Listen to the Russian lies in the UN security council today, I remembered this article in the Atlantic.
Vladimir Putin, Russian Neocon
Ever since Vladimir Putin invaded Crimea, American pundits have strained to understand his view of the world. Putin’s been called a Nazi; a tsar; a man detached from reality. But there’s another, more familiar framework that explains his behavior. In his approach to foreign policy, Vladimir Putin has a lot in common with those very American hawks (or “neocons” in popular parlance) who revile him most.
It's depressing how “what goes around, comes around”
To Kristol, McCain, and their ilk, the United States is a nation perennially bullied by adversaries who are tougher, nastier, and more resolute than we are.
I know, I know, pass me a hankie.
For American hawks, appeasement is not merely bad foreign policy. It represents a crisis of values—an aversion to those martial, manly virtues that make nations strong and give life meaning. In his 1977 essay, “The Culture of Appeasement,” Podhoretz argued that “one of the interesting similarities” between Jimmy Carter’s America and Neville Chamberlain’s Britain “was the prominence of homosexuals in the literary worlds” of both eras.
Their understanding of History has always been twisted. It is an interesting article and worth a read [again]
In the best Teddy Roosevelt tradition, Putin has made his own physical vigor a metaphor for the new vigor of Russian foreign policy. And even as they denounce Putin’s actions, hawks like Hanson can barely restrain their envy at his imperialistic machismo. “People are looking at Putin as one who wrestles bears and drills for oil,” Sarah Palin told Fox News. “They look at our president as one who wears mom jeans.”
Of course the Russians know this, that is why their ambassador to the UN keeps bring them up again and again.
Quoting other people's lies does not make your own lies ring true.
I hear so many echoes of 2001/2002, and it hurts, and our warnings at the time appear to have fruitless.
I am not the only one
The Iraq War and WMDs: An intelligence failure or White House spin?
“The Iraq war began sixteen years ago tomorrow. There is a myth about the war that I have been meaning to set straight for years. After no WMDs were found, the left claimed ‘Bush lied. People died.’ This accusation itself is a lie. It’s time to put it to rest.”
— Former Bush administration press secretary Ari Fleischer, in a Twitter thread, March 19, 2019
I can picture the Kremlin ticking off the checklist.
Of course, Trump has to garble in
“I got along with these people,” Trump said of the world’s most ruthless authoritarians. “I got along with them well”
I bet.