Thank Goodness for Putin!

We welcome Vladimir Putin’s visit to Jordan, and his visits to Qatar and Saudi Arabia. We welcome his positive change in attitude and the correct positions he has taken with regard to major Arab issues. We welcome his rejection of the United States of America’s occupation of Iraq. We appreciate his support for the Iraqi and Palestinian peoples and his well-known objectivity. He always leans toward righteousness, security and peace, and works hard to avoid violence, aggression, and unjustified invasions.

It seems that with his candid statements in Munich, Germany , he was attempting to revitalize something of the role that his country played during the era of the Soviet Union or the Cold War. But Putin doesn’t want to contradict or antagonize the U.S. administration. He merely wants to guide it toward truth and justice. He knows that the East Camp is gone [the Warsaw Pact ] and that the Soviet Union has disintegrated into sixteen post-socialist republics. He knows that that era began with Vladimir Lenin and ended with the collapse of Communism in the late 1980s.

The Russian head of state has no intention of resurrecting the Soviet Union, nor does he intend to return to a state of conflict with the United States or the Western camp. Nor does he have an interest in reverting to Socialism; all he wants is to rescue the Iraqi people from U.S. aggression and save the Palestinians from Israeli occupation. He wants to achieve this by being fair, avoiding imperialism and colonialism and by ending the violence, terrorism and unjust bombardment of other nations. President Putin possesses an arsenal of nuclear warheads and rockets with which he could destroy the whole of planet Earth. But he will not resort to the use of force, violence, or weapons of mass destruction against human beings or on any other country. Rather, he seeks to apply justice and integrity and rejects hostile behavior toward other nations.

If we try to compare the acts of the great superpower, the United States of American, to those of a strong state of slightly less power, namely the Russian Federation, we would see that the American administration commits acts of violence and occupation, while Russia leans more toward democracy.

America’s occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq, its alliance with Israel and its relentless attempt to control most of what goes on in the world will not lead to the spread of “democracy.” On the other side, the statements of President Putin prove that Russia is headed in the right direction and that it seeks to end the tremendous number of tragedies in different parts of the world, rescue the victims and heal their wounds. This will enable people in different countries to depend on themselves and will result in more appropriate domestic and foreign policies.

*Fakhri Kawar (born 1945) is one of Jordan’s most prolific writers. He has also been the President of the Jordanian Writers Association and secretary general of the Arab Writers Association.