al-Jazeera America that says that "Assad told Russia's state Rossiya 24 news channel in an interview that is set to be broadcast fully later Thursday that "Syria is transferring chemical weapons under international control because of Russia." He added that "the U.S. threats hadn't influenced" his government's decision." This is a good development because like I said many times I'm against any bombing action in Syria and I don't care what reasons the Syrians have for handing over their chemical weapons, as long as they do it that is what matters to me.
Al-Jazeera America link:
http://live.america.aljazeera.com/Event/Syrias_War/88723083
Another point that Putin made was "It is alarming that military intervention in internal conflicts in foreign countries has become commonplace for the United States. Is it in America's long-term interest? I doubt it. Millions around the world increasingly see America not as a model of democracy but as relying solely on brute force, cobbling coalitions together under the slogan “you're either with us or against us.” Putin is right because as a American I'm alarmed that the United States always think that military intervention is always the answer and no that is not in our best interests right now, and that's going to cost us more and more money which we don't have by the way because we won't raise taxes on the top 1% or the corporations. I'm glad that President Obama is allowing the Russians to try and get the Chemical Weapons from the Syrians that way the government would not have bomb Syria, because if Mitt Romney would've became President then we would have boots on the ground in Syria right now which would be a awful decision. 
