No, We Don't Need Russia for Anything, It Never Helps

It's funny when you can see right on the front page of the New York Times not only one of their witless "progressive" op-eds like "To Save Syria, We Need Russia"  -- written by a long-time pro-Kremlin Sovietologist Dimitry Simes and pragmatist Paul Saunders of the Center for National Interest  -- but we also see the news story that undercuts it "Russia Dismisses a Role in Helping to Oust Assad". Thanks, reality check! Looks like Taylor Townsend is bouncing that one right back across the net!

I wish I had a dollar for every time at the UN in the last 30 years I've heard someone tell me that "we need Russia" for this or that thing -- I'd be retired and growing nasturtiums by now.

And every time I would hear these earnest calls, as this or that diplomat or UN worker or NGO cadre would look into the middle distance and sigh about this or that bad thing Russia was doing -- jailing dissidents, bombarding Chechnya, invading Georgia -- I would hear how we just had to keep good relations with Russia because we "needed them" to get progress done on Iran or Kosovo or Israel -- or even some seemingly little thing like having a human rights component of the UN peace-keeping force in Haiti.

Then after the "needing Russia" stuff was over -- nobody would ever seem to stick around to see that when you sold this or that person or issue down the river because you "needed Russia" -- you didn't get the thing you sought on Russia anyway. Almost never.

Look at all the resetting and coddling Obama did to get Medvedev to "help" on Iran. He kinda, sorta did, but then it all reversed.

Now it's Syria.

Like many others agonized by the worst carnage in our time since Bashir's assault on the Darfurians,  I've been trying to raise Syria where I could. But here's the reality: we can't start a fourth war with a Muslim country. We have left Iraq, but it's not really over; we remain in Libya and four of our diplomats were killed and the situation is basically deteriorating there; we haven't left Afghanistan yet even though we're supposed to.

Yet along comes the responsibility-to-protect crowd, who always take their business to the US and never to Russia or China (where they probably couldn't even get meetings) and tells us we must shoulder one more burden, and not even with "leading from behind," but leading -- period -- and invade Syria, or create a supposed "safe corridor" (everyone having forgotten the "lessons learned" from Goma and Srebrenica).

Meanwhile, the situation in Syria disintegrates along the lines that everyone said it would disintegrate if we didn't get involved -- and some said it would disintegrate if we *did* get involved, i.e. more civilian deaths and more extremism and more Al Qaeda. The leftists and "progressives" and international America-haters on Twitter constantly tell us that we "created" Osama bin Ladn because we helped the mujahideen fight the Soviets. That's actually not true, as even Wikipedia will tell you, and it also takes place in a completely morally bankrupt vaccum -- leaving out that the Soviets wound up killing a million civilians and displacing hundreds of thousands more, and that the right thing to do was to stand up to them as they tried to acquire another impoverished "stan".

So just as they actually never did with Afghanistan back in the 1980s, the moral crusaders of the world are asking the US to "do something" and not stand idly by about Syria, and just as was the case with Afghanistan back then, we are hesitant because it means fighting the Russians.

Because the Russians are the ones who give all the arms to Assad and just as importantly, prop him up everywhere in international meetings and give  him political cover. And they don't change that script even when they play games like pretend they're going to loosen their grip on him for the sake of the international community's concerns, and this gets reported as them changing their position when in fact they haven't one whit.

Simes basically makes the point that we should stop thinking of "Russia helping" as "Russia just doing America's bidding".

Like many lefties and loonies not as smart as he is, Simes self-righteously intones the figure of "100,000 people killed in Iraq". The overwhelming number of these people were not killed by American troops -- you know, like Soviet troops killed the overwhelming number of civilians in Afghanistan in their day. The overwhelming number of people killed in Iraq were killed by militants and terrorists, many of them supported by that Iran that Russia was always supposed to be helping with, and that Syria -- ditto. Just like the overwhelming number of civilians in Afghanistan today are killed by the Taliban and their allies. The correlation of forces and those responsible for killing them are really starkly visible once you take off your anti-American one-way uni-focals.

You can argue all you like about what the US didn't or didn't do wrong in Iraq. Pro-tip: stop telling everyone like it's news that no weapons of mass destruction were found there. We get all that. I was one of those people who took part in an anti-war march when Iraq was invaded because I didn't think it was the best idea. Meanwhile, YOU haven't explained why most of the mass killing done after that epiphany you think you alone have discovered was done by terrorists. You can't go on endlessly blaming the US and the collapse of the Iraqi army or government which didn't reall quite collapse anyway for these deaths. The terrorists could have stopped at any time and solved their grievances differently. They didn't.

But then I want you -- Dimitri Simes and New York Times liberals and all those on Twitter with this perspective -- take full and complete and total ownership of Russia's involvement in Syria, and full and complete and total ownership of all the civilian casualties.

And that's what I think we all need to do more of, and why I confronted even Sen. McCain, who has good reasons for taking a position for more action in Syria, to make Russia have the ownership of this war. Fully. By telling them it's all theirs. Not by asking them to help. But by granting them full and complete ownership of it.

Because there isn't anything we need Russia for. They are not doing a blasted thing to help anywhere, anyhow, and are only doing more and more terrible things.

So I would make a big, bold shrug and tell them that if they want ownership of the Syrian account, hey, it's all theirs.

This would not require consigning Syrian civilians to their deaths. We've already consigned Syrian civilians to their deaths, watching generally with little more than a back pat for the OIC or fervent wishes for Kofi Annan or Brahimi to become the 16th member of the Security Council, as I call these figures the special envoy or the fact-finder who comes back from his travels and tells them all what to think.

This would not require doing anything different than what we're doing. We're helping the opposition a little -- but that isn't enough to win. We're paying for some humanitarian assistance, but humanitarians don't have much access. We're holding Turkey's hand, sort of.

In other words, behaving with feeble helplessness because we are pinned down by three other wars in Muslim countries. Therefore, I'm for handing this all over to Russia, a modern state with a Christian heritage in the G8 and member of the Council of Europe, because they are only pinned down with one war against Muslims in their own country. But in doing so, we shouldn't make this look like it's a joint-venture. It's not.

So I'm all for making Russia take "exclusive, fully-paid, royalty-free, worldwide, license in perpetuity" over the Syrian issue, like the California terms of service often say.

You want ownership? You have ownership. Na te.

This is not cruel to Syrian civilians (we aren't helping them and aren't going to do much for them anyway except help some flee, so let's not be silly). This isn't even cruel to Russia -- they have oil money, they have skilled NGOs that don't need development help and shouldn't be funded abroad by foreign agencies, they have a caring socially-active Russian Orthodox Church *cough* -- let them taste all the sweetness of the Middle East they wish to control.

It's really about going on and doing what we're doing -- which is a little of this and that -- and Turkey -- and changing the rhetoric full tilt so the glaring eyes of the world -- especially the world on Twitter -- turn on Moscow as they seldom do. You want a multipolar world? Here's your pole.

America should not be "partnering" with Russia to get the outcome Dimitri Simes suggests like getting "a rebel leader who is not an Islamist extremist" --as the butcher of Grozny defines it -- and ensuring him the fate of, oh, Maskhadov or Najibullah. And if we're going to have another Egypt-like situation, let's let the country that supplied all the armaments for the toppled dictator pay for the reconstruction and the political aftermath.

Is this American isolationism? Oh, no. I'm for doing this in the sturdiest multilateral fashion possible, complete with Brahimi reports. I'm for handing Russia the pen on Syria, and asking them to write the resolution and ensuring no vetos. Let them take ownership over Syria, the way the Russians tried to get ownership of Iraq put into US hands via the Security Council -- and failed (a motion to censure the US invasion failed, and then later the UN went in and got their people bombed by terrorists and then had to withdraw).

Ownership. The Russians will find this a glorious thing. We should find the people who sell arms to Assad via Russian exporters and add them to the Magnitsky List.

 

 

 

 

Comments

[Mr. X]

"So just as they actually never did with Afghanistan back in the 1980s, the moral crusaders of the world are asking the US to "do something" and not stand idly by about Syria, and just as was the case with Afghanistan back then, we are hesitant because it means fighting the Russians." Your tweeps, @ReginaldQuill, and your pal Not So Streetwise Professor included Catherine. All of whom have insisted we need to 'do something in Syria' for a long time though SWP in particular has no freakin' clue what an earlier Obama intervention in Syria would've looked like. And CointelproReggie has always disingenuously insisted he didn't want direct U.S. intervention while defaming all those who said NATO's actions were leading up to precisely that outcome once it became undeniable Al-Qaeda jihadi lunatics were taking over the 'Free Syrian Army' our beloved Saudi and Qatari friends created. Then of course Washington will insist it has to invade Syria to save Syria from the Al-Qaeda thugs Washington's allies empowered.

And while @ReginaldQuill pro is pushing his 'Russians control all neo-Confederate anti-war agitproppers in the U.S.' bullshit pro-BigSis conspiracy theory, he can note that this week Brother Alex Jones came out and condemned RT for carrying pro-gun control hysteria water and so did now apparent non-RT guest Paul Craig Roberts (RT dropped Jones a while back).

But I'm sure he'll say, much like Mr. Jones hosting Joel Skousen who created the 'eternal USSR = faked collapse of Russia" theory along with a few defectors who wanted to stay relevant post 1991, that it's all part of the elaborate subterfuge etc etc etc. No sometimes when people say they're coming for your guns and then say they don't mean to violate your 2nd Amendment right they in fact do intend to do what they said they would do.

[Mr. X]

And I don't give a damn if you call me tinfoil hat wearer, we cannot have One World Government so long as 300 million privately held firearms remain in the hands of Americans. If it takes a thousand prozac heads or more MK Ultra grads being turned loose against schools than can possibly be created, nonetheless the forces of evil will do their damndest to give it a try.

And again, why can't other nations besides the U.S. pick up the slack and adopt Russian kids? And why isn't Russia within its rights to finally slap down Washington for its hypocrisy and lies and arrogance in presuming to judge human rights in the whole world while killing off rights one drone strike and TSA/state police sexual assault at a time?

[Mr. X]

"Ownership. The Russians will find this a glorious thing. We should find the people who sell arms to Assad via Russian exporters and add them to the Magnitsky List." And every last blood stained criminal involved in Operation Fast and Furious starting with Eric Holder himself should be banned from ever setting foot in the Russian Federation. M'k?