Posted on 07/21/2014 11:02:08 AM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
AMONG the daft things uttered by George W Bush while he was president of the United States — and there were plenty — his 2001 assessment of Russia’s then new leader, Vladimir Putin, was the dumbest.
Mastering that familiar expression of simian incomprehension, Bush said that he “liked the look of the man”.
“I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy, and we had a very good dialogue. I was able to get a sense of his soul.”
Bush said he saw in Putin a man committed to his country and its best interests. But before him that day at their summit in Slovenia was a scheming psychopath and ruthless egomaniac.
In defence of Bush’s uninformed character assessment, it is true that Putin had risen almost without trace from the backblocks of the KGB to his country’s presidency at breakneck speed. His promotions under then president Boris Yeltsin might have much to do with Yeltsin being incapacitated by alcoholism and having to rely on someone — anyone — to help him steer the ship of state and keep quiet.
If that is so, it was a deal with the devil. On New Year’s Eve 1999, the devil came knocking. No one knows what was discussed, but Yeltsin shocked the world on the final night of the century that his country had influenced more than any other, mostly for the worst.
In a way, only to Russians would passing power to the young Putin make sense. He had become the country’s most popular politician having masterminded the brutal suppression of Chechnya’s separatists. It was a sign of the country’s dark heart.
Long before communism sank under the weight of its own contradictions it had been hijacked by genocidal opportunists — first Lenin, then, infamously, Stalin.
Putin is the latest thug writing a chapter in that sorry saga. But the Russian character has been corrupted by decades of a brutal perversion of “communism”.
Russian nationalism masking itself as pride can be an ugly thing and it is why Putin reigns again as a popular leader; his predatory and murderous expansion into Ukraine plays well at home.
During the communist era, there was no need to think for one’s self, indeed it was dangerous to do so. The fearful nation of children to which this gave birth was kept in its place by a KGB killing machine.
The Iron Curtain meant most of these murders went unnoticed in the West. But when the KGB assassinated dissident Bulgarian broadcaster George Markov on London’s busy Waterloo Bridge in 1978 with a tiny ricin capsule injected in to his leg by an umbrella, we were reminded of communism’s paranoia.
Putin was a three-year veteran of the KGB by then. Of course, he was not involved. And neither was he involved in the murder of reformist politician Galina Starovoitova, who supported Russia’s ethnic minorities and was opposed to in-house appointments such as Putin’s to head the KGB’s successor, the FSB. Putin got that job in July 1998. Starovoitova was shot dead that November. Hitmen were convicted. Their paymaster remains anonymous.
Then there was Iskandar Khatloni, who had been filing reports on human rights abuses in Chechnya. In September 2000 he was attacked with an axe in his apartment. It’s an unsolved crime.
Three years later, investigative reporter Yuri Shchekochikhni was working on stories of corruption in the FSB, but died of an “infection” that shut down all his internal organs. No autopsy was allowed.
HE worked for Novaya Gazeta. Anna Politkovskaya also worked there. Not only was Anna brave enough to write about the brutal suppression of the Chechens, she boldly wrote a book, titled, naturally, Putin’s Russia.
Reviewers were shocked by her revelations of how the Russian state brutalised its soldiers, of torture and unofficial prisons, of dissidents being “diagnosed” as schizophrenic and then “hospitalised” and of how parodies of capitalism had allowed some men to amass vast fortunes.
She was perhaps Putin’s most severe critic. “Am I afraid?” she asked. She said it was easy to fall in line and be optimistic about Russia’s future, “but it is the death sentence for our grandchildren”.
Politkovskaya was shot in the chest and head in her Moscow apartment lift on October 7, 2006 — Putin’s birthday.
After several trials, her hired killers were convicted, but again the paymaster remains unknown.
That was five years after Bush had found Putin “straightforward and trustworthy”.
Putin’s men brought down that Malaysia Airlines jet using his rockets. His bullies — out-of-towners, insist locals — kept investigators at bay with guns. His brutes then interfered with the bodies of the dead. And his drunken hooligans looted their victims’ valuables.
Tony Abbott should not withdraw Putin’s invitation to the G20 meeting in Sydney in Brisbane in November.
But he should have him arrested and charged with crimes against humanity when he touches down in Brisbane.
Sounds like the author is a Jihadist sympathizer, or am I wrong?
I think the author is daft. While what Bush said sounds like he had a man crush on Putin, in reality, world leaders say that crap to be diplomatically nice. They don’t really mean it. I think Putin respected Bush and the two of them did have an effective dialog. Now that Bush is gone, Putin is taking every advantage of a lack of leadership in Washington, and why not? It’s what nations do. Particularly the Russians.
Would relations have eventually soured even with someone like Bush as President? Sure. Would we have the disaster today? No way.
“Bush said he saw in Putin a man committed to his country and its best interests. But before him that day at their summit in Slovenia was a scheming psychopath and ruthless egomaniac.”
Maybe Putin “Devolved.”
Are you saying that he was not brutal to them? He was nice to them? What exactly are you trying to say?
You like the genocidal mass murderingbterrorist KGB Putin? You have mancrush on him? You want to hold his hand?
WTF is wrong with you? Someone can be a genocidal killer and still not be guilty of this shootdown. I don’t know what happened with the Malaysian airliner and neither do you. Does stating that the Nazis didn’t kill all those Poles in the Katyn Forest say that I have a “mancrush” on Adolf Hitler?
Actually, I know exactly what happened with the airliner. It was shot down by stupid evil Russky savages. The whole world knows.
Link?
There’s about as much chance of Putin being arrested in Australia as for me to be the next Miss Universe.
BTW, I worked for Presidents Carter and Reagan and am VERY FAMILIAR with Soviet/Russian characteristics and how they act, so lecturing me about their latest leader is laughable, to say the least.
In defense of Bush, his assessment must be taken in the context of a Russia recovering from misrule under Boris Yeltsin and the post-Communist oligarchs. Putin must have seemed like an improvement over his predecessor.
If you don’t know what happened, it’s because you refuse to face the truth.
Cui bono?
Russia benefits the most because now they can fool gullible morons into believing Ukraine did it to make Putin look bad.
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I’m sorry, did you percieve my comment as directed at you?
Are you a gullible moron?
I was only answering your question.
It sure looked like it to me after your previous comments such as “You like the genocidal mass murderingbterrorist KGB Putin? You have mancrush on him? You want to hold his hand?” or did someone hack your account?
Why don't you let the dust settle, while fact gathering continues, before you try to send us all careening towards World War III?
No one, with any sense in any of the countries involved, is not saddened by this incident. If the insurgents in the Ukraine, used Russian equipment in this reckless way, that hardly proves that a hard nosed pragmatist, such as President Putin, ever intended such a self-defeating result. On the other hand, it is obvious that some people are bent on using this tragedy to stir up hatred against the Russian Government. For example, consider the British tabloid piece that was also posted here today, that suggests that Russia is still Communist. That, of course is ridiculous, as Russia, under Putin--whatever his failings--has restored the importance of the ancient heritage that the Communists suppressed.
The tragedy in the Ukraine, today, of course, is the result of the Communist era, where Stalin deliberately injected large numbers of ethnic Russians into the Ukraine, as well as the Baltic States, to undermine the capacity of the populations to resist Communist rule. There is no easy solution to this situation, and what is called for is a cool-headed dialogue between the various factions. Pouring oil on the fire--as was done, whether intentionally or not, in the shooting down of the passenger jet--is certainly very far from being constructive. But neither are your over-reaching tirades.
William Flax
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