WHAT NEEDS RESETTING

Mona Charen


The bodies of 298 passengers and crew of
Malaysia Air Flight 17, 80 of them children,
lie unburied in a Ukrainian field while
Vladimir Putin's men fire their weapons into the air to keep international investigators from approaching the site. Yes, "Putin's men." Calling them "Russian separatists" unnecessarily dignifies them. They are supplied, armed and trained by the despot in the Kremlin.
At the very least, Putin is responsible for
arming these dangerous actors. At most, it's
possible the missile wasn't fired by
Ukrainians at all, but by Russians, which
would answer President Barack Obama's
question: "What do they have to hide?" The
SA-11 is apparently a complex system
requiring four well-trained weapons
specialists to operate. In either case, the man with blood on his hands is Putin.
Obama began relations with Russia with a
"reset." The premise of this new start was that relations between our nations had
deteriorated due to the policies of former
President George W. Bush.
But Obama was following the same trajectory as his predecessor. Bush, too, began with high hopes for Putin. He was even taken in, for a short time, by Putin's profession of religious faith -- surely one of the biggest cons of modern diplomacy. As Bush watched Putin commit one aggressive act after another, both domestically and internationally, he wised up. Midway through his second term, journalist Peter Baker writes, when Tony Blair said he was more worried than ever about Putin, Bush replied, "You should be."
Bush may have clung too long to the hope of
moderating the criminal in the Kremlin, but
Obama had even less excuse. He had the
benefit of Bush's experience. He had
witnessed Putin's invasion of Georgia in
2008, his unflagging support for Iran and
Syria, his use of oil and gas to intimidate
Ukraine and other nations, his obliteration of democracy in Russia, his muzzling of the
press, and his systematic murder of domestic critics. Funny that Obama would have thought that responsibility for the decay in relations should be laid at the feet of Bush.
When Putin took command of the FSB (the
KGB renamed), Russia was enduring
international criticism for its war in
Chechnya. Moscow apartment complexes
experienced a wave of bombings that killed
several hundred. Putin pointed the finger at
Chechens, and the enraged Russian people
endorsed the continuation of the war.
Some members of the Kovalev Commission,
appointed to investigate the bombings,
expressed interest in accounts of possible FSB
responsibility for the attacks. Here's what
happened to them: Sergei Yushenkov, co-
chairman of the commission and a member
of the Liberal Russia party, was assassinated
in front of his apartment; Yuri
Shchekochikhin, another commission
member, independent journalist and Duma
member, was poisoned with thallium; and
Mikhail Trepashkin was arrested on a
weapons charge that later morphed into an
espionage case. He was tried in a closed
military proceeding and condemned to four
years in prison.
A KBG defector, Alexander Litvinenko, wrote
a book called "Blowing Up Russia" alleging
that the FSB was responsible for the Moscow
bombings. He died, slowly, of poisoning with
polonium-210. Litvinenko had also accused
Putin of arranging the murder of Anna
Politkovskaya -- a Russian journalist and
critic of Putin and the Chechnya war. She was
gunned down in the elevator of her
apartment in 2006.
Putin has applied the logic of the Moscow
bombings (stoke hatred of others to rally
Russians around himself) to relations with
other nations. Russian state TV, after labeling
the elected government in Kiev, Ukraine, as
Nazi for months, recently accused the
Ukrainian army of crucifying a 3-year-old
boy. Russian media feature an almost daily
diet of conspiracies supposedly concocted by
Americans to undermine and humiliate
Russia.
For about the 100th time, Obama this week
warned Putin that if he didn't cooperate in
the Malaysia plane investigation, he would
risk "isolating" Russia from the international
community.
Putin doesn't seek to be part of any
community. He seeks to be feared -- and he
should be. A look back at recent history
shows clearly that he is incapable of shame
and deaf to conscience. In light of this,
Obama can at least do a few things: 1) arm
the Ukrainians with something considerably more lethal than MREs; 2) stop placing phone calls to the Kremlin -- we should have nothing to say to him; 3) fast-track liquefied natural gas export permits; and 4) freeze the assets of Putin and his cronies just as we did to Saddam Hussein.
The thing that needs a reset is our perception of Putin.