Broken Clock Syndrome
Conservatives are still arching their backs over Russian President Putin's remarks at a Munich international conference in which he castigated current US policies. Max Boot joined the chorus in today's Los Angeles Times.
THE AMERICAN delegates to last weekend's Munich Conference on Security Policy, an annual transatlantic gathering of policymakers and defense experts, were not predisposed to embrace Vladimir Putin after we learned that the Russian president's entourage had booked more than 100 rooms in the conference hotel, the stately Bayerischer Hof, relegating most of us to a ho-hum Hilton in the hinterlands. (It could have been worse. As one journalist joked, if President Bush had been in attendance, the White House would have taken so many rooms that we would have been commuting from Lichtenstein.)
...At a superficial level, his remarks might sound like the standard plaints from Western liberals about American "unilateralism," which is how they were portrayed in some European news accounts. But coming from such an illiberal leader, these comments had a different mien — sinister and absurd at once.
Putin, for instance, complained that a unipolar world order dominated by the U.S. was undemocratic. His concern might be touching if he hadn't spent the last few years dismantling the vestiges of Russia's own democracy. ...
Boot spent the rest of his column pointing out the absurdity of the Russian leader condemning the US while he himself is guilty of undemocratic behavior in Russia. How dare such a despot criticize the US and its Dear Leader! That's just like the kettle calling the pot black. Or something.
Nevermind the fact that the US president has conducted foreign policy under a thoroughly questionable and probably illegal theory of "pre-emptive war" and has invaded a country for reasons now seen to be based on lies. Nevermind that the US president has authorized torture and the detention of other countries' citizens in secret prisons in contravention of international treaties the US is a party to. Nevermind the fact that the US president has systematically engaged in shredding the rights of citizens guaranteed by the US Constitution by dispensing with habeas corpus and illegally spying on people here in the US.
Putin is a despot. Therefore he can't say those things about the US and its leader, even if they are true and even if the rest of the world happened to agree with him. One simply doesn't say those things about the US.
Oh, and Australia's John Howard and his comments about Barack Obama's candidacy giving hope to terrorists the world over? Him? He gets a free pass.
THE AMERICAN delegates to last weekend's Munich Conference on Security Policy, an annual transatlantic gathering of policymakers and defense experts, were not predisposed to embrace Vladimir Putin after we learned that the Russian president's entourage had booked more than 100 rooms in the conference hotel, the stately Bayerischer Hof, relegating most of us to a ho-hum Hilton in the hinterlands. (It could have been worse. As one journalist joked, if President Bush had been in attendance, the White House would have taken so many rooms that we would have been commuting from Lichtenstein.)
...At a superficial level, his remarks might sound like the standard plaints from Western liberals about American "unilateralism," which is how they were portrayed in some European news accounts. But coming from such an illiberal leader, these comments had a different mien — sinister and absurd at once.
Putin, for instance, complained that a unipolar world order dominated by the U.S. was undemocratic. His concern might be touching if he hadn't spent the last few years dismantling the vestiges of Russia's own democracy. ...
Boot spent the rest of his column pointing out the absurdity of the Russian leader condemning the US while he himself is guilty of undemocratic behavior in Russia. How dare such a despot criticize the US and its Dear Leader! That's just like the kettle calling the pot black. Or something.
Nevermind the fact that the US president has conducted foreign policy under a thoroughly questionable and probably illegal theory of "pre-emptive war" and has invaded a country for reasons now seen to be based on lies. Nevermind that the US president has authorized torture and the detention of other countries' citizens in secret prisons in contravention of international treaties the US is a party to. Nevermind the fact that the US president has systematically engaged in shredding the rights of citizens guaranteed by the US Constitution by dispensing with habeas corpus and illegally spying on people here in the US.
Putin is a despot. Therefore he can't say those things about the US and its leader, even if they are true and even if the rest of the world happened to agree with him. One simply doesn't say those things about the US.
Oh, and Australia's John Howard and his comments about Barack Obama's candidacy giving hope to terrorists the world over? Him? He gets a free pass.
Labels: Foreign Policy
posted by Diane at 10:03 AM
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