But there are two important differences that weaken our hand. First, the United States does not have the same moral authority as it did in the last century. As ambassador, I found it difficult to defend our commitment to sovereignty and international law when asked by Russians, “What about Iraq?” Some current practices of American democracy also do not inspire observers abroad. To win this new conflict, we must restore the United States as a model.
Michael McFaul, Former Ambassador to Russia. New York Times 3/23/14
It is a sad time when it becomes acceptable practice in the respected media to compare the ruthless land grab of Putin with our attempt to support a democracy in Iraq. This train of thought originates from the rejection of morals in the public affairs of our country today. The Left has become so afraid of offending anyone that they have refused to accept the responsibility of passing judgement on any action other than our own. The behavior of a foreign country cannot be judged until we contrast it with our own, but we are always held to a impossibly high standard in which right and wrong play no part. How can we judge Putin when we did something “similar” somewhere else? It doesn’t matter what our intentions, outcomes or motives were. Only that we once invaded a country.
The Iraq War has been debated to death over the past decade, but the differences between it and Putin’s actions in the Ukraine are clear to anyone who wants to apply the commonly accepted model of Right vs Wrong.
Even though many people rail against what happened in Iraq, I have yet to hear a single person speak out in support of Saddam Hussein as a person or a leader. Even the most rabid anti-war protesters refuse to make a common cause with him as they do with Castro. Hussein was an evil person who terrorized his people and waged war for sport. If you think our war in Iraq is bad, try learning about the Iran-Iraq War.
The tyranny that Saddam Hussein indulged in is contrasted clearly in the Ukraine where the wannabe tyrant was driven from control of the government by a popular uprising of the people.
The people triumphed in Kiev and we made use of our military against Saddam, but the goal was the same; remove a dictator and support democracy. Putin has done the opposite: he supported the dictator against the people he ruled over and when the dictator was forced from power, Putin stole the land he wanted. I know of no parallel in Iraq, but as we know, the Left refuses to pass judgement, so stealing land from a struggling Republic is the same as ousting a tyrant and inviting democracy.
The contrast is obvious to anyone who will look at the situation objectively, but Mr. Mcfaul and his kind are too nice to offend anyone, so they refuse to point out the blatant wrongness of Putin’s actions. Mr. Mcfaul’s failure to speak when confronted by the Russian’s mention of Iraq is embarrassing. Putin doesn’t care about what happened in Iraq, he isn’t using it as a model for his behavior, he is a bully who is taking what he wants and knows he can because the only country that can stop him is too busy trying to be unobjectionable. Bringing up Iraq in a debate is clearly an attempt to change the conversation and push a weak minded diplomat into a sputtering mess. A diplomat who then decides to quit his post and take to the press to blame his own country for setting the bad example that Putin is embracing.
Mr. McFaul says that we cannot speak about Democracy because we have had such a poor record lately, but I don’t know what events he is referring to since the Leftst mind has so many bogeymen of Republican tyranny. Either way, the perfect time of our pure conscience is an illusion. There has never been a time when America was wholly correct in every action we took. We have made plenty of mistakes through our history. Even as we led the fight against Fascism we were oppressing people in our own country. No country is perfect, but using that as an excuse to ignore the evil designs of a dictator is a much more egregious sin.
The most perplexing part of the Left’s attitude towards the enemies of the United States is how they excuse or ignore the actions that would result in a full fledged panic attack if they occurred here. Think of Putin’s actions against gays and Iran’s behavior against women or China’s genocide of women. While they ignore the shocking human rights violations of these countries, they worry about Voter ID laws here or whether employees can get free birth control. Their obsessive need to prove how much better they are than the masses by refusing to pass judgment causes them to abandon those they claim to care about.
The greatest sin that can be committed by a country is not passing judgement against evil, it is standing idly by while evil spreads.
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