Putin: A Plea for Caution From Russia

This. If you were looking for a reason to support the war, that it goes against Russia's interests is a pretty good one. Reminding people of that seems unwise. Putin would be smart to distance himself from it, since he must know the American people dislike him and consider Russian interests to be a threat.

That the rational thing to do as a reader is to ignore his identity and examine his arguments is mostly irrelevant, since that's not actually what people do. I suspect it's a miscalculation.

Edit: minor changes for clarity

China. You are forgetting about China.

"The law is still the law, and we must follow it whether we like it or not."

The irony of Putin saying this cannot be understated. This entire editorial is dripping with it.

For those of you buying into his rhetoric, remember that Putin is the head of a "virtual mafia state" [1] and a government of thugs who are too busy stealing the wealth generated by Russia's natural resources to pursue the eternal dream of Russia as a global hegemon on par with the United States. The Russian state has assassinated journalists [2] and jailed political opponents with impunity while the bureaucracy (now intertwined with organized crime) steals money at an alarming rate [3]. They don't even bother to hide it anymore (Egregious example: Magnitsky [4] and Litvinenko [5]).

I hate the idea of the US getting involved with a civil war on the other side of the world and Putin is right in his logic, but as an immigrant from Russia I can't help but feel I'm reading the same propaganda but with a translator. If at this point, Putin sounds reasonable and is starting to look like the better of two devils, we're in deep shit.

[1] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/dec/01/wikileaks-cable...

[2] There's a whole damn wikipedia article dedicated to this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_journalists_killed_in_R...

[3] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/24/russia-fifth-of-def...

[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Magnitsky

[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrey_Lugovoy

Edit: To clarify, yes this is emotional and ad hominem. But come on, how many of you thought bombing Syria was a good idea to begin with? How many were entirely unaware of the US government's terrible record of following international law? This article is only on the front page of HN because of its author and it bears remembering how Putin's actions have spoken far louder than his words.

>you can't understand it with intellect and can only believe in it (which is a classic bit of Russian poetry internalized by pretty much everyone)

It's not poetry, it's a self critical fable. It's so obvious too, "you can't understand it" because it's not logical. This is in line with everyone being proud of how Russian roads are the worst in the world. This particular attitude of being exceptional, regardless if it's exceptionally corrupt or drunk, is perpendicular to the concept of exceptionalism by the virtue of being chosen by God as special people. The concept of American self-righteousness does not exist in Russia the way it does in US.

>Putin has the knack for coming off as fairly reasonable to the western audience, but to someone who was born and raised in the former Soviet Union this reads like something from the Onion.

I'm curious, were you born and raised in the former Soviet Union?

Irony, you say? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

I agree with you, of course - Putin is by all accounts a monster, and he has no moral standing whatsoever. That doesn't mean he's wrong.