Vladimir Putin, March 2015 courtesy of kremlin.ru image licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0.
Since Donald Trump’s election there has been near hysteria from the Democratic Party about ‘Russian hacking’ of Hillary Clinton’s emails and ‘troll farms’ interfering with the United States elections to help get Donald Trump elected (archive here). There is incredibly powerful evidence of Russian innocence. Wikileaks, who released the emails, say they got the ‘hacked’ emails from Democratic staffers and it had nothing to do with Russia (archive here). They are backed in this by a former British ambassador, Craig Murray.
The idea that one of the vipers in the toxic, writhing nest otherwise known as the Democratic Party is behind the leak is vastly more plausible than the idea of some surreal international conspiracy or (see below) the line some leftists are peddling about a plot by space aliens.
Even so, it would be perfectly understandable if Russia and its President Vladimir Putin had decided to put the case for Donald Trump? Why not? During her election campaign Hillary Rodham Clinton planned to establish, ‘no fly zones’ (archive here) in Syria. This led to warnings from retired US military pilots that the reckless policy could provoke a war with Russia.
Worse, the conflict in Syria repeats the same mistakes that have coloured all of western interventions in the Middle East for the past several decades. The Middle East contains many countries and many factions. Almost none of them favours democracy, an idea that the west continues to try to impose despite total, catastrophic, ruinous failure on each attempt.
The most recent disaster is the creation of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in the aftermath of the removal of Saddam Hussein. Is there a democracy in Iraq? No – there is a medieval theocracy beheading and burning that according to Bloomberg news sells children aged 1-9 as sex slaves for $165 each (archive here).
