Reactions to the Paris terror attacks have prompted a staccato of news blips and reactions already. First, American President Barack Obama goes live a few hours after the attacks, with his tough-guy posture, proclaiming allegiances and liberty. The scene from the White House was a hollow one, and of course the president promised new military action aimed at the same tired old foe. While “terror” has been continually evangelized as the enemy though, America’s effectiveness in killing “it” has been pitifully inept. Here we are again, ravaged by the news peaceful people have been slaughtered by an elusive enemy that should have been vanquished by George W. Bush, and “shock and awe.” Alas, the real shock, the real awe surfaces again – more dead innocents. What a pitiful excuse for leadership our world has.
As I type this, news extremists were responsible for the Russian airliner downed over Sinai galvanizes other stark realities. Chief among these, listening to Vladimir Putin swear retribution upon all those responsible, is that the world’s most powerful man is a Godsend. If not for Putin and his dogged pursuit of moderation, our world would really be ablaze. To this reality I add the hopeful vision, that somewhere in the deserts of Syria, Iraq, Egypt or Lebanon gaunt figures sit staring at one another over a campfire or a kitchen table. Their looks are inquisitive, sheepish, wily or introspective, but they surely look at one another in the realization they are dead men. $50 million buys a lot of corpses in Egypt, hell anywhere in the Middle East. If Spetsnaz does not get them, their own kind will surely. In case you did not notice, Putin never promises without delivering. The politicians, media and the general public in the west has misjudged, misread Putin and Russia. These people have practically been begging for the world to unite against this evil, and only now are eyes and ears turned toward Moscow.
While searching for more information for this story, I came across a provocative title, a Simon Saradzhyan’s piece on Huff Po I at first was written by yet another “Obama troll.” But satisfyingly, almost amazingly, I was dead wrong. “Putin’s Russia: Claims Versus Reality,” was decidedly NOT intended to reassure Americans that we can invade Russia at a moment’s notice, and does not suggest that Putin will soon be shot like Czar Nicholas, for allowing the people to starve. As it turns out, Saradzhyan, a Research fellow at Harvard’s Belfer Center, is one of the world’s top experts on not only Russian policy, but weapons and counterterrorism as well. Unlike most of the western think tank sellouts I’ve run across, the Harvard man knows his stuff, and presents his facts with a refreshing honesty.
The gist of Saradzhyan’s argument (before Paris I might add) is that Russia is not some dying third world regional player, as many in Washington and abroad would have you believe. No, Russia is not on the verge of collapse, and Forbes’ most powerful man is playing his cards on the world card table, for all to see. While many “grant clutching” professors simply parroted and pirated State Department lingo for Obama these last few years, people like Saradzhyan did the real work. The assistant director of the U.S.-Russia Initiative to Prevent Nuclear Terrorism’s paper “Russia’s System to Combat Terrorism and Its Application in Chechnya,” published in the “National Counter-Terrorism Strategies” of NATO Security through Science Series, should give my readers pause. The reason being, if Mr. Saradzhyan knows Russia inside and out, then why doesn’t NATO get it? But they do, don’t you know?
This academia is mentioned prominently in the book, “Russian Foreign Policy: The Return of Great Power Politics,” by Jeffrey Mankoff. While Obama and his British colleagues would like you to classify Russia as the New U-S-S-R, the worst case is something Mankoff calls an “authoritarian democracy.” I only wanted to illustrate using Saradzhyan’s credentials, how wrong we in the west have been about Russia. While this nation does “act” out of regional motivations, the Russian leadership has known since World War II that a place in the world is necessary for Russia to survive. Yes Mr. Putin and other Russians cling to their homeland’s geographic security contingency, but Russia is fully capable of projecting power anywhere she likes. This brings me to comment on the real idiots who contrast experts like Saradzhyan.
Hours after Paris was the victim of the barbarism you see on news feed, Vladimir Putin was planning his talk for the G20. It was a revision, it simply had to be. When I saw him step of the plane in Turkey via an RT report, there was a new doggedness, impatience, some might even call it a bounce in his step. As we learned later on, Mr. Putin knew he held the controlling hand in a dirty card game we’ve all witnessed. France would not stand for more, Russians were just blown out of the sky too, though the public did not know yet. His people, those geniuses that help him win at policy at every turn, they had handed over the “goods” on ISIL ‘s backers, and Putin is now set to play all these cards. This is why he and Obama chatted in a casual but tense session before silent cameras the other day. All this will come out, what I am saying will play out like a movie trailer in the days to come. But here’s the thing, people of the world really need to start understanding Russia. And this won’t be accomplished by listening to CNN or FOX, or by watching White House press briefings either.
Russia does not want to invade Poland. Nor does she need Latvian or Lithuanian bills to pay. Russia has more land than the US and Canada combined, and then some. Russians do not hate anybody, not in my thousands of personal communications with people from every walk of life there. Russia’s armed forces are not rusted and useless, ask ISIL about this in two more weeks. The economy of Russia is not collapsing. While sanctions and money manipulations by Obama and the rest have hurt the people there, I assure you Russians can and will survive ANY hardship. They are like Americans in that way, it’s in their DNA only more acutely remembered. Obama and the bankers who began this pushing for hegemony, they miscalculated badly. What really burns me today though, is that Vladimir Putin was forced to react in this way. Yes, Putin was forced, not the other way around. Back when I spoke before the Sochi Olympics, peace was right there in the palm of Barack Obama’s hand. All he had to do was fly to the Olympics, cut the fool and enjoy a Russian spectacle, by God he’d have been the hero of the waiting world.
But instead, the American president chose the low road, the one frequently travelled by inadequate people. Sure, maybe if he’d bucked the bankers and military industrialists, they might have JFK’d him for sure. But you know what, he’d have been a damned martyr. Generations would say; “Look at that, the first black president had that much courage, that much class. Why, he revered peace and sportsmanship, above all else.”
Sadly, we don’t live in a Hollywood blockbuster where presidents fight their way out of Air Force One. Our presidents don’t beat the shit out of the terrorists personally; they send drones to kill however the hell gets in the way. They sling mud, do their backers’ bidding, and in the aftermath ruin the reputation of a nation, or a great people. Worse still, their policies and lies get other nation’s killed too. A girl at a Paris concert, dead as hell because $10 million dollars a day could not blow up an ISIL oil convoy! A baby in a Russian jet plane form a wonderful vacation, blasted to smithereens because a vast coalition of nations could not get the goddamned job done. This is the epitome of sorry and mediocre. Cowards, psychopaths, soulless narcissists put in charge of our human legacy.
Then when the supposed evil emerges unscathed to kill a deadly beast, the worms in the west wiggle, squirm, try and figure another strategy to rescue their horrid hides. This is how it pans out, this is the final play. Russia showed the way, but it took the spirit and civility of Paris to spark the fire. ISIL will be dead shortly, brutality is so stupid that way. Putin’s promise will be kept, and I can see those $50 million dollar glances going back and forth again. The legacy of inhumanity is death. But thank God for men like Putin, or we’d all be lost in the lie.
Phil Butler, is a policy investigator and analyst, a political scientist and expert on Eastern Europe, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
