Members of the Washington establishment were quick to denounce Vladimir Putin's op ed article in Thursday's New York Times questioning the legitimacy and legality of a U.S. attack on Syria. The White House quickly dismissed his column as "irrelevant" and a sideshow to the real issues at stake. Many tweeters and "texters" have criticized the Times for daring to publish a column by the Russian President that is critical of President Obama and U.S. policy abroad.There is an unspoken sub-text at play here: what President Putin said in his column is pretty much what American liberals and leftists have been saying about the United States since the 1960s. From the standpoint of American liberals, there is nothing the least bit new or controversial in anything Mr. Putin wrote in his column.
Putin made three general points. First, it is contrary to international law for a member of the United Nations to attack another country without approval from the U.N. Security Council. Second, the major powers should avoid armed intervention into internal conflicts and civil wars in other countries. Such interventions are likewise illegitimate under international law. They are also ineffective and typically result only in an escalation in the level of violence. Third, the United States is not an "exceptional" nation, or no more exceptional than any other nation is, and this belief promotes a sense that the United States is not bound by conventional rule of international conduct
Where have we heard Mr. Putin's principles before? They are in fact basic articles of faith among American liberals who have been saying for decades that the U.S. should not use military force without United Nations authorization, we should not intervene in civil wars abroad, and the idea of American exceptionalism is a myth used to cover up crimes against women and minorities at home and the poor and oppressed abroad. Barack Obama at one time or another has expressed support for all three of Mr. Putin's principles.
It would be a good thing if American liberals, in their zeal to defend a liberal president, would in fact shelve for good their doctrines about diversity, multiculturalism, and American imperialism. But their attacks on Mr. Putin will undoubtedly prove to be but a momentary lapse in their ideological campaign to re-make the United States into a multi-cultural utopia. At some point in the future, probably when a Republican next occupies the White House, they will dust off Mr. Putin's principles and put them into play once more.