Senator John McCain was not happy about
Vladimir Putin’s op-ed Wednesday in the New York Times. He said the other day he was “offended” by Russia, and he was not happy about Putin’s plan for Syria.
He told
Jake Tapper on The Lead that he hoped negotiations between the U.S. and Russia succeeded, but
now that they have, he’s upset that they did. He and Lindsey Graham (r-SC)
say the deal is an “act of provocative weakness on America’s part.”
Hell,
even China gave the OK to the U.S.-Russia deal.
So
what’s McCain’s problem? Sure he’s grumpy, and he seems to have nearly
as many positions as Rand Paul. And while he presents President Obama as
being confused and weak, he seems rather confused himself.
Take
his attempt to write an op-ed for Pravda in a sort of revenge stroke for
Putin’s op-ed. But the New York Times is an independent American
newspaper. It is not owned or operated by the government, the repugican cabal, or the Democratic Party. Pravda, on the other hand, is the
official organ of the Communist Party, established in 1912 even before
the October Revolution put the Communists in power in 1917.
One problem is that McCain forgot to tell Pravda anything about his plans.
The other is that on Friday his spokesperson,
Brian Rogers, said McCain had accepted an offer from Pravda to write an op-ed response to Putin’s.
Time Magazine and
Politico both were taken in and carried the announcement on Friday.
But Pravda made no such offer.
Pravda knew nothing about it. Boris Komotsky, Pravda’s editor,
took to the party’s website to answer,
in a piece titled Sen. John McCain wants to answer? saying, “There is
only one Pravda in Russia, it is the organ of the Communist Party, and
we have heard nothing about the intentions of the repugican senator.”
Oh dear.
First Secretary of the Communist Party Gennady Zyuganov opined via the party’s website in a piece titled,
GA Zyuganov – John McCain: “If you support the position of the Communist Party on Syria, then publish your article that “it is surprising that McCain did not bother to inform either the leadership of the party or the editors of Pravda.”
Zyuganov
stressed, that neither Pravda nor the Communist Party was in
negotiations with McCain to publish an op-ed to answer Putin.
Oh, oh dear.
It
turns out that The Cable, Foreign Policy’s website, in its attempt to
set up the deal, did not contact Pravda. They contacted pravda.ru, a
website which has nothing to do with Pravda or with the Communist Party (
Joshua Keating at The Slate
calls it “whose content is a kind of cross between WorldNetDaily and
the National Enquirer”) instead of gazeta-pravda.ru, which is where you
will find THE Pravda.
McCain, who is so up-in-arms over Obama
supposedly making the U.S. appear weak and foolish, has done just that
with his Pravda faux pas.
Zyuganov says, sure McCain can write something for Pravda. But he has to follow the party line to do so.
Our
answer to McCain is this: if you support the position of the Russian
Communist Party on Syria, then we will publish your article.
But
the Communist view is that Syria is Russia’s ally and that the U.S. is
“trying to destroy our last ally in the Middle East, Syria. And one of
the most rapacious hawks calling for direct aggression is Senator John
McCain.”
John McCain, Zyuganov says, is a “russophobe.”
Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.
Well, that’s only fair. It’s true. And John McCain is an Obamaphobe who wanted to do some grandstanding of his own.
Unfortunately
for McCain – or as McCain would put it – for the United States,
McCain’s attempt to get some petty revenge on Putin has backfired.
The
Russians can laugh, the Communists no doubt have laughed, and even we
liberals can laugh. But that doesn’t change the fact that people like
McCain occupy positions of power and authority in our national
government, and that it is precisely these sorts of schoolboy antics
that got us into two wars that lasted a decade apiece the last time the repugicans were in charge.
Be afraid world. Be very afraid.
