This admittedly unpleasant analogy came to mind at the sight of Obama and Cameron playing lickspittle to Putin before and during the G20 summit.
Come back into the fold, Vlad, they are saying. All is forgiven. Never mind the Ukraine, feel the Middle East.
Vicious attacks on neighbours, Chechnya, Georgia, Crimea, East Ukraine, a spate of political murders all over the world (including London), turning Russia into a kleptofascist country unparalleled in history, regularly threatening the West with nuclear extinction – none of this matters any longer.
“We are meeting together after the appalling terrorist attacks in France,” said Dave with that carefully rehearsed statesman’s expression on his face, “and it is clear to me that we must work together to defeat the scourge of terrorism that is a threat to Britain, a threat to Russia and a threat to us all.”
The gap between us and Putin still exists, lamented Dave who managed to use the word ‘gap’ half a dozen times in a couple of sentences, but it’s getting smaller. One would think that the Russians had withdrawn from the Ukraine and Crimea, stopped their massive rearmament programme and adopted a modicum of civilised behaviour.
They haven’t. They aren’t going to either, not while the country is run by the KGB junta fronted by this murderous gangster. If there’s a gap anywhere, it’s between Dave’s ears and, judging by his cowardly submission to Putin, between his legs as well.
What separates us from Russia isn’t a gap between our ideas on Assad’s future, but a chasm between civilisation in decline and barbarism in ascendancy. On that there can be no compromise (another catchword Dave repeated several times). There can only be surrender.
The West has form in joining Russian monsters to defeat other ogres. In fact, the Putin propaganda, otherwise known as the Russian press, is screaming itself hoarse about the anti-Hitler coalition and how history is repeating itself.
If my analogy in the title is unpleasant, this one is spurious. Since neither side to that coalition could have defeated Hitler on its own, it could be plausibly presented as essential to survival.
Are Barack and Dave, with François bringing up the rear, seriously suggesting that the situation is the same now? That the combined might of the West can’t on its own handle a bunch of crazed mullahs?
If that is indeed the case, we might as well go further than merely legitimising what should be seen as an evil pariah state. We might as well apply for admission into the Russian Federation and pledge allegiance to Putin (which probably wouldn’t turn off some ‘useful idiots’ on our political right who wish we had a ‘strong leader’ like this proud KGB veteran – Peter Hitchens, ring your office).
That isn’t the case though. To use Dave’s word of the moment, there is no gap in our military capability vis-à-vis ISIS, el-Qaeda or, should it come to that, the whole Islamic world.
We could easily incinerate every ISIS stronghold with everyone in it. We could believably threaten to do the same to any country that offers logistic, financial and intelligence support to the terrorists (a demonstration or two would help to focus their minds). We could not only cut off the terrorists’ access to our banks, but also, if need be, take over the Middle Eastern oilfields, thereby starving terrorism of any financial sustenance.
We could do all those things by way of administering antibiotics to treat the syphilis of Muslim aggression. But such actions would take plenty of steel, not just to build our weapons but, infinitely more important, to strengthen our backbone.
That’s what’s missing, and hence we are treated to the cringe-making spectacle of our ‘leaders’ injecting us with a far deadlier contagion by opening the door to Putin.
We count on him to provide the resolve we ourselves lack, and he may well do that. However, his aims are different from ours.
Just as Stalin used the wartime coalition to set up his conquest of half the world, so will Putin try to use this embryonic anti-terrorist coalition to advance Russia’s ideological and territorial offensive.
That’s all he and his gang want, and it takes either a gross misunderstanding of the nature of Putin’s Russia or clinical idiocy to keep drawing parallels between the Paris carnage and the downing, by the same lot, of the Russian Airbus.
The difference is that we care about our dead and Putin doesn’t give two flying BUKs about his. What’s 224 deaths to a man who has the blood of thousands on his hands directly and, as a proud KGB man, that of millions by association?
Putin is cynically exploiting the situation to spread the Russian contagion high and wide. And our craven, mindless ‘leaders’ are falling all over themselves to proffer the syringe.