Vladimir Putin is kind weird, right?
Whether he’s posing for horribly staged photos of him like a shirtless cowboy on a horse, or passing oppressive laws (such as his gross expansion of the definition of ‘treason’ or suppressing activities of the gay and lesbian community), there are certainly grounds to consider Putin a bad guy.
I mean, just look at him. He looks like a rejected Die Hard villain. I feel like Bruce Willis should be chasing Putin and Hans Gruber on a skyscraper roof somewhere.
But President Putin managed to do something I think is worth some form of recognition.
But, as you’ll see, Putin gives himself a little bit of recognition as well…perhaps a little too much.
He and his administration managed to convince Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad to join a chemical weapons contract in order to avoid any further conflict amongst the Syrian government and its people, as well as the Syrian government and the United States of America.
This came on the heels of President Obama’s rally to the senate to perform military action on the Syrian government for using chemical weapons on their own people; President Obama cited that these weapons could also be used against the United States.
It seemed that President Obama would not persuade the senate like he’d hoped, but Putin’s actions eliminated the need for any sort of action or any further persuasion.
Secretary of State John Kerry met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov last week to formally engage Syria in an anti-chemical weapon pact, reported the New York Times article “Syria Takes Steps to Join Weapons Treaty as U.S.-Russian Talks Begin” by Michael R. Gordon.
Then Putin did something that caught me as incredibly strange; he wrote an op-ed piece for the New York Times on his feelings on the subject of the U.S./Syria/Russia quagmire.
The letter is all over the place and tonally very strange.
It begins with President Putin recounting the long and often tense relationship between the U.S. and the former U.S.S.R. during the Cold War, but then takes a left turn when Putin goes back further in history and recalls that the two nations were once friends and allies in the face of Hitler’s Nazi Germany.
He goes on to question that if the U.S. became involved in Syria, the nation we call home would lose its stature as a figure of democracy.
But, what’s even stranger is that the letter ends with a criticism of President Obama’s address given to the American people last Tuesday.
In the address, President Obama referred to the American people and the American way of life as “exceptional.” And that’s where one of Putin’s problem pops up.
He writes that the American people are no more exceptional than all people – for we’re all equal in the eyes of God. Fair enough.
But the letter itself both claims that Putin has a growing trust in President Obama and yet openly criticizes the man whom Putin wants to nurture an alliance with.
Not that I disagree with his claim (I don’t. To my mind all men and women are created equal.), but it’s weird for someone as controversial as Putin to play the role of the morality police, while admitting a growing trust in the leader of the system that he’s criticizing.
While I may support Putin’s recent actions in avoiding violence in Syria as well as some of his apt statements about the U.S.’s notions of exceptionalism, I find it weird that Putin is pointing fingers.
Words like oppressive, dictatorial and harsh are only mild insults that one could use to describe President Putin.
Sure, Putin may be the man in the white hat this week, but that’s not enough to change my opinion of the man.
Yes, the United States of America has done some incredibly questionable things within our own military complex.
However, Russian President Putin hardly seems like the one should be playing morality police.
Please keep it in mind that I’m not trying in any way to justify the questionable things that have been a product of United States military complex of political system.
I am merely trying to elaborate that being the good guy with a cooler head once in a blue moon gives no reason for moral high ground.
It’s like a Western. You can tell who the bad guy is just by looking at ‘em.
While our own President Obama may not be a good guy in every sense (his eagerness to join the fray in Syria seems hypocritical given the criticisms he’s had of the overreaching American military complex), he’s certainly not the oppressive, Hans Gruber-type…or the shirtless cowboy type…thank God.
So what have we established? Both Russians and Americans are capable of great diplomacy and great evils.
So, basically we just spent an article talking about things that the Cold War solved decades ago…darn.
Brian Laughran
Senior Viewpoints Editor