Dear President Putin:
First of all, thanks for “speaking directly to the American people” in your New York Times op-ed. I’d grown used to reading various communists in those pages, but to get a note from an actual Russian president is something special.
You may be noticing that it’s not going over so well. I thought I could explain.
The short answer is many of us feel we are on to you. We know we can’t trust Assad, and don’t get us started on trusting our own president. But you may be overplaying this so ham-handedly that some clarity may be emerging.
It all just looks too tidy. You, Assad and President Obama were all facing a dark fate. Obama was about to get a congressional punch in the nose, Assad was about to hear bombs whizzing by his windows and you were facing the loss of your Syrian friend and henchman.
Now it’s high fives all around. Assad can make dinner plans into the foreseeable future, Obama can crow about a “strong stance” that cooled all heads, and you are probably up for a Peace Prize from those knuckleheads at the Nobel Committee.
What happened?
All of you would like us to believe that the eternally wooden John Kerry embarked on a hypothetical riff that involved you pressuring Assad to submit his chemical weapons to international scrutiny, quickly qualifying that prospect by saying Assad “isn’t about to do it” and “it can’t be done.”
But wait! Apparently it can, and at lightning speed! You got your people to Geneva to meet with Kerry faster than I can run down to the corner for milk. In view of the usual glacial pace of such sensitive matters, this is a real eye-opener.
But what we see drips with suspicion. And now here you are, enjoying your momentary perch as global power-broker, lecturing Americans about “brute force" interventions and your preference for just calming down and talking everything out.
That’s always what tyrants want. CONTINUE READING
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