As a rule, I’m not within the behavior of providing unsolicited recommendation to males like Vladimir Putin, liable for the deaths of numerous innocents.
I’ve determined to make an exception on this pressing event as a result of it’s clear that the smug thug with a wispy-haired combover is in a little bit of a geopolitical pickle that he has to get out of earlier than he reaches for the nuclear codes.
Putin thought Ukraine was Czechoslovakia circa summer time 1968. Positive, Ukrainians would possibly mount a spirited battle, however the harrowing sight of an limitless conga line of Russian tanks would put a fast finish to any actual resistance.
A shaken Kyiv would, in due and largely cold course, return to the Motherland’s at all times welcoming bosom. On the most, plucky Ukraine would possibly give it a great, noble go regardless of the terrible odds. Form of how a bunch of courageous, white-clad-from-head-to-toe Finns on cross-country skis as soon as held out for a very long time within the face of Soviet invaders.
Alas, Putin is being taught a stiff, disorienting lesson: it’s finest to not mess with Ukrainians who appear to be getting by with just a little assist from their associates.
So, like each different failed imperialist, Putin retains spinning the wheel of generic generals to attempt to stave off what appears to be like just like the inevitable: retreat or negotiate an exit ramp off the human disaster of his silly making.
However, wait, Mr President, there could also be an unorthodox technique to keep away from additional humiliation. Relatively than flip to a different dour, medal-laden, do-as-he’s-told Russian common, rent a columnist to indicate you how one can repair what has, till now, gone so unexpectedly mistaken.
That’s proper. A columnist. At this dire level, what do it’s important to lose, sir? It’s all proper to ask for assist. Russia is at what lots of dangerous, cliché-addicted Western columnists name an “inflection level”. You’re simply asking for assist in the mistaken locations, together with on the majestic Kremlin.
You’ve been a columnist your self, Mr President. As soon as, you had been revealed within the venerable New York Occasions, the place you cautioned Western leaders from attacking Syria. Your column included this prophetic paragraph.
“The potential strike by america towards Syria, regardless of robust opposition from many international locations and main political and spiritual leaders, together with the pope, will end in extra harmless victims and escalation, doubtlessly spreading the battle far past Syria’s borders,” you wrote in 2013. “It may throw the complete system of worldwide legislation and order out of stability.”
It’s a disgrace you didn’t take your personal prescient recommendation, sir. Oh properly, reside and never study.
As a member of the fraternity, you recognize that columnists have an answer for each drawback – massive or small – that confronts and bedevils this mad, mixed-up world. Who higher to recruit for recommendation and course on condition that your gratuitous invasion hasn’t unfolded the best way you had hoped for “on the bottom”.
Past the chance that Earth is hurtling in direction of extinction because it retains get hotter 12 months after 12 months, I can’t consider one other matter that requires the singular consideration of a columnist for rent than the disastrous battle that was imagined to be over inside hours of you beginning it.
It could, I suppose, be preferable to show to a Russian columnist. Honest warning, although: if she or he remotely shares the grating certitude of many English-language columnists, they are going to be blinded by hubris, harbour few doubts, and won’t tolerate introspection. That sounds quite a bit such as you too, Mr President. Forgive me, I digress.
I guarantee you that the know-it-all on a regular basis columnist will give you – in a thousand phrases or much less – the elusive prescription to steer Russia out of the quagmire that you simply and your grovelling sycophants are liable for.
Satisfaction assured.
However given your, to place it charitably, uncharitable behavior of silencing, jailing, possibly even arranging the sudden demise of – please be aware, sir, I wrote “possibly” – pesky, contrarian Russians, maybe taking up a Moscow-based columnist as a wartime consigliere isn’t within the offing.
To not fear, there’s a completely happy extra of top-tier candidates. One among my colleagues at Al Jazeera wrote a positive piece earlier this month itemizing a number of explanation why you might have failed in Ukraine.
You thought your massive stick would bludgeon Ukrainians into capitulation. You had been satisfied the Biden administration and NATO wouldn’t reply decisively. Lastly, your self-importance and cocksure temperament made you certain that Ukraine could be crushed. Fallacious, mistaken and mistaken once more.
Because you insist on surrounding your self – like another autocrat – with agreeable “sure males”, I doubt my sensible, iconoclastic opinion-page companion could be the best alternative.
OK. Why not strategy these two marquee American columnists – Fareed Zakaria and Thomas Friedman? They’d a quick chat just lately on CNN about what you’re more likely to do on condition that the liberation of Ukraine from marauding neo-Nazis has flopped. It’s so dangerous your folks have been doing a satisfactory impersonation of Dr Strangelove with all this loopy speak of launching a “restricted” atomic strike.
Anyway, the section was known as Putin’s Subsequent Transfer. You see, the clairvoyant duo already is aware of what you’re going to do, regardless of, to my data, neither columnist talking or studying Russian and sitting comfortably in entrance of tv cameras 1000’s of miles from the actual entrance.
You could recall, Mr President, that each Zakaria and Friedman had been for invading Iraq earlier than they had been towards you invading Ukraine. (Unhealthy.) You might also do not forget that Friedman was a giant fan of your “reformist” agenda for a vibrant, capitalist Russia rising from its Chilly Battle coma. (Good.) In 2001, he wrote an extended, outstanding hagiography of you disguised as a “suppose piece” which ended with this gooey line: “So hold rooting for Putin.” (Nice.)
The “rooting” has ended. Today, Friedman says you’ve been blowing up pure fuel pipelines as a part of an even bigger plan to have oil and fuel costs spike and drive Europeans, specifically, to decide on between “heating or consuming” this winter. Then, Ukraine will probably be obliged to “lower a unclean deal” with you.
There you might have it, Mr President: your issues solved in a pleasant, neat 50-second soundbite.
Feels like Friedman’s your man.
Nonetheless, I might be remiss in not sharing my very own opinion, as an opinion columnist. You’re shedding, Mr President. Overlook “saving face”. Begin saving lives. Cease the killing. Let Ukrainians return to their houses to rebuild their shattered nation as finest they’ll. And permit Russian troopers to return to their moms – alive.
The views expressed on this article are the creator’s personal and don’t essentially replicate Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.