Presidents’ Precedents
Having Ethics vs. Using Ethics
by Bruce Louis Cohen
RE: THE UNITED NATIONS SUMMIT THIS WEEK
THE DISCUSSION OF ISIS AND SYRIA
The speeches of Presidents Obama and Putin in the UN this week bring into stark relief for us the difference between genuinely having ethics and merely using ethics.
President Obama said in his speech at one point, the Syrian people cannot be expected to look past massive and horrible and long-term brutalities inflicted on them by Assad’s regime, and go on with that same abusive regime in power. A government using chemical weapons to subdue its own population from dissent is a government having lost the right to continue in power.
President Putin’s position is an absolute paradigm that “No President of America or France or any other nation is a citizen of Syria, and therefore has no right to choose who governs Syria.”
Putin’s idea sounds so moral, does it not?
His own country only survives because they actually do not believe, and have not practiced this precept.
In the case of the American President – a law professor by previous profession – his ethical position is clearly a legal concept called, “fruit of the poisonous tree.” It is not sound legally or ethically to permit wrongdoers to profit in the present or future from their misdeeds: one cannot murder someone, then write a best-seller telling the story, and rake in the profits for one’s own or one’s family’s benefit. The Assad regime has passed the line of no return on atrocity: they have lost their moral right to govern. They must move or be moved aside. Retention of the privileges of power is unthinkable, morally. If the Syrian people were allowed to hold a free election, it is inconceivable they would elect Bashar al-Assad. They would most likely vote in a new government, and call for the former leaders to be tried for war crimes and crimes against humanity, in Syria, and at The Hague.
For such a government as Assad’s to continue in power with the assent of the civilized world is tantamount to civilization validating barbarism.
President Putin’s case to the opposite of President Obama’s is ridiculous to an extreme, and downright hypocritical, ignoring Russia’s own active past in similar matters.
Putin maintains no outsider has the right to move out a government of a sovereign nation, and install one different than the internal mechanisms of the country have led to being established.
Adolf Hitler had been democratically chosen by the German people; yet Russia played a major role in having the Nazi regime destroyed and its leader erased.Why then, did they not stop attacking Germany once the German advance against Russia was halted? Why did they cross the border into Germany? The answer is obvious: Hitler’s government was hegemonistic and immoral, and had done deep harm to Russia. From pragmatic need to deprive the German aggressor of resources to renew his efforts, and from the desire for justice and vengeance for the suffering Hitler inflicted on Russia, and his betrayal of his former Russian ally – these were all reasons Russians could see the situation clearly back then.
Putin claims not to see it now – because he is repeating the error that got Russia into bed with Hitler as an ally less than one lifetime ago: there is presently benefit for Russia in not seeing Assad’s nature or history.
They will.
When, Assad’s regime becomes toxic to Russian interests as did Hitler’s, then will Russia under Putin or whoever succeeds him: but at far greater cost. A despot does not think in terms other than self-aggrandizement and advancement of self-interest. There is no greater cause for Assad than Assad-maintenance and Assad-aggrandizement. Eventually, those agendas must clash with Russian aggrandizement and the advancement of Russian interests. As the old cold-war proverb goes, “The Russians can always and only be counted upon to do one thing: act in their own self-interest.” This precept governed all policy efforts in relation to Russia – including the October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, which almost destroyed civilization.
Despots are always ticking bombs: it is never a matter of if they will blow up in your face – only a question of when.
Russia – having tried to use Hitler also – will fulfill the Santayana maxim that “Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” and we all will be stuck with the New York Subway graffiti addendum to it: “and those who do learn from history will be stuck dealing with the mess created by those who did not learn from it.”
Meanwhile – speaking as an American – while the world is lambasting our President Obama for appearing “weak” and letting Putin appear to play the “stronger man” getting the upper hand; I am proud to be a citizen of a country with a leader saying in the open that a Syrian mass-murderer getting richer and more secure through mass murder should not be rewarded by the world with assistance in the retention of his presidency.
The Syrian people, and the world, need a Syrian president with the agenda of caring for and advancing the well-being of the Syrian men, women, and children who wake up every day praying for a government that cares more about them than about shallow victories and self-glorification.
The American President acts as a leader having ethics.
The Russian President seems merely to be using ethics – or the aped appearance of them.
His stated ethical basis for his country’s policies and actions is obviously not their real motivation at all.
President Putin will, at some point in the future, learn the lesson Aesop taught in the Turtle and The Scorpion. Why did the scorpion sting the very creature permitting him to make and survive his journey across the river? Because it was his nature.
As for President-Professor Obama – thank you, Mr. President, for teaching the world that ethics are not a side-show, and strength is not only a function of position-play and ego-driven display-behavior.
My President lost no prestige in my eyes at the UN this week: he made me proud.
Bruce L. Cohen
29 September 2015 • Manhattan