Cole Figus | Staff Reporter
Posted March 12, 2014; 1:21 p.m.
Published Legacy March 11, 2014
Despite conservatives’ general discomfort with homosexuality, they have recently developed a man-crush on Vladimir Putin.
Following the events in Crimea, conservative commentators have been gushing about how strong a leader Putin is, and have been infatuated with shirtless pictures of the Russian president on horses and mystical accounts of Putin allegedly fist-fighting bears and tigers.
This is in sharp contrast to the comparisons of “mom-jeans-wearing” Barack Obama in what is one of the oddest, most adolescent talking points to come from Roger Ailes.
However, besides the burgeoning man-crush, there have also been fervent calls for instantaneous war with Russia.
Obama is a weak leader because the US did not immediately bomb Russia, Fox News said continually, and this, like most Fox talking points, sounds accurate until you think about it… at all. This is unambiguous: reflexive instincts to go to war are weak, childish, self-destructive, and are appallingly crystal-clear signs of terrible leadership.
Hawkish factions in politics are dead wrong almost every time because sending our soldiers to die and be maimed both physically and psychologically in global war on account of the world’s politician class being unable to solve their self-created conflicts is the greatest charade of any species on planet Earth.
One of the biggest mistakes in American history was the pointlessly fought Iraq War, and all of the people who are clamoring for war with Russia had a boner for war then.
They were outright dishonest about the WMD threat, and so, as a result, anybody who feels that the Iraq War was positive for the U.S. or any single human being on the planet other than CEOs of Haliburton (remember, Dick Cheney, the grand instigator of the Iraq War was one) has no role as a contributor to any dialogue on foreign policy.
Because they were so wrong, so fraudulent, and so instrumental in ruining the American hegemony that they are so perennially concerned with up keeping. Because of them America is a hypocrite when President Obama castigates Putin for invading a country on bogus pretenses.
America’s role in the world is not the bomber-in-chief nation. The U.S. narrowly avoided bombing Syria, which would have strengthened Assad’s paranoid fear of American manipulation, and, worse, would have convinced the Syrian people that his paranoia is justified while creating a generation’s worth of future Syrian blowback against the U.S.
And even more insane, increasingly Republicans want to bomb Iran and/or increase economic sanctions.
Stop with the warmongering!
Iran has entered into extraordinarily unprecedented peace talks with the US as a result of moderate president Rouhani’s willingness to reach consensus on its nuclear power program after being elected expressly to change Iran’s pariah state status in the world.
Why would we suddenly get tougher on Iran when they begin to cooperate? Do Republicans ever want peace?
Because of decades of economic pummeling, the Iranian rial is the least valued currency in the world; international cooperation of economic sanctions (not war!) has worked, and Iran has come to the peace talk table!
Republicans’ hard-one for war is so four-hour-plus dangerous that peace apparently is not an option of foreign policy for them.
President Obama has shown strength as a leader for not immediately sending missiles into Russia, and the future will show that the building united, international opposition to Russian aggression will be a much more powerful and lasting solution than a unilateral, juvenile, Cold War-reigniting phallic showoff.
