I’ve been casually reading some of these posts for weeks now, and have tried to refrain from posting on them as best I can. But having said that, I have made several observations and they are somewhat unsettling.
What I see is a contingent of FReepers, supporting Putin adamantly, with the shared reasoning that they all admire his handling of what is by all accounts a large regional Muslim terrorist threat. From that standpoint, if that was all it was about, I think most would agree that he has done a fairly good job, but these threads are going far beyond that.
Putin is a geopolitical danger in his own right, as has been Russia for as long as my memory goes back and that is for his tenure and going back to the Vietnam war that they participated in as chief agitator..
He has opposed the US in every way possible to include arming and technology exchanges with Iran, Syria and other Muslim states as you know. He is now and has been single handedly reinstating much more than a soft tyranny in Russia and while he has not gone back to Communism, he might just as well have done so. He has achieved the same goals, but as a populist politician.
Now I’m not going to even try to say that our fearless “mom jeans” leader in the US is any better. I’m just trying to make the point that Putin has only begun to consolidate power in the region and we in the US at some point will have to intervene militarily, (post Obama) or just let him run wild, because that is what he’s going to do if unopposed.
So from that standpoint, I see very little to admire in Vlad, or his people for that matter who are letting him do it.
However this has always been the case with the Russians. It will continue to be the case, for as long as I can see in the future, unless there are some democratic reforms, a rejiggered populace that does not have nationalist hegemony tendencies and the removal of the bull crud faux regime we are witnessing occur there now.
I think anyone with half a brain and a bit of history can make the correct call that we are going to end up with another containment policy on Russia and that it’s close to inevitable.
The problem with the US however is that our policies tend to shift with the political winds and there is never any follow through. If our policies were consistent, we would have allowed Patton rearrange the deck chairs in the region before we called WWII a done deal.
Could have saved ourselves and many millions of people in the region, years of useless misery over the Russian issue and my Georgian grandparents would have died happy and content..
But alas...that did not happen.
Where is the Iranian bomb for that much of technology transfer?
Bottom line is that earlier Putin regime was more pro-American than late Yeltsin regime and it mean really pro-American considering the fact that Yeltsin was a Clinton’s sock puppet.
It haven’t paid off for Russia and certain actions by certain US politicians have convinced him to change course.
Putin is a populist, true, he is doing hard to follow a public opinion in a situation when he is unable to influence it.
If people in Russia would think America is an enemy he would become really anti-American. That is actually how he has his 90% rating.