Why do American "anti elite" types think the Kremlin is OK?

[Kinser79]

(08-09-2016, 12:52 AM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(08-08-2016, 03:46 PM)Mikebert Wrote: I don't approve of the Russian polity as Putin runs it.  But I don't see Russia as a threat to America.  Also what Russia says on foreign policy makes more sense to me than what America says.  That was NOT the case during the Cold War.  I can see how what Putin says applies to the world as I see it.  I do not see how what America says is supposed to make sense.  

Why was America so eager so see Saddam, Quadhafi and Assad replaced by an Islamic theocracy?  I don't know. 

Why do we want an aging (and possibly softening) theocracy in Iran replaced by an extremist Islamist group, as most Republicans seem to want. I don't know that either.

 I could be cynical and think that we want to spread fundamentalist Islam so as to recreate a far-away enemy so as to justify ignoring domestic issues, but I don't think this is really right.

 I am simply at a loss.  I think I used to understand our foreign policy during the Cold War. Now it seems bonkers.

American foreign policy under Barack Obama has come to resemble what Ronald Reagan got away with, and Hillary Clinton seems to be adopting much the same. So perhaps it is American foreign policy that is aging. To be sure, Marxism-Leninism is dead everywhere but North Korea (China and Vietnam are practically capitalist, but even Marxism-Leninism as remains in North Korea remains as despised under Barack Obama as the Soviet Union in the Brezhnev era. Then there is Daesh, which seems to be fascist Jihad.

Saddam Hussein and Moammar Qaddafi were murderous tyrants, and Bashir Assad is one too. Murderous tyrants in command of second-rate or lesser powers have a tendency to implode over time.

Marxism-Leninism has been dead in China since 1976, it was encased in glass along with Mao's mummified corpse. It never really existed in the DPRK as Kim Il-Sung was mostly a nationalist who only became a Marxist after the fact and then implemented a new ideology of his own anyway (Juche). Vietnam, Laos and Cuba have ruling communist parties but none were ML and aren't now. Rather those three countries have ruling communist parties as an artifact of the cold war. IE to be against the US you must be as a consequence a communist. (Khrushevite revisionism 101).

Say what you like about Qaddafi and Hussein but the fact is that both kept the lid on the pressure cooker that are their respective countries, and without a strong man you end up with Islamist terrorism and tribal warfare. As for them imploding...reality paints a different picture. Both were removed through US intervention. In both cases the result was the same, Islamist Terrorism and Tribal warfare.

Is it possible for second rate dictators of third rate countries to implode of their own accord? Absolutely, and in cases where that happens the result is inevitably the replacement of one second rate dictator with a different second rate dictator. Some civilizations simply are not compatible with Western Democracy--probably because that is a product of Western Civilization.