Photo Credit: Martin Kozlowski

He twisted the knife and gloated, which was an odd and self-indulgent thing to do when he was winning. Vladimir Putin, in his essay in the New York Times, may even to some degree have overplayed his hand, though that won’t matter much immediately. As a public posture, grace and patience would have brought him a lot further, impressing people and allowing them to feel some confidence in the idea that he’s seriously trying to offer an actual path out of the Syrian mess. But maybe he doesn’t think he has to win anyone over anymore—and maybe that’s the real news. In any case, the steely-eyed geopolitical strategist has reminded us that he’s also the media-obsessed operator who plays to his base back home by tranquilizing bears, wrestling alligators and riding horses shirtless, like Yul Brynner in “Taras Bulba.”

Clearly he is looking at President Obama and seeing weakness, lostness, lack of popularity. His essay is intended to exploit this and make some larger points, often sanctimoniously, about how the U.S. should conduct itself in the world. And so he chided American leadership, implicitly challenged its position as world leader, posited the U.N. Security Council, where Russia has done so much mischief, as the only appropriate decision-making body for international military action, and worried the U.N. will “suffer the fate” of the League of Nations if “influential countries” continue to take action without authorization. He does not doubt chemical weapons were used in Syria but doubts it was the government that used them. It was probably the rebels, he asserts, in an attempt to “provoke intervention by their powerful foreign patrons.”

Still, in general, Mr. Putin made a better case in the piece against a U.S. military strike than the American president has for it. And he did so, in a way, by getting to the left of the president, who he implies is insufficiently respectful to international bodies. Mr. Putin was candid about his primary anxiety—a spillover from Syria that could threaten Russian stability.

The Syrian civil war, he both conceded and cleverly noted for a U.S. audience, is in no way “a battle for democracy.” He made no moral claims for his ally, Bashar Assad. The war, he said, is a battle between government and opposition, with the latter composed of militants and mercenaries including al Qaeda fighters and “extremists of all stripes.” He sees what is happening as a danger to his country. Some of the rebels are from the West, and some from Russia itself. He does not want them returning home with the training they’ve acquired. “This threatens us all,” he said. True enough.

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‘Putin Played Obama for a Chump’

By WND.

The Obama administration and its congressional allies who favor strikes on Syria insist the rebels there are moderates and that any radical elements involved are a tiny fraction of the opposition who would never take power if the rebellion succeeds.

Other evidence suggests rebel forces are responsible for executions of Syrian soldiers, the live dismembering of Christians and even cannibalism.

So who’s right?

“The rebel forces are now dominated by jihadists, from al-Qaida to Hezbollah to some of the forces that are just pure Muslim mercenaries,” said Ken Blackwell, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights. “All you have to do is to look at who has been brutalized by this rebellion group. The most dominant victim has been Christians. When you look at that, you have to raise the question, ‘Why would we support forces that are hellbent on creating hell on Earth for Christian believers in Syria?”

When asked to answer his own question, Blackwell told WND lack of clarity from Washington is a big part of the problem.

“There’s no coherent Middle East policy within the Obama administration. There’s no clarity of purpose, no real set of objectives for why we should be engaged, what our interests are and who our true allies are,” he said. “This is an administration that stiff arms (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu, that turns a cold shoulder toward allies in the U.K. and who, over the past several years, has embraced and been a cheerleader for the Muslim Brotherhood.”

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