Vlad Must Go
Posted on December 12, 2011
Vlad Must Go
The Occupy Wall Street movement has moved to Russia. How is that for some irony?
The protest movement that started in Cairo, swept through almost every Middle East Country, made its way through, Paris, London and New York has finally showed up at the Kremlin.
If I were Vladimir Putin, I would be a bit nervous.
Putin tried to steal the election for the Duma, and the Russian people called foul.
Good for them. Bad on Putin.
Putin is a thug. The single worst thing George W. Bush said during his 8 years in office (and he said a lot of stupid things), had to do with seeing something he stared into Putin’s eyes. What W. should have seen was a KGB thug. Who knows what he actually did see?
I understand why Putin had been popular in the former Soviet Union.
He projected strength in a country that likes that kind of thing. He would parade around without his shirt off and flex his muscles for the cameras. And when the cameras were turned off, he would send out his muscle to kill enterprising journalists or jail rich capitalists who didn’t do exactly what he wanted.
The Russians have been useful in the war on terror, so official American policy has been to look the other way when comes to Vlad the impaler.
But that official government policy is insane.
Russia remains a bigger threat to us than any terror group and the longer Mr. Putin stays in office, the less secure we should feel.
The Russians might be helpful in Afghanistan (which contains its own set of ironies) but they are downright destructive when it comes to Iran. And we might be getting into a war faster in Iran than we know. (In fact, we might already be at war with them).
Putin doesn’t like it when people protest against him. The KGB doesn’t care much for protest. So we will see how this all proceeds.
My guess is that the Russian protestors will soon feel more than the back of the hand of the FSB, and that the crackdown will cause chaos in Moscow for months.
Time will tell if Mr. Putin survives all of this tumult. My guess is that he does, and that would be a shame.