Rep. Buck McKeon (R-CA), who chairs the House Armed Services Committee, penned an op-ed in the Moscow Times Wednesday lambasting Russian President Vladimir Putin for what McKeon calls a hypocritical stance on Syria in a New York Times editorial last week.
“Putin speaks grandly on the importance of the United Nations and chides the U.S. for failing to seek UN Security Council authorization for humanitarian interventions,” McKeon writes in the English-language paper. “Of course, the U.S. has not been alone in seeking this authorization to deter the Assad regime — and other tyrannical regimes like it across the globe — from committing more crimes against humanity. It is Putin and his Chinese counterparts who have blocked this avenue. The world continues to wait for leadership from Putin or the Chinese Communist Party when it comes to human rights.”
“My suspicion is that Putin’s sudden inspired confidence in the UN isn’t so much warmhearted goodwill as it is a place where he has a veto over Western strategic interests,” he said. “After all, I imagine the Security Council was as surprised as I was to see Putin’s tanks rolling towards Tblisi, Georgia in 2008.”
“The Americans who read Putin’s op-ed are not dupes,” he added. “They are aware of the suppression of the Russian people, the intimidation of journalists and the wanton disregard for basic human rights. In addition, they are able to identify irony when they see it — particularly when it is Putin who is making a spontaneous appeal for humanitarianism and the observance of rule of law.”
Read McKeon’s editorial in fulll here.
