About Putin's New York Times Editorial

At first, I did not read the September 11 editorial article that the New York Times printed that was written by Russian president Vladimir Putin, focusing on threatened U.S. military action against the Syrian regime.  All  I had been hearing, though, for the last few days, was how insulting he was to America and our president.  This was chiefly coming from the torrent of conservatives who, in the midst of an international crisis, have found little better to do themselves than to concentrate on ripping apart Obama for his ongoing handling of the situation.  Apparently, THAT'S not insulting to America and the President...but a foreign leader who obviously would have his own nation's interests to advance and would naturally entertain differing opinions IS.  I had been intrigued by the level of animosity leveled at Putin, especially considering how his proposal to alleviate the clamor for an American military strike that involved Syria turning over all of its chemical weapons has been taken up by our side and is apparently headed for agreement and implementation.  Shouldn't we instead thank the Russian president for his positive participation and see where peaceful diplomacy leads us before we blow everything up into smithereens, creating God knows what consequences down the road for us and the people we are proposing to help?

So I decided this morning to read Putin's op-ed piece and am left scratching my head as to why anyone would find it insulting or objectionable.  His tone was conciliatory and respectful, not at all arrogant as he has been accused.  His talking points were largely the same talking points, albeit more elegantly and cogently expressed, as those I have heard from both liberals and conservatives here in the United States who oppose American military intervention in Syria's civil war.  He was upbeat about reaching a peaceful settlement while working with the United States and was complimentary to President Obama.  The one passage at the end for which many in our own domestic media blasted Putin the most was his critical reference to the idea of American exceptionalism...a concept that ANYONE responsibly governing another country with its own legitimate policies to further would sanely take "exception" to.  He wasn't framing his objection to this by in any way putting down the United States, its people or government, but rather was trying to encourage us to reach out and relate to other countries before heading out on military adventures (my words, not his).

This has been an object lesson to me about how I cannot allow others, through secondhand criticism, to form my own opinions about something that someone else said or wrote.  This article by Putin had nothing of the supposedly inflammatory and demeaning rhetoric that had been attributed to him.  The experience has had a different outcome to me, though: it causes me to now look upon those who had publicly and very negatively spun it out of control in the media and politics with a more skeptical sense of scrutiny...