A Brilliant Case Officer
There’s an amusing line in Jonathan Landay’s article on the Bush Administration’s discovery that Vladimir Putin has no soul.
Bush and his aides "grossly misjudged Putin," considering him "agood guy and one of us," said Michael McFaul of Stanford University’sHoover Institution.
The former KGB officer created that illusionpartly by appearing to share Bush’s political and religiousconvictions, standard tradecraft employed by intelligence officers torecruit spies, he said.
"Putin . . . is a brilliant caseofficer," said Carlos Pasqual, a former senior State Departmentofficial now at The Brookings Institution, a center-left policyorganization in Washington.
What many experts regard as the realPutin — a hard-line, derisive Russian nationalist — was on displayFriday as he greeted visiting Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice andDefense Secretary Robert Gates ahead of talks that failed to break theimpasses over missile defense and other key security issues.
Afterkeeping the U.S. officials waiting for 40 minutes, Putin mocked theirmission in front of reporters and television cameras. [my emphasis]
The suggestion, of course, is that wily Vladimir fooled the poor unsuspecting Bush cronies by misrepresenting who he was.
It’s a nice excuse, I guess. But IMO there is nothing that Putin is currently doing that isn’t utterly consistent with who he was in 2001, when Bush looking into his soul. What has changed is not Putin’s willingness to display his real personality. What has changed is the power dynamic in the relationship. In 2001, oil was cheap and Russia was weak. In later 2001, Putin recognized that the war on terror offered a remarkable opportunity to legitimize his Chechnya campaign, at least in some corners of the Western world. But as the Bush Administration tried to morph the war on terror into the "war to sustain our hegemony by dominating the Middle East" (at the expense of Russian relations with Iraq and the potential expense of Russian cooperation agreements on various issues with Iran), Russia no longer had an interest in playing along. Oh, and did I mention that Bush’s Middle Eastern war contributed to record oil prices, which served as a springboard for Putin’s resurgent authoritarianism?
So it wasn’t so much that Putin hid his true nature. Rather, it’s that the Bushies saw what they wanted to see, without bothering to inquire what was lurking beyond the view immediately in front of their face.
yes. I used to scream at the t.v as they were touting Putin as some kind of Bush side kick. Ugh. Good and evil don’t ever cut it. This is the other disadvantage to all that black and white thinking. If you judge folks in terms of evil and good, you miss the truth. Authoritarians are very easy to fool.
It cuts both ways. Not only do we start conflicts by deeming imperfect people as evil, we put ourselves at great risk by deeming imperfect people as â€goodâ€.
Judgment land is a risky place to live.
Well, the loyal Bushies get taken in by other countries’ spies all the time (the Philippines, Iran, etc.), so why should this be any different?
Condi’s Russia expertise finally paid off, eh? That’s so reassuring, with the only country capable of turning us into a sheet of glass. And Bush saw his soul. Musta been deliriums tremors (DTs).
Ahem! Condi, Bob – all together now:
We are the champions – my friends
And well keep on fighting – till the end –
We are the champions –
We are the champions
No time for losers
cause we are the champions – of the world –
Kevin
As someone whose academic expertise is only 3 degrees of separation removed from Condi’s (though it’s much closer to Maddy Albright’s), I’m not sure that Russia expertise was ever what it was cracked up to be.
Based on the premise of Chris Matthews’ new book, it would appear that Putin has demonstrated the qualities not of an evil person but instead is the standard bearer of a what a successful campaigner really acts like.
you know,
this isn’t the only time the bush/cheney gang saw only what they wanted to see.
it’s one of the defining characteristic of their regime.
â€analytical†is not in their lexicon.
What kind of rube looks into the eyes of a freaking career KGB leader, â€a brilliant case officer†no less, and sees the warm and fuzzy â€soul of a man I can do business withâ€? That would be our glorious leader, and it turns out he was taken advantage of and made to look like a fool. As Condi the brilliant scholar would say, â€Who could have predicted thatâ€?
The WH regime is paying a price for its overweening arrogance; Bush, in saying that he was able to ’look into a man’s soul and come to know it and him’, puts himself on a philosophical par with his god. Now, if I’m not mistaken, the bad god-bodyguard later called Satan was cast out of the Christian heaven for a similar crime. I saw Bush’s arrogance, his hubris, in that statement, and I saw that it would later come back to bite him. Imagine thinking that ex-KGB could possibly have a soul, much less one that meshed with Bush’s. On the other hand, given the fascist totalitarianism toward which this country is hurtling won’t look topologically any different from the Putin-flavored totalitarianism that is developing in Russia. Maybe Bush wasn’t so wrong about their similarities, after all. The only error on Bush’s part was thinking that his fascist utopia would be antithetical to the Russian anti-Capitalist Putin. Of course, if Bush knew what antithetical meant, perhaps he’d have been a different person.
Love ya, EW.
Keep fighting the good fight
Seriously, are we really surprised Bush was made to look like a fool? Really, how hard was that?
The basic thing to know about Russians and a lot of people East of America is that they lie regularly and well as part of their survival in tough societies. Know that and you’re less likely to miss their real politik.
Bush is a putz and Condi is a lapdog. Maybe Gates has a clue, but it’s hard to say since he isn’t usually involved in such foreign diplomacy.
That said, why was Gates involved? Why was he there at all?
and now we know why we shouldn’t elect the three stooges’ dumber brother to be presnit
who coulda predicted that ???
not our resident â€Russian Expertâ€, that’s certain
Well, now we know it’s open season on Bush inside Diplomatic Channels.
After six years of swinging hard, Smirky’s all punched out.
He still talks a mean game, but…
He’s got nothin’, and Nobody Trusts Him.
Bush has Betrayed the World, and now he’s going to hear his own echo in oh so many cultured tones of sarcasm, irony, humor, derision and scorn.
They’ve punked W until he’s got nuthin’, and now they are kicking his no-credit ass to the curb – he’s no longer welcome in the Casino of Power Statecraft.
Another fine post, EW.
I find the Bush-Putin relationship curious, along with the â€pick up the phone and make shit happen†comment to Tony Blair, the â€you’ve covered your ass†comment to the 8/01 CIA briefer, and the Merkel backrub, given what these and other episodes seem to reflect about W’s personality. He appears to genuinely â€trust his gut†i.e. rely on an intuition based on working in campaigns for his dad and hanging around Karl.
In otherwords, W seems to be a genuine naif when confronted by what he doesn’t know — and his ignorance is stunning and dangerous.
Putin was a KGB station chief in BERLIN, of all places — a professional spy and likely no stranger to personally dispensing the kind of brutality that Bush41 and W. dish out through at careful distance.
W. appears fascinated by violence. He is proud of his 140+ execution orders as governor of Texas, proud of his ’bring it on’ militarism. It’s easy to imagine how Putin seduced him.
Actually, didn’t Bush just see in Putin something he wanted to be but his handlers knew he was not going to be: a productive, effective, undemocratic (dangerous) leader. Bush had already been told and fully understood that he wasn’t up to the task of president, that he was a sort of figure head manipulating the public vision away from the Cheney presidency that does resemble Putin’s style. Bush liked Putin because he wanted to be like Putin, but his natural talents(?sic), native intelligence and personal work habits relegated him to the role of disinterested walk-on â€C†actor. After this many years of deliberate degradation of our democracy by the bush/Cheney administration, the recent public recognition of the true nature of Putin is necessary to deflect attention from the similarities between the two governments.
The longer bush/Cheney stay unimpeached, the more deluded Bush becomes- will he become a liability to the real powers that be? Only impeachment can change the dynamics of this artificial construct called the Bush Administration. The fact that impeachment is still not happening means to me– not that the Democratic leadership is cowardly–but that these new powers and accepted abuses of the Constitution are desirable to the Democratic leaders themselves! â€He they didn’t have to tell the truth, why should I?â€
MarkH: â€That said, why was Gates involved? Why was he there at all?â€
go read, three part series on Tom’s Dispatch:
here is part 1:
http://www.tomdispatch.com/pos…..nheritance
Ew,
Off topic, Why has the MSM compleatly blacked out any coverage of Dodds hold on FISA Bill? Does this seem odd to you ? KO did not mention it on Countdown,seem like the Democratic leaders do not want it out there. I can understand that the ’08 canidates might want it blacked out because it makes them look like the shills they are, but I for one was happy to see someone actually do something other than grandstand. I actually sent Dodd a contribution which I never do to any canidate. Your thoughts on this….