Putin

They Lied with Their Boots On

Posted Wed, 09/03/2008 - 10:55 by Jeff Huber

originally posted 2008-09-03 03:50:30 - bumped - cho

Ideology—that is what gives evildoing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination. --Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago
Vladimir Putin, who promoted himself from being Russia's president to being Russia's Dick Cheney, says America's Dick Cheney orchestrated the Russia-Georgia conflict to benefit the presidential bid of the neoconservatives' next white hope, John McCain. I've googled high and low and can't find a whisper of denial of Putin's accusations from our Dick Cheney or any of his henchmen. Maybe the Cheney Gang has given up bothering to deny anything. Maybe they realize that by now, any time it's the word of Russia's Dick Cheney—or for that matter anybody else's Dick Cheney—and our Dick Cheney, the world population makes the safe assumption that our Dick Cheney is lying. Or it could be that they're simply so used to telling earth shattering untruths and getting away with it that they don't even bother to tell them any more.

Hegemon Hold "Em

Posted Mon, 08/25/2008 - 08:30 by Jeff Huber
It is a senseless policy, apparently meant to intimidate Russia, but why? For the sake of perpetuating international tension so as to strengthen the forces that with Cheney and Bush have been promoting constitutionally unaccountable executive rule in the United States?" William Pfaff, August 19, 2008.
The art of analyzing international affairs is somewhat like discovering new planets. The astronomer notes the behaviors of observable objects; when those objects behave in a manner that other observable phenomena can't explain, the astronomer begins hypothesizing what unseen phenomena may be present whose gravity could have produced an otherwise irrational event. So it is with the ongoing monkeyshines between Russia and the Borscht Republic of Georgia. Assuming that Georgia is a "rational actor," it doesn’t make sense for it to have invited invasion from Russia by launching an offensive into South Ossetia.

Warm Beer and Cold War

Posted Fri, 08/22/2008 - 06:20 by Jeff Huber
When young Mr. Bush told Vladimir Putin in June 2007 that "The Cold War is over," we couldn't have gotten more surefire confirmation that the Cold War was, in fact, alive and kicking. The recent monkey business in Georgia has been in the pipeline since at least then, probably since much earlier. Noam Chomsky used the term "Cold War II" in August 2007. I first mentioned it in February of that year (so there, Chomsky, you snoozer). Stephen F. Cohen referred to a "new cold war" in a June 2006 article for The Nation. It's eminently arguable that President Bill Clinton started the second Cold War when he intervened in Kosovo in part to distract the world from his pants-capades. It has been the Bush administration, though, that has managed to escalate the second cold war by losing the first one retroactively.

The Irony Curtain

Posted Thu, 08/14/2008 - 04:42 by Jeff Huber
Vladimir Putin has gone from being Russia's president to being Russia's Dick Cheney. As Prime Minister, he still has all the real power but has shed the accountability that goes with being the head of state. So while Putin is undoubtedly the dastard who decided to put the clobber on Georgia, the guy who has to take criticism for it is Putin's political Pinocchio President Dmitry Medvedev. Being the man in the hot seat sort of makes Medvedev Russia's George W. Bush, except that Bush has never really been held responsible for anything. (Bush is only sixty-something and he's only been on the job for seven and a half years, what do you want?)