General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Magical thinking [View all]Flaxbee
(13,661 posts)Better than we are, because the Kremlin doesn't tolerate a bunch of brain dead bloodthirsty warmongers (Wolfowitz and Lieberman being two of them on CNN last night) spouting off nonsense. Yes, freedom of speech is wonderful, but it does hinder the ability to present a unified front. I much prefer the first amendment, but the Russians do have an advantage when it comes to staying on message.
Honestly, if we worked with them more, I believe we could have a much more peaceful world. The Russians can exert tremendous influence worldwide; I'd love to have Russia working with us to contain China. So many politicians and current military leaders still have the Cold War mindset, that the Russians are our enemies (after all, the military needs a powerful enemy to justify its bloated, mendacious self). But the Russians played extremely important roles multiple times during the Cold War in preventing nuclear catastrophe.
Now, some of their domestic policy is abhorrent. But it is such blind idol worship to think this was all Obama's grand plan, and it underestimates the Russians. I think Putin et al were watching this situation extremely closely, and when they saw a way to divert this idiotic plan of attack and allow the US to save face, they moved on it. If there was a solution that did not allow us to back away from the bombs without losing face, we wouldn't have gone for it. Because it has been said many times by Kerry et al that we HAD to do this because we said we would and we couldn't make empty threats. NOT because it was the right thing to do, but because every Republican would scream that Obama was a wimp if he didn't go forward with it. And that might hurt the 2014 elections. Yes, I do believe that's what this was all about.
The Russians deserve a hell of a lot of credit for this. We should have been working with them all along. Imagine if the rest of the world refused to deal with the US because we have capital punishment. We have some awful policies; Russia has some awful policies; that doesn't mean we should not be allies to prevent catastrophe.
The Obama administration deserves a hell of a lot of credit for taking the offered olive branch (and hopefully not going ahead with this foolishness anyway). You know damn well Bush wouldn't have done so.