The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #113349 Message #2411656
Posted By: Little Hawk
12-Aug-08 - 01:08 PM
Thread Name: BS: War in Georgia (2008)
Subject: RE: BS: War in Georgia
For sure, Russia is really run by Putin. ;-) No doubt about it. The ironical thing, though, is that a large majority of the Russian population likes it that way, so even if they had a totally real democracy right now, they would still elect Putin if he ran for office again. So how about that? Watcha gonna do?
Putin is a highly effective leader, he's no fool, and he's the FIRST actually effective leader Russia has had since the breakup of the Soviet Union. Accordingly he's very popular.
So he was KGB? So what? People who have been CIA amount to the same thing in my opinion, but having been in the CIA does not preclude American politicians from being respected and from serving in other areas of government, does it? Quite the contrary. Your secret service people are regarded as heros and protectors of the country. How ironical! They've caused the deaths of untold numbers of people all over the world with their undercover activities, their coups, and their assassinations of foreign leaders.
I'm not impressed one bit by this hypocritical double standard in assessing the character of Russian politicians and secret agents versus American politicians and secret agents. Both of those great powers are totally self-interested, they are both utterly ruthless, they are both military aggressors, they are both imperialists, and they both invade and subjugate small nations whenever they have a whim and an excuse to do so.
There is little to choose between them and no reason for moral grandstanding on the part of either one of them.
The Georgians have no reason for moral grandstanding either, because their government brought this mess down on itself through its own irresponsible behaviour.
You say they were sucked in? Maybe so...but no more than Saddam Hussein was sucked in when he attacked Kuwait back in '91. (the American ambassador to Iraq assured him before the invasion of Kuwait that the USA had no interest or reason to take sides in any Arab vs Arab conflicts...thus sucking him in...and I have a strong suspicion that that was a deliberate ploy by the USA, and a clever one too).