I want to believe

There's been some mention of late that we need a bogeyman, and some question about how long we can use bin Laden and Hussein. I think that we are certainly well-set for future bogeymen, should we need them. We've got Hugo Chavez in Venezuela who's just itching for the position. And now that Khodorkovsky has been arrested in Russia, I've noted several articles preparing a place for Vladimir Putin. The right hates him because he's thrown a monkey wrench into the corporate creep into Russian government, and the left hates him because Bush said he was his kind of guy.

I am finding myself intrigued by the man. I know he's wealthy and powerful, which often puts a person on the wrong side of the tracks in my book. He also seems to be cracking a mean whip, which can do the same. But I just wonder. For whatever reason(s), he's put a leash on the corporate bid to turn Russia into America of the East. And deflected what looked to be an American bid to snag Russia's oil. He's obviously using the Russian army for purposes other than defending Russia, and calling it battling Chechen terrorists, which puts him on the wrong side of the tracks again, if I have it right (and I might not) that Chechnya would simply like to be independent. He's obviously also got something going with the groups that want to separate from Georgia. I'm sure he's playing everybody.

I'm just not able to get a good picture, and haven't been trying long enough to know much of anything. There's this article that lambasts both Bush and Putin, who it essentially claims is channeling Stalin. My last post on the situation looked to me like the Russian people are overwhelmingly in favor of Putin and against the extremely wealthy corporates who were making out like bandits while the regular folk were not finding any of that new prosperity a Western style democracy was supposed to bring them.

Putin certainly isn't Bush's lapdog. It looks to me like he's taken the reigns of what has recently been an American lackey bleeding its people drier than they already were in order to line the pockets of a few who were in political positions to get the advantage, and shaping it into a world power again.

And I'm still holding out for Vlad to strike a balance and come up with a strong government independent of the West's dictation that gives the average Russian some stability and prosperity. If anything nicks my pretty picture, it's the thought that he may be attempting to do it by restoring something more like the old tzardom. I don't know that - it's just a thought. As for the slams he's taking in the Western world, I think those are inevitable if he gains in power and makes Russia a force to be reckoned with again. We can get our old bogeyman back.

We seem to be marching backwards in many more ways. Why not that as well?

For the moment, Justin Raimondo has agreed to feed my fantasies:

The neocons have always considered Russia as the enemy: the infamous Wolfowitz memorandum, in which the now deputy defense secretary and architect of the Iraq war laid out the new hegemonism of post-cold war American foreign policy, explicitly targeted Russia for encirclement and subjugation in a U.S.-dominated world order.

...The real reasons for the concerted attack on Putin and evocations of a new "Russian threat" have nothing to do with the consolidation of a neo-Soviet regime in the Kremlin, and everything to do with Moscow's increasingly independent foreign policy stance.

Check out the article. He's got lots of good links with his info. I didn't give you a bunch of links this time for my previous posts, which have links to other articles, but if you want to find them, using the term "Putin" and separately the term "Georgia" will snare them all. (And "Venezuela" will get you the skinny on Hugo Chavez.)

I actually thought Gorbachev was going to be good for Russia. And I still think so. Nobody wanted to go at the slow pace he was moving toward a more democratic government. But look what happened when he was ousted. Yeltsin. And collapse. I think Gorbachev knew it was going to take something other than American-style capitalism quickly imposed to hold the country together. Ah well, history.

Our problem is our super paranoia (and perhaps our arrogance and greed). Other countries with other forms of government don't have to be our enemies - unless they refuse to buy our crap, of course. A world of economically stable governments and fairly treated citizens who can make decent livings for themselves seems like a better goal than a one size fits all (American dictated led) system.

Another Russian once said it in a much better way in a not too distant past:

"...the structure of the state is secondary to the spirit of human relations. Given human integrity, any honest system is acceptable, but given human rancor and selfishness, even the most sweeping of democracies would become unbearable." -- Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Rebuilding Russia

Come on, now, Vlad, don't disappoint me.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.