After Ukraine tragedy Vladimir Putin should shackle his dogs of war

[SidDithers]

Rather than issue a hollow appeal for a ceasefire in Ukraine, Vladimir Putin could have stopped the conflict in a breath by ordering his proxies to end it.

Whoever pulled the trigger, Russian President Vladimir Putin can’t dodge responsibility for the rocket attack on a Malaysia Airlines flight that left 298 people from a dozen nations dead. And Prime Minister Stephen Harper is right to say so in the bluntest terms.

At the end of the day Russia’s “military aggression and illegal occupation of Ukraine … is at the root of the ongoing conflict in the region,” as Harper noted. Only Putin can shackle his dogs of war.

Putin’s cynical, serial assaults — bullying Kyiv, seizing Crimea, sending troops across the border, fanning Russian ethnic unrest in eastern Ukraine, arming pro-Moscow separatists — have spawned the chaotic military conflict that led to this ghastly loss of life including that of Canadian medical student Andrei Anghel. Putin’s fingerprints are all over the smoking ruins of Flight 17.

In a chilling report to the United Nations Security Council on Friday American diplomats said they had concluded that the plane — flying in an international air corridor — was likely downed by pro-Moscow separatists firing a sophisticated SA-11 surface-to-air missile, possibly helped by Russian personnel. While tentative pending a full probe, it was a damning indictment of Putin’s reckless hand. It also raises the troubling question of whether Kyiv is fighting domestic insurgents or regular Russian forces.

http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorials/2014/07/18/after_ukraine_tragedy_vladimir_putin_should_shackle_his_dogs_of_war_editorial.html

Sid

[geek tragedy]

1. Time for him to take his medicine, but he won't. nt

[Warren Stupidity]

2. Or what?

Suppose he doesn't. What next?

[geek tragedy]

5. Comprehensive sanctions like Iran is getting.

Maximizing economic damage to Russia's arms, banking, and energy sectors as well as its overall economy.

[Warren Stupidity]

13. ok. fine. Suppose we do that and Russia annexes eastern ukraine.

now what?

[geek tragedy]

14. Then let them try to hold it.

The lads from ISIS et al are going to be looking for a way to strike at Assad's friends. Nice porous border for them to cross and compare notes with the Chechens. They'll get a taste of Afghanistan all over again.

And, of course, we would not have to do anything. Just sit back and watch.

Europeans would stop buying his gas on an accelerated basis (if the Ukrainians would even allow it to pass through their pipelines. Though it probably would cooperate with its fellow NATO and EU members at that point).

Russian oligarchs hold a lot of real estate in the US and Europe. All of that would be forfeited.

Russia would be reduced to being China's gas station, and Putin would report to Beijing.

[Warren Stupidity]

15. you need to look at a map.

So your solution it seems includes using ISIS as a proxy force against Russia. Aside from the geographic problems, this seems like a program that just might have some unintended consequences. Are you sure that is what you think should be done?

[geek tragedy]

16. Oh heavens we should not arm or provide them aid in any way .

But certainly a truce could be arranged--we stop all drone attacks, they stop all attacks against NATO targets, nudge nudge wink wink.

Also, Russia would still wind up being China's gas station under that scenario that way. Not sure how being a client state of China's figures into his master plan.

[Warren Stupidity]

17. "or aid them in any way" other than for example a cease fire?

But indeed you are proposing yet another alliance of convenience with lunatic wahhabi jihadists, I mean, what could possibly go wrong with that?

You still need to consult a map.

[geek tragedy]

18. I think a policy wherein we stop drone attacks

and they stop attacking NATO targets would be a win-win situation, no? Drone strikes are bad. Terrorist attacks against NATO nations are bad.

We leave them alone, they leave us alone . It's how things should be.

Question for you is: why doesn't Putin grab East Ukraine?

[WinkyDink]

3. And so should the U.S. The Illegal Invasion of Iraq put paid to any U.S. moral superiority.

[geek tragedy]

7. Article is from a Canadian paper. nt

[Igel]

9. Imagine this.

A man burst into a restaurant and sees his wife with an older man. He pulls out a gun, lets loose a string of insults and accusations that takes 20 seconds, then shoots her and nobody else. He gets sentenced to live in jail, but serves 30 years because it was his only offense, he was a model prisoner, and he appears to have reformed.

He is released and meets up with his daughter, now 35 years old, at a restaurant.

Just then, a man bursts into the restaurant and sees the woman with her father, an older man. The man pulls out a gun lets loose a string of insults about his wife seeing an older man that takes 20 seconds, and seems to be about to shoot.

You have two choices:
1. The father sits there and watches as the man shoots his daughter. After all, the man has no claim to moral superiority, and it's not about the morality of the situation, it's not about the morality of the guy with the gun, it's not about the morality of the daughter's being killed. It's all about the man's morality. Therefore, the only legitimate thing for the father to do is passively observe.

2. The father uses anything at hand to stop that putative shooter, including rushing him with a steak knife to try to kill him. You claim his illegal shooting of his wife put paid to any moral superiority the man may have, but in retrospect reconsider since the man's moral "essence" says nothing about the morality of stopping a murder. The father's stopping, even if it means killing, the gunman is moral and the father thereby commits a moral act.

We're not that important. This claim of "you don't have any moral responsibility, bugger off" is a nice kludge to prevent action that we don't we don't want taken. Perhaps it's a distraction from what's *really* important. Perhaps we think that the other side is actually moral but we don't want to put up with the crap that comes from making that claim. Perhaps all we can see is our own faults (esp. if when we say "we" or we Americans say "the US" we really mean "them, not us", bringing the fault to our neighborhood and then pompously depositing it on our neighbors' steps).

[Cha]

21. The Star is a Canadian Paper so they can say what they want. And, President Obama can say

what he wants on the subject too. "Putin Should Shackle his Dogs of War". Who the fuck would disagree with that? Putin?

[socialist_n_TN]

4. Why yes. The people in the eastern and southern part of Ukraine........

should just roll over and be HAPPY to be shot by the Right Sector "National Guard". All in the name of IMF austerity and privatization.

[geek tragedy]

6. The scumbag separatists aren't fighting

rightwingers or capitalism. They are servants of rightwing nationalism and Russia's oligarchs. This hype about protection from Right Sector is nothing but propaganda churned out by the Russian oligarchy and its agents.

They are nationalistic goons and thugs, not socialist freedom fighters. Rooting for them is like rooting for Cliven Bundy.

[Igel]

10. Au contraire.

The Communist Party and the Party of Regions have both strongly supported the DPR and LPR. In the LPR the entire Communist side of the local oblast' council went over to support the LPr as a bloc. (They do things as blocs, by and large. Lockstep, party line. Ukraine isn't very de-Sovietized.)

Bolotov, the LPR leader, has insisted on wide-sweeping programs of nationalization in LPR territory, although he's had a heck of a time actually accomplishing it. A lot of businesses, NGOs, and educational institutions have been formally taken over--sometimes called "raskulachivanie", which is the Stalinist-era Russian term for "de-kulaking" a farm or area--and since a lot of the real property records are in their hands it's going to be a bear to reconstruct who owns what. The property records include names and addresses, making finding enemies easier, as well as IDing targets for take-over or liquidation. Making it less onerous will be the ban he early imposed on any transfer of real property.

The Donetsk People's Republic, as far as I can tell from reading what's available online, isn't clearly so pro-Communist. It's hard to tell with Borodai, their official premier. Gubarev, the "people's mayor"--remember, these are all self-appointed--is openly for collectivization. Strelkov is Stalinist in many ways, although it's hard to say if he's for a return to collectivization. He's authoritarian, and if you're going to go all totalitarian and be anti-fascist that means you're probably pro-Commmunist. That's what "anti-fascist" often actually means in Russian.

The CP of Russia has actively raised money for the groups and helped fund them. It's Duma members have stridently called for helping the LPR and DPR. It's very strange, seeing them on Putin's side, but it's clear that they're fellow-travellers. They just have overlapping interests with Putin.

And it's been downright bone-chilling to hear strident Communists calling for fighting capitalism and fascism, and at the same time being ardent Russian-ethnic nationalists and strong supporters of Russian Orthodoxy. (The intersection of the three movements isn't huge, but important. There are a lot with two traits: Communist nationalists called 'natsbols' for nationalistic bol'sheviks, Communist Orthodox, and nationalist Orthodox.)

It's easy to so focus on one ingredient of this toxic brew to miss the other ingredients.

[geek tragedy]

11. Ethnonationalism is a defining trait of fascism.

Keeping people divided by race/ethnicity is how TPTB keep the structures of oppression in power, according to every socialist/Marxist reading I've been given.

The CPs in this case are the useful idiots of Putin and the oligarchs. The only thing they have in common is Ethnonationalism and a commitment to authoritarianism.

Kafkaesque.

[Cha]

22. Of which too many on this board have been sucked into the vortex.

[The Magistrate]

8. Exactly, Sir

[rickyhall]

12. I'd say #2 even if it meant stopping the bullet meant for the daughter

As for the Ukraine, would have been better had "we" not gotten involved is the first place; i.e. the Coup

[RobertEarl]

19. After Iraq tragedy US should shackle its dogs of war

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025268244

[JEB]

20. I'm sure we can sell arms to somebody.

So buy some stock and relax by the pool until it fills with blood.