COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE THE TORONTO STAR
Sorry, but your calling Putin a bully is mighty shabby
stuff, Justin Trudeau.
It truly makes you sound like Stephen Harper, likely the
most dishonest and disliked politician in Canadian history, a true bully, if
you will.
I do not see how there's really anything you must tell Putin, unless you count repeating
some boilerplate phrases borrowed from America’s sprawling junkyard of needless
attacks and propaganda.
If there is a legitimate bully on the world’s stage today, it
is, without question, America, responsible as it is for the deaths, destruction,
and refugees of Syria.
It is America also that is responsible for the mess in
Ukraine, putting an illegitimate government in place by coup and then supporting
its awful policies of intolerance and war.
And even in the case of Flight MH-17, it is America who has
kept things hidden. It never released data from its radars and spy satellite -
which was overhead at the time - and that is mighty suspicious. Likely it was afraid
of seeing its coup-induced government in Ukraine embarrassed. So we've had long
delays and much evidence never used and a useless report.
Putin is the most able leader on the international scene
today, a totally reasonable man, and a far more honest one than Obama or Harper
or Cameron, all of whom lie regularly about matters like Syria. Putin’s
country, too, is certainly destined to be a great one in future, given its
endowments of natural resources and human ingenuity. It is extremely
short-sighted to use American trash-talk about a leader Russians embrace as
strongly as they do Putin.
We should welcome working with a reasonable man like Putin
for many reasons, but if some chose not to do so, they can at least avoid
bellowing undiplomatic nonsense for a few cheap votes, as you did with your
campaign statement.
That's not how your much-respected father would have acted
in these circumstances – witness his independent-minded judgment and policies about
Castro’s Cuba - and in the case of Russia today, Pierre Trudeau’s way would be far
more productive than bellowing.
