I’ve just reread Adam Zamoyski’s
magnificent Moscow 1812, which I read when it first
appeared ten years ago. I can never get enough of it. The courage, the glory,
the suffering, it’s all too much. Germans and Poles, Frenchmen and Russians,
Italians, all covered themselves with glory…….
Mind you, Napo never won anything important again. Mother Russia had defeated him as it
defeated Hitler 130 years later. Which brings me to the present. Unlike the clowns of the EU and the bungling
Americans, Uncle Vlad did a Kutusov, went into Syria, avoided the risks of
getting bogged down, and, having lost only one aircraft that was shot down by a
NATO power supposedly on his side, departed the quagmire with maximum results.
Yet that fool of a foreign secretary, Hammond—never have I seen a
man who looks more like a boring accountant—warns us not to cheer because it
would be like praising a man who stopped beating his wife. Well, I don’t beat
women in general or my wife in particular, so I wouldn’t know. What I do know
is that Putin is authentic and authoritarian, the type who wins wars, a
spontaneous and courageous leader who has shown up the West as a paper tiger.
Let’s face it. When was the last time a world leader did something really bold?
And he didn’t declare mission accomplished, either, a declaration that has
proved fatal in the case of Iraq and Libya. This is the man the clowns in
Brussels tried to bluff with Circe-like songs to Ukraine, so he took back
Crimea as a bonus. His standing by Assad has shown up Uncle Sam yet again as an
unreliable ally when the going gets tough.
No matter how hard the Americans and Europeans have tried to
show Russia as a busted flush, the joke’s on them. And by leaving the playing
field, Vlad has shot across the Assad bow, warning him to negotiate or else.
Just compare Putin’s stance in Syria with that of Uncle Sam in Yemen. The
latter is a humanitarian disaster that rivals that of Syria.
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