Putin the realist versus Bush the utopian

At a news conference at the G-8 summit in St. Petersburg, President Bush, describing to reporters his meeting with Russian president Vladimir Putin, reproached Russia for failing to live up to democratic ideals. “I talked about my desire to promote institutional change in parts of the world like Iraq where there’s a free press and free religion, and I told him that a lot of people in our country would hope that Russia would do the same thing.”

Putin replied to Bush’s criticism by knocking it out of the park: “We certainly would not want to have the same kind of democracy as they have in Iraq, I will tell you quite honestly.”

According to the AP, “Bush’s face reddened as he tried to laugh off the remark.” Then Bush essayed his own comeback, which was not in the same league as Putin’s. “Just wait,” Bush said about Iraq.

And how long are we to wait? Read this, also from the AP:

The Army’s top uniformed officer said Friday he did not believe the United States was losing the war in Iraq, but declined to say the nation was winning.

Americans should brace for a long, dangerous fight against terrorism, said Gen. Peter Schoomaker, the Army’s chief of staff.

“I believe that we are closer to the beginning … than we are to the end,” he said during a luncheon on Capitol Hill sponsored by the Defense Forum Foundation.

When asked whether the military was winning in Iraq, Schoomaker paused before telling the audience of mostly congressional staffers: “I don’t think we’re losing.”

Of course we’re not “losing” in Iraq, since obviously the other side doesn’t have the ability to defeat us. The question is not whether we’re losing, but whether we’re winning. And, as I repeated ad nauseam at this site in 2005, 2004, and even 2003, we were not and are not winning and, given our policy, there was and is no prospect of our winning or even any logical possibility of our winning. I have kept saying this, even as the Bush administration and the entire apparatus of American mainstream conservatism have kept announcing that we were and are winning, or that we were and are at the turning point, or that the turning point was and is just around the corner, even as, from time to time, some high-ranking general would admit that our efforts in Iraq were and are going nowhere.

That Bush would tell Putin that he should “just wait” for democracy in Iraq is bitterly ironic. Did anyone ever imagine that a U.S. president would advise a Russian leader to “just wait” for the results of America’s next Five Year Plan?

* * *

Paul K. writes:

One of the things that is remarkable about this story is that Bush would be so utterly clueless as to bring up Iraq as an example for Russia to follow. That Putin would respond as he did is only natural.

It’s as if a friend who was grossly obese told you you looked like you had put on a few pounds. “Worry about yourself!” would be the obvious response.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at July 15, 2006 10:53 AM | Send