I’ve tried to steer well clear of US politics – it’s not my country, it’s not my business – but this fiasco has wider implications.
To summarize, Obama has just had his political influence, and that of the US generally, castrated by Putin. The Middle East is now even less under the control of the US than ever. Just to rub it in, I see Putin has an op ed in the New York times. Jesus, the cheek of the thing. Obama, meanwhile, cannot resist the opportunity to make himself look even worse and had to reply – in the Huffington Post. He couldn’t even get a reply in the same damn newspaper, let alone taking getting a right of reply in Pravda (which, incidentally, is jeering at him as Puff the Magic Dragon and other, less repeatable terms). Mark Steyn has a good commentary.
Just to stay with that piece in HuffPo – someone needs to explain that you cannot mouth off like that when you have just had your butt publicly whipped. Does anyone think that the US President’s objections to Russian gay-bashing will mean anything, ever again? I wouldn’t be surprised if Putin orders a few gay bars shut down just for laughs.
[As has been brought to my attention, the HuffPo piece is a satire. This is why I stay out US politics usually. I am sorry, I should have spent more time with the US sources; I was too focused on the international implications]
Oh, but lets not be unfair. A prominent US politician has a piece in Pravda. Care to guess who? John McCain.
Who says Putin doesn’t have a sense of humour? Jesus, the cheek of it – not only is he rubbing Obama’s nose in it in the pages of America’s journal of record, he is letting the man whom Obama beat to the Presidency have a right of reply that the sitting President does not.
When Obama first ran, and got himself bogged down in pointless arguments with FOX and the Republican party, I found myself with a sinking feeling. I thought: If he’s so easily put out of commission by the domestic opposition, what is he going to be like against a team from out of town? Well, now I know.
Meanwhile, Putin continues with the arming of the Iranian mullahs, and helping them with their nuclear aims. Now, as I have said I try to stay the hell out of US politics, but the first thing that people do not realise about the Iranian theocracy’s nuclear ambitions will firstly confirm it in power – please read Orwell on the significance of the atomic bomb and domestic protest. Second, it means that other nations in reach of those missiles will have to start to make other arrangements than relying on America keeping the peace (or what? rely on a nation that hung its own people out to dry in Benghazi?). That firstly affects Israel, but it secondly affects Europe. When the Mullahs who sent death squads to British streets have atomic weapons, how do you think they will likely behave? And for Europe that almost certainly means finding a new security arrangement with Russia (I could get into detail about the political theories behind this, but just google “Alexander Dugin” to find out some of it).
So the net outcome of all this is a power up to both Islam and also to Orthodox Christianity.
I never want to hear another squeak about Bush’s religiosity. Yes, the man had nitwit ideas, but his Presidency saw the Taliban pounded like veal, A.Q. Khan in prison, and the US foreign policy switched from baking Pakistan to siding with India. Obama’s years and we have the US pandering to the Pakistani Junta again, A.Q. Khan on the loose and fifteen hundred centrifuges spinning in Iran.
Meanwhile, certain types are scrambling to put lipstick on this pig. The line taken is that the dextrosphere is just being soooo howwid and mean to poor Obama and its just because they don’t like him.
What strikes the eye is the utter parochialism of this. There is not even the slightest idea that there is a real world out there, and that in the world beyond US shores, no one gives a hoot about these internal squabbles. People like me are wondering what the hell we’re going to have to do if US leadership can no longer be relied on. My advice: Germany should start by getting all its gold back, pronto, and begin seeking… other arrangements. Bring the Brits onboard; it won’t be hard.
This puts me in mind of a certain type of ‘vocal’ atheist who seriously believes that he is achieving anything other than the triumph of militant religion by yelling loudly when everything is safe and playing dead when Things Get Real. Allow me to disabuse you of that illusion: whatever fine ideas you have mean precisely squat if you lack the will to implement them.
UPDATE: How many times must I say that I do not care about the internal party-political squabbles of the United States? I do not care whether or not Obama is “grateful” that he has been spared having to follow through on his words. He never should have said them in the first place. This resolution is the second worst thing that could have happened, the worst being the US going along with this mad venture.
Kraut2, a loyal commentator here, makes several good points about the long game being played by Russia, for which I am very grateful. Please do read the AT article he cites. I happen to agree that the Orthodox world will take on the jihadis and in many instances is better at it (I notice that it is Russia that is defending the rights of the beleaguered Christians and other infidels in that part of the world). I also have considerably less hostility toward Orthodox Christianity than to Islam for the simple reason that it has considerably less hostility for me. However, this does not change the fact that an empowered Orthodox civilisation, headed by Putin, is necessarily an outcome wanted by us atheists and secularists – most especially, given his role in arming the Mullahs in Tehran.
