[Belligerence and incompetence]

Reports of this “brawl,” oddly perhaps, have affirmed my conviction that Putin’s junta must go. I’m not sure about Putin himself, but the people he brought in to work for him in the Kremlin — mostly from St. Petersburg and the KGB — have been consistently displaying two qualities that are deadly when mixed: belligerence and patent, unprecedented incompetence. Yeltsin’s kleptocratic lieutenants seem efficient and sophisticated in comparison.

2 Comments

  1. I couldn’t agree with you more. However, I keep hearing people saying that the plan is for Sergei Ivanov to take over in 2008. How scary would that be?!

    And your post on the “Great Pyrrhic Victory” was outstanding as well.

  2. Thank you, Lyndon — I must admit I’ve been hearing the same rumors for since a few months ago, and much as I would like to think they are worthless, I am not sure. Have your heard Ivanov speak on the state of the army, for instance? It’s hard to tell if he is indiscriminately lying (as in Bulgakov — “what’s truly amazing is not that it’s a pack of lies: it’s that it’s nothing but lies from start to finish”) or lunatically out of touch.

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