Mzgraciev: White House fool report:

Hey Mr. P,

You're trolling me, right? At the Palais des Beaux-Arts? As quoted in Slate?

Russia has pointed to America’s decision to go into Iraq as an example of Western hypocrisy. Now, it is true that the Iraq war was a subject of vigorous debate, not just around the world but in the United States, as well. I participated in that debate, and I opposed our military intervention there.

But even in Iraq, America sought to work within the international system. We did not claim or annex Iraq’s territory. We did not grab its resources for our own gain. Instead, we ended our war and left Iraq to its people in a fully sovereign Iraqi state that can make decisions about its own future.

1. Putin's reason for seizing Crimea may not be a very good reason, but you could hardly say he grabbed its resources for his own gain. It doesn't have any resources except the port Russia already controlled and some gas deposits everybody talks about but nobody seems to want to develop (except Gazprom, which never actually gets anything going unless it has foreign partners no matter how hard it tries to dump them).

Karen Vartapetov, an analyst at Standard & Poor's rating agency, calculated that Moscow would need to pay 38 billion rubles (just over $1 billion) a year to bring Crimea's per capita budget revenue to the same level as Russia's poorest regions, such as North Ossetia and Kabardino-Balkaria in the restive North Caucasus. (Reuters)

It needs desperate aid to bring it up to the level of North Ossetia.

2. Meanwhile, are you suggesting that General Abizaid and Defense Secretary Hagel were lying when they agreed that the Iraq War was "about oil"? Just because we didn't actually get the oil doesn't mean we didn't mean to. It just means the war was a failure in this as other respects. And subcontractors like Halliburton are doing fine.

3. How do you know Putin won't end his war on Ukraine in ten years or so, or it won't be ended by whoever succeeds him? It's only been a few weeks! Give the guy a chance! George W. Bush would have gotten around to it sooner or later too, if he'd somehow not been relieved of his duties when it was only six years old.

Also there's been exactly one death so far (plus a Russian apparently killed by friendly fire), or at least a rumor of one, more than ten days ago and still not properly confirmed or even identified, compared to how many in the first month of the Iraq invasion? Tommy Franks estimated 30,000 Iraqi combatants killed in the five or six weeks from March 19 to May 1 2003. With "combatant" defied as any male between 15 and 60, of course.

"Elections 2132: I will lift Russia off its knees." Image via owni.eu.

4. Not that I think Vladimir Vladimirovich is in any way an acceptable human being. I don't believe I have ever had anything positive to say about him in these pages anyway. I just don't think he can hold the proverbial candle to Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and the rest when it comes to senseless and bloody invasions. He's much better than they are at running personality cults and having reporters murdered, if that's any consolation.

5. I'm really glad you've pulled the troops out of Iraq as promised, but calling it a "fully sovereign state that can make decisions about its own future" doesn't actually mean anything. And the place is a total fucking mess. In terms of corruption and incompetence the government is hardly distinguishable from the Saddam Hussein regime, just unable to monopolize the violence in the new atmosphere of free-market competition, and it's clear as I've said before that the unfinished conflict begun there by the US provides the fuel that keeps Syria burning: the Syrian civil war, as Clausewitz didn't say, is the Iraq war continued by other means. Rather than congratulating ourselves for how much better we handled things than Vladimir Vladimirovich does, we should be praying that Awesome God of the Blue States for forgiveness for the dreadful irreversible damage our country did.

I've supported you everywhere since I voted for you in the 2008 primary, sometimes when it seemed pretty embarrassing, because I'm a realist, and I don't think any electable politician in the United States, no matter how smart, is going to be as smart as you or able to make changes any more profound than you can, and because Roosevelt was too conservative too, and so on, and I like the ACA and banking reform as far as they go and the confident political engagement we see in minority communities and so many things, but really, I'm feeling kind of mocked here.

Brussels Palais des Beaux-Arts.