The World's Silliest Empire

[JohnyCanuck]

Dmitry Orlov, the author of the following blog post, is a Russian-American engineer. He moved with his family to the US from Russia at the age of 12 and completed his high school and university education in the USA. He claims that the signs of economic and social decline and decay along with the lack of competent leadership which he sees today in the US is comparable to the situation in the USSR just prior to its own collapse and dissolution.

The World's Silliest Empire

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But it was Putin's speech that laid out the Empire's silliness for all to see when he scolded the US for making a bloody mess of the Middle East with its ham-handed interventions. The oft-repeated quote is “Do you understand what you have done?” but that's not quite right. The Russian «Вы хоть понимаете теперь, чего вы натворили?» can be more accurately translated as “How can you even now fail to understand what a mess you have made?” Words matter: this is not how one talks to a superpower before an assembly of the world's leaders; this is how one scolds a stupid and wayward child. In the eyes of the whole world, this made the Empire look rather silly.

What happened next is that Russia announced the start of its bombing campaign against all manner of terrorists in Syria (and perhaps Iraq too; the Iraqi request is in Putin's in-box). What's notable about this bombing campaign is that it is entirely legal. The legitimate, elected government of Syria asked Russia for help; the campaign was approved by the Russian legislature. On the other hand, the bombing campaign that the US has been conducting in Syria is entirely illegal. There are exactly two ways to legally bomb the territory of another country: 1. an invitation from that country's government and 2. a UN Security Council resolution. The US has not obtained either of them.

Why is this important? Because the UN, with its Security Council, was instituted to prevent war, by making it difficult for nations to engage each other militarily without all sorts of international economic and political repercussions. After World War II it was thought that wars are rather nasty and that something should be done to prevent them. But the US feels that this is rather unnecessary. When a Russian correspondent (Gayane Chichakyan from RT) asked the White House press secretary under what legal authority the US was bombing Syria, he at first pretended to not understand the question, then babbled incoherently, looking rather silly. You see, the US likes to fight wars (or rather, its military contractors like to fight wars, because that's how they make money, and they happen to own a big piece of the US government). But the US can't win any wars, and that makes its entire war effort rather silly (in a murderous sort of way).

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Ok, how about continuously prattling on about “freedom and democracy”—in the Middle East, after throwing the whole region into chaos through their brain-dead interventions? The only voice of reason in the US seems to be that of Donald Trump, who recently declared that the Middle East was more stable under Saddam Hussein, Moammar Khaddafi and Bashar al Assad. Indeed it was. The fact that the only non-silly politician left in the US is Trump—that bloviating moneybag—sets a rather high bar for silliness for the country as a whole.

http://cluborlov.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/the-worlds-silliest-empire.html

[uhnope]

1. world's silliest comparison nt