What more can the "sage" Putin teach us?

What a bad idea it was to get rid of the Czar, maybe? After all, look how that turned out, John McCain.

Phoning in from infinity and beyond somewhere from within his fortress of solitude in the verdant suburbs of St. Francisville, LA,



Rod Dreher turns a question from Ishaan Tharoor (formerly of Barsoom, now writing at the Washington Post) into a statement of fact:

Putin Told Us So

while with trademark Dreher fecklessness retaining Tharoor as his mouthpiece to avoid direct attribution.

So, what more can the "sage" Putin teach us? Well, for one thing, if you want the nicest spot for your Benedict Option in Ukraine or wherever, you should just take it. That's how a strong, pre-Enlightenment Slavic leader runs a masculine organization with a masculine church, right? Well, not directly, of course, no more than using your own words in a blog post. You need a cut-out, either a Tharoor from Barsoom or patriotic separatists you can arm with BUK surface-to-air missiles to make your point at 30,000 feet.

Or am I missing something from today's lesson?

Let's dig a little deeper.

Commenter Chris 1 writes  

According to Tharoor, this is exactly what Vladimir Putin warned about in his New York Times op-ed last September advising the West not to engage in airstrikes against Syria to help the rebels.

Did I miss something? When and where did the West engage in airstrikes to help the Syrian rebels?

Dreher responds:

[NFR: On September 10, 2013, Obama went on national television and said the United States would conduct a "military strike" against Syria to punish it for using chemical weapons. He got significant pushback from the public and from some in Congress over this, and stood down. Click the link and read the speech; Obama plainly wanted to bomb Syria, and asked the public to support him. -- RD]

I think I see now. Obama wanted to draw a red line in the sand as CINC, but then demurred and didn't, and now Putin has told us so about what would happen if he had, but actually didn't.

Even Rachel Maddow-loving commenter Jack Shifflett throws up in his mouth a little bit at Dreher's reflexive prevarication:

I’ll also note that President Obama, for whatever reason(s), did in fact call off last year’s proposed airstrikes, and that he has all along resisted arming the Syrian rebels; and yet here ISIS is anyway. I think the president made the right call–that is, he followed Mr. Putin’s (and Rachel Maddow’s) advice–but in what way did that make the slightest difference about this particular threat?

If you go back and read the entire Putin editorial in question, you’ll see that, as a paean to international law, it’s an astonishing exercise in hypocrisy and disingenuousness. I concede that even a blind pig can find an acorn now and then, but why are you so determined to laud this particular blind pig’s vision?

So, in the end, what was the correct decision?

Leaving the raising of the children almost entirely in the hands of Mrs. Dreher while Rod splits his time reading Dante, chasing the latest food morsel, and sleeping off the effects of Ambien, depression, fanboi worship of strong, masculine, dominating men, mono, or whatever this week's story happens to be, of course.

Picture of the day

From a Buzzfeed piece detailing Obama's blunders on Syria. Caption: The Winner.

The best thing I heard last night was Michael Rubin on Hugh Hewitt's show analyzing the perpetual gaffe situation due to the leaders of our country continuously flapping their mouths. He said something like, and I'm totally paraphrasing, "This is what happens when you have a President who is a Senator, a VP who's a Senator, a Secretary of State who's a Senator and a Secretary of Defense who's a Senator. They keep forgetting they're not in the Senate and the things they say now have consequences."

"Our enemies are killing each other"

Just for the record, I'm against military action against Syria. Act for America lays out why in their petition:

Dear President Obama,

We agree that the civil war in Syria is a humanitarian disaster.

However, America does not need to be dragged into another war that will stress our already exhausted military and weak economy.

Our enemies are killing each other with Iran/Hezbollah/Assad on one side and the Al-Qaida factions/Muslim Brotherhood/salafists on the other.

America's intervention in Libya and Egypt proved to be grave mistakes that undermined our respect and stature on the international stage. Enough of supporting enemies who hate us, costing us the lives of our precious sons and daughters with no clear objective or strategy in sight.

A strong majority of Americans don't want us to get dragged into another Middle Eastern civil war. A recent Reuters/Ipsos poll found that 60% of Americans do not support U.S. involvement and 89% oppose arming the rebels.

Therefore, we appeal to you in the strongest voice:

Don't drag us into another Middle Eastern Civil War and don't arm the rebel factions in Syria.

It's painful to look at how badly Obama is doing in his attempt to gain support for his military action. For example, Adam Kinzinger is a Representative from Illinois who is for military action:

Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., on Sunday said he had offered the White House his help to rally support for a strike on Syria but had been ignored.

“A week and a half ago my office actually reached out to the White House and said ‘we support the strike on Syria, we’re going to help you round up support if you need it,’” he said on ABC’s “This Week.”

“I haven’t heard back from the White House yet — I haven’t heard back from anyone,” he continued. “I don’t even know who my White House liaison is, who’s supposed to be creating this relationship.”

...

“He’s trying to build a relationship with Congress and there’s a trust deficit,” he added.

"A trust deficit." Republicans are always understating things. Perma-hawk Peter King is also lamenting the poor job Obama is doing.

“I just wish the president had laid this out better,” said King on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

“I wish that he would be more of a commander-in-chief than a community organizer,” he added.

“He’s commander in chief, for one year he said a red line was there and then the red line was crossed and he sends [Secretary of State John] Kerry and [Secretary of Defense Chuck] Hagel out,” said King. “We’re told Congress is not needed at the 11th hour. He brings in Congress and then he says it’s not his red line.

“I can’t imagine Harry Truman or John Kennedy or Ronald Reagan or Dwight Eisenhower ever putting a nation in a position like this on a military vote,” King added.

I like Peter King, he has done great work in exposing Islamic fascism and lunacy and he is usually in lock-step with Act for America. And truthfully, I really thought about this one, read Bill Kristol's thoughtful argument supporting action and listened to other supporters make their arguments (Hugh Hewitt, Michael Medved, et al.) I see the point, but I don't think anything we end up doing would do a lick of good for us or anybody else in the world. Obama doesn't want to do this, he's putting too many restrictions on the action and telegraphing them all. It's really a lose-lose at this point, and just because Obama flushed his credibility it doesn't mean America is going over the cliff with him. Andrew McCarthy said it best: "American credibility on the international stage is bound up in the recognition of, and willingness to act on, vital national interests. It is not embodied by any single political actor – indeed, when one branch of government acts against the national interest, our system is designed to enable the other branches to put a stop to it."