While I agree entirely with the call for Israel to respond with restraint and proportionality to the Hizballah attacks across its northern border, I’m not so sure that President Vladimir Putin has much credibility in making the point. Putin told the G8 summit Israel’s violence was “out of all proportion” to the Hizballah provocation, and urged it to exercise restraint. But Israel could simply respond that it’s simply exercising the king of restraint and proportionality as Putin did in 1999 when he bombed Grozny back to the stone age (above) in response to a small-scale guerrilla raid from Chechnya into Dagestan. (And given the history of mass terror attacks by Chechens in Russia ever since, look how much that helped…)
6 Responses to Putin’s Restraint