Oh Please, Mr. Robinson, Is This the Best You Can Do? — A Comment regarding Columnist Eugene Robinson’s Poorly Thought Out Swipe at the Obnoxious Vladimir Putin

© 2013 Peter Free

 

13 September 2013

 

 

I pick on Mr. Robinson (whom I admire) today, because his reflexively superficial thinking on geopolitics accurately reflects the American norm

 

Enthusiastically swiping at President Putin’s New York Times opinion piece regarding Syria and American non-exceptionalism, Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson retorted:

 

 

To me, the concept of exceptionalism underpins Obama’s strongest argument for taking military action in Syria.

 

When we see more than 1,400 men, women and children killed with poison gas, it is not our nature to look away. We ask ourselves whether there is anything we should do.

 

We weigh the costs and benefits, the risks and rewards, and we do what we can. The moral case for a strike against the Assad regime is predicated on the fact that if the United States doesn’t do something, nobody will.

 

Yes, Mr. Putin, you can call that American exceptionalism. I like it a lot better than the Russian kind.

 

© 2013 Eugene Robinson, Exceptional, You Bet, TruthDig (13 September 2013) (paragraph split)

 

 

Retaliatory anger makes us stupid

 

First, Putin never claimed that Russia was exceptional.  In fact, his premise (and its implication) was that no nation should hold itself out as such because the sense of superiority leads to unnecessary conflicts.

 

Second, Mr. Robinson’s focus on 1,400 nerve gassed Syrians cavalierly overlooks the reportedly 100,000 people who have died at the hands of “conventional” weapons in the same place — and about which the United States has done nothing.

 

Robinson’s retort is not rationally considered.  It is jingoistic pride prancing on the Horse of Self-Righteousness.

 

This is the very trait that the abrasively hypocritical Russian president accurately admonished us for.  Just because Putin is an irritating prick, does not mean that he is always wrong.

 

 

The moral? — When somebody annoys us, it is best to analyze the content of their message before replying in a reflexively stupid fashion

 

Wherever we look in the American media today, someone is pouncing on President Putin’s blatantly obvious flaws — but almost uniformly without providing a competently thought out response to the Realpolitik that was the content of his message.