You Americans want to remove my ally, the Syrian leader Bashar Al-Assad. To borrow a phrase from your John F. Kennedy, Assad may be a son-of-a-bitch, but he’smy son-of-a-bitch.
So if you want to destroy him, what are you going to give me in return? If your answer is, “We will give you nothing,” well, why would I ever agree to that? That’s not negotiation, that’s dictation; it’s a return to the bad Yeltsin days, when Holy Mother Russia was pushed into the mud like a used whore.
Do I think that Assad did it? Gassed those people? I don’t know; I’ve never asked him. He’s certainly capable of it, and yet only the Americans think that the case against Assad is a “slam dunk.” Everyone else agrees that the case is murky. Everyone else follows the first rule of intelligence-gathering: Consider the source--namely, the pro-rebel media. In this instance, the rebels were losing, and then they got “gassed”--and now Uncle Sam is rushing to their side. How convenient.
The Romans, who knew something about both imperialism and trickery, always asked, cui bono--who benefits? Well, the beneficiaries in this episode are the rebels--also known as Al Qaeda. Way to go, Americans!
Yet could this evidence against the rebels all be Russian disinformation? Hey, we’re good, but not that good.
Meanwhile, go ahead: Look for this information in your mainstream American media--your so-called “free press.” You can barely find it. Yankee lapdog reporters will cover everything that Obama says, and everything that John McCain says, but they won’t send reporters to warzones to go and actually figure out what happened.
Nor will American “presstitutes” remind their people of their own country’s history of helping the Iraqis use poison gas, all the time, in the 80s.
Yes, American reporters are sheep. They try to figure out what Obama wants them to write, and then they write it. Or if Obama doesn’t have a clear line on some topic--which is often--they look over the shoulder of the reporter next to them and copy that. Like I said, sheep.
The result is a herd mentality, showing no understanding of what true necessity truly looks like.
So in my time, I can hardly get worked up over Assad using poison gas--if he did. Dead is dead, I say. In any case, Assad is adhering to the first rule of a leader: Stay in power. And so you do what it takes.
In fact, I’m not against gas warfare; I’m
for gas warfare, if that’s what it takes. For example, I would love to gas the Chechens--all 1.2 million of them. They are like cockroaches, murderous Muslim cockroaches, and if the Chechens had done to Americans
what they have done to Russians, maybe the US public would want to join with us. The Chechens deserve to be fumigated.
In addition, there are another billion or more Muslims to the south of Russia--and a lot of them are trouble, too. Indeed, Russia has been fighting Muslims all across Central Asia for centuries. It’s not easy.
But the American leaders don’t seem to understand any of this. They are lost in their silly theories about liberation, human rights--all that nonsense. They don’t see that the struggle with radical Islam is a war, pure and simple. It’s a war that should unite all the civilized countries of the world. I didn’t say “democratic,” I said “civilized.”
One Western journalist who at least begins to understand where I’m coming from is
The New York Times’
Steven Lee Myers. In his report of August 28, Myers accurately describes the Putin view of what’s been going on in the Middle East:
“In his view, the United States and its partners have unleashed the forces of extremism in country after country in the Middle East by forcing or advocating change in leadership — from Iraq to Libya, Egypt to Syria.”
That’s right. Over the last 15 years, from Clinton to Bush 43 to Obama, America has stirred up all the hornet-nests in the Middle East. For the most part, those angry hornets are far away from the US, but those insects are on Russia’s southern border--starting with those lousy Chechens.
And it’s not just the Americans stirring things up; it’s flunky-countries, too. It still kills me to think back to what British Prime Minister
Tony Blair said just a few weeks after 9-11. In a speech that made the Americans swoon, Blair chose to regard all the coming wars as a great opportunity for international do-gooding.
After talking up the importance of “freedom,” Blair cited all needy peoples of the Muslim world and declared, “They, too, are our cause.” What kind of bull is that? Radical Muslims kill you, and so you want to go help them? Put them on welfare? America put its blacks on welfare, and were they grateful? Did they become less violent? Yet in Blair’s mind, these same Muslims were supposed to be grateful for all this “help.” That was the theory.
Then Blair concluded with these lines:
“This is a moment to seize. The kaleidoscope has been shaken. The pieces are in flux. Soon they will settle again. Before they do, let us re-order this world around us.”
And of course, that’s what Blair and Bush did--they reordered the Muslim world. But not in a good way. They made it much worse!
Look, I’m a conservative. I have my imperial ambitions, to be sure, but the last thing I want to do is send all the pieces of the world-kaleidoscope fluxing around. We’ve had enough gratuitous messing things up in our own history, whether by Ivan the Terrible or Comrade Stalin. I want order--Russian Orthodox order.
So I’ve been predicting, all along, that the Bush-Blair crusade wouldn’t work--and I’ve been right, all along. A
Reuters reporter quoted me as saying on September 1:
“We need to remember what's happened in the last decade, the number of times the United States has initiated armed conflicts in various parts of the world. Has it solved a single problem?”
And the answer, of course, is “no.” The US made things worse. Today, look at Syria.
Indeed, by my count, the US has led six major interventions in the Muslim Asia and Africa over the last 30 years: Reagan in Lebanon, Bush 41 and Clinton in Somalia, Bush 43 in Afghanistan and Iraq, and Obama in Libya and Egypt. None of them have worked out well. And so now, Syria!
Needless to say, I’m happy to see the Americans make fools of themselves once again. Anything that weakens Uncle Sam helps Mother Russia.
Yet even so, after all this, I could be persuaded to make a deal with Obama on Syria. Other US presidents have done just that; they have gone over the heads of the crummy little countries they were fighting in some benighted corner of the world, and reached a war-ending agreement with us Russians.
That’s what Nixon did with Brezhnev in May 1972, as Vietnam was still raging. He said, in effect,
I need to get out of this stupid war, but I must look tough so I get re-elected. So you Russians, pretty please, look the other way while I bomb the crap out of the North Vietnamese. So the US can stand tall on its way out of Vietnam, secure a“decent interval,” and not obviously lose our honor. And then we’ll owe you one.
Brezhnev went along, Nixon bombed and then got out, and the result was “detente,” a notable warming of US-Soviet relations in the 1970s.
So that’s the kind of deal that Obama could make with me today on Syria. Coincidentally, he’s coming this week to St. Petersburg for the G-20 Summit; we could easily peel off some time and figure out how to solve the Syria question.
Yet once again, Obama would have to give me something in return. What would it be? A free rein in Chechyna? A blind eye toward the incremental reclaiming of lost Soviet territories, back into the Russian Motherland? Or just a simple bribe? Who knows. I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.
But that rendezvous at the bridge almost certainly won’t happen, because Obama doesn’t seem to think he needs me for anything.
Indeed, he is going out of his way to stick his finger in my eye: Just on Monday, we learned that the President is going to be meeting with
“gay” groups while in Russia, as a not-so-subtle statement against recent Russia’s anti-homosexuality crackdown. He is meeting with my enemies! Right in my own country! I don’t do that to him. I don’t come to America to meet with, say, the National Rifle Association.
Yes, Obama would rather cultivate the worldwide “gay” constituency than work with me to solve Syria. The Americans still think they can have it all: They think they can clobber Assad in Damascus, snub me here in Russia, and pander to their liberal sexual constituencies.
In other words, they get everything, and we get nothing. The Americans have had it so good for so long that it just doesn’t occur to them that they might have to make some tradeoffs.
We Russians know about tradeoffs. Back during the Great Patriotic War, in ’42, the Nazis were besieging both Leningrad and Stalingrad. The Red Army had to manage its resources: Do we seek to relieve Leningrad in the north and keep a million people from starving, or do we relieve Stalingrad in the south and keep the Hitlerites from capturing our oil resources? We did the latter, of course, and not only did we save the Hero City of Stalingrad, but we wiped out the entire German Sixth Army.
So yes, it was a tough tradeoff, the kind you have to make when you need to win. Hundreds of thousands in Leningrad died--including my uncle--but the tide of the war was shifted, and the USSR was saved.
Today, of course, I will make it my business to see to it that Obama gets none of what he wants. I will help Assad, I will subdue the homosexuals here in Russia, and I will be still be in power when Obama is laughed off the world stage.
Yet while I will savor the prospect of humiliating Obama, I still lament the lost opportunity--the lost opportunity to focus on the real enemy, which is Islamic radicalism. We can deal with Saudi Arabia, that’s for sure--but even they have trouble with the crazies. They would be glad to have our help. But we should do it together, so that one party doesn’t come to dominate.
The Americans, the Europeans, the Israelis, the Christian Africans, the Chinese, and the Indians all have something in common with us: The jihadis are our collective enemy. From Nigeria to Libya, from Syria to Chechnya, we see terrorism and strife.
That’s the bad news. The good news is that we can manage this problem--again, if we work together. Let’s look at the globe. The truth is that we have Islam surrounded: east, west, south and north. So we, the civilized people, should make a deal.
For starters, let Russia reoccupy the Central Asian states--the five
“Stans”--that broke away during Russia’s most recent time of troubles, in the early 90s.
In return, I will turn Assad over to his fate, and so will the Chinese. Why? Because the Chinese are cursed with 50 million or so Muslims in their westernmost province, Xinjiang, which is right next to Russia. So as part of the same deal, the Chinese get to suppress--I guess that’s the nice way of putting it--their restive Muslims.
Wait, there’s more. Under this new deal, the Israelis can do what they want with the Palestinians. My fellow ex-Soviet citizen,
Avigdor Lieberman, the former foreign minister of Israel--he gets this. And he’s still close to Bibi.
And together, we can all deal with those two most troublesome nations: Iran and Pakistan.
Iran is a lot closer to Russia than it is to America--I don’t want those nuts to have nuclear weapons! But I have defended Iran to keep the Americans from filling the space instead. I’d rather have the ayatollahs in Tehran than a hostile US Army, bent on still more “liberation.”
Those Americans--they thought they were so cool for helping to push the Red Army out of Afghanistan in the 80s. And look what they got after that--Osama Bin Laden in his new home.
Now, 25 years later, the Americans are finally giving up on their missionary work in Afghanistan. If we ever have to go back to bring order there, it will be no more Mr. Nice Guy! But Pakistan is the real problem--they make Afghanistan possible.
So those are the real evil empires: Iran and Pakistan. Bringing them to heel won’t be easy, of course, but we Russians have never shied away from strong measures. The Americans could learn a lot from us.
So that’s my vision. Let’s stop worrying about silly little niceties about the right and the wrong way to fight a war. Let’s stop trying to bring democracy to barbarians. Instead, let’s bring them the only thing they understand--force.
Let’s all of us--Moscow, Washington, London, Paris, Brussels, Jerusalem, Lagos, Addis Ababa, Beijing, New Delhi--come together in a new Holy Alliance, similar to that which kept Europe safe from radicalism in the early 19th century. Let’s join one another to crush the unholy, unruly, jihadi Muslims. The good Muslims will thank us for it. And if they don’t--too bad.
Admit it: You, too, think it’s a good idea.
