A Loser’s Malice: What’s Behind Obama’s Attacks On Putin
By Tyler Durden
Submitted by Michael Jabara Carley via Strategic-Culture.org,
Relations between Russian president Vladimir Putin and US president Barack Obama are poisoned and irretrievably damaged. It’s therefore a good thing that Obama is leaving office on 20 January. Bad US-Russian relations are of course nothing new. Since the Anglo-American war against Iraq in 2003, the US-Russian relationship has been headed downhill. For Obama, it appears that everything has gotten personal. The US president often acts like a petulant adolescent, jealous of a high school rival. You know, the kid who does everything better than he does. The lad takes it badly and won’t let it go. He challenges his nemesis to some new contest at every opportunity only to lose again and again. That’s got to be hard on the ego. Between Obama and Putin there have been many such encounters. Nor can it help that western cartoonists so often ridicule Obama as out of his depth in comparison to Putin.
Let’s consider Obama’s remarks at his last press conference on Friday, 16 December. “The Russians can’t change us or significantly weaken us?, said Obama: “They are a smaller country. They are a weaker country. Their economy doesn’t produce anything that anybody wants to buy, except oil and gas and arms. They don’t innovate?. This was insulting both Putin and his country, but not enough apparently for Obama. “They [the Russians] can impact us if we lose track of who we are. They can impact us if we abandon our values. Mr. Putin can weaken us, just like he’s trying to weaken Europe, if we start buying into notions that it’s okay to intimidate the press, or lock up dissidents, or discriminate against people because of their faith or what they look like?.
Western cartoonists so often ridicule Obama as out of his depth in comparison to Putin
What on earth is Mr. Obama talking about? Intimidate the press? The Moscow newspapers and television media are loaded with “liberals?. Many Russians call them “fifth columnists?. They are “people with ‘more advanced’ worldview[s] who do not tolerate ‘Russian propaganda’ themselves?, according to one colleague in Moscow. But Mr. Putin tolerates them and pays them no mind.
“Lock up dissidents… discriminate against people?? What alternate reality does Mr. Obama live in? Doesn’t produce anything people want to buy? The United States buys rocket engines that it does not now produce at home. Maybe the Americans, a Russian commentator joked, can use high tech trampolines to get into space and do without Russian technology.
In an interview the previous day with the American National Public Radio Obama ranted about Putin. It must have been a rehearsal for his press conference. “This is somebody, the former head of the KGB?, said Obama, “who is responsible for crushing democracy in Russia… countering American efforts to expand freedom at every turn; is currently making decisions that's leading to a slaughter in Syria?. What stupefying hypocrisy; what utter nonsense. Putin was a lieutenant colonel in the KGB, but never its …read more
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