Good on Russia for U.S Election Interference

If Vladimir Putin ever retires and seeks another occupation, I'm sure Hollywood would come beckoning for him to play an evil antagonist in a Bond or Star Wars movie.
He so exemplifies evil, right down to his evil Mr. Burns sneer. He so fits the part because he's an easy character to hate.

And boy do the Americans ever hate him, not because he is dishonest, sneaky and underhanded as we are reminded constantly by American politicians and the American media, but rather because he is infinitely more successful at his job in advancing his country's interests than any American president he has faced.

Russia successfully ended the bloody Syrian civil war by bringing overwhelming air power to the battlefield, bombing the heck out of the opposition forces with a pragmatic view towards civilian casualties, rejecting current western philosophy where civilians casualties must be avoided at all costs. While true that civilians did die under the unremitting and sometimes haphazard bombing, it is hard to fault the Russian argument that had the war dragged on, many more civilians would be lost. In fact, in can be argued that the ruthlessness of Russian fighting tactics brought the war to a much quicker end.

Putin not only ended the war but did so on Russian terms, supplanting America as the dominant foreign power in the middle east, where even Israel now looks to Russia as the kingmaker.
The Russian air force and navy may have lacked the ultra high tech weapons of the western world, but made good use of what it has.
While NASA invented a pen that could write in the zero gravity of outer space, Russia made do with pencils. It is the Russian way of succeeding with much fewer assets that is so maddening to the Americans.

As for interfering in other countries elections, in this case, the presidential election in the USA, the only thing that is surprising is how easily it was done. Russia employed some pretty basic hacking and low-tech spoofing.
Say what you will, if Russian meddling actually worked and helped elect Donald Trump, Putin should be congratulated his geopolitical strategy, which is of course to advance Russian fortunes.

Now and for the last year, we have been bombarded with American outrage that a foreign government had the audacity and in fact the ability to interfere in the presidential election.
It is especially sweet to see the fulminations and outrage expressed by politicians like Lindsay Grahm and media types on CNN and MSNBC over the affair.

But good on Putin for teaching America a lesson, like the bully who gets his comeuppance.

How come in all the outrage, nobody is saying what is patently evident, that is the United States just got schooled at their own game.
How come nobody points out that interfering in other country's affairs is as American as apple pie, a practice that every single American president has engaged in since World War Two, including Obama who funded groups opposed to the re-election of his nemesis Bibi Netanyahu.

The State Department paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxpayers grants to an Israeli group that used the money to build a campaign to oust Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in last year’s Israeli parliamentary elections, a congressional investigation concluded Tuesday. Washington Post

Could you imagine the outrage if it was found that Russia funded a group that bought anti-Hillary television ads?
Why is it fine for America to interfere in other country's affairs and not so for Russia?

 The United States created the CIA expressly for the purpose of interfering in other country's business, which includes funding opposition groups of unfriendly governments on the soft side to targetted murders and outright invasions.
According to one academic, the United States interfered in about foreign 72 elections since 1945 and Russia about half as much.

As for arranging coup d'etats, the CIA had a direct hand in the overthrow of the governments of Iran in 1953, Guatemala in1954, the Congo in1960,  the Dominican Republic in 1961, South Vietnam in 1963, Brazil in1964 and Chile 1973. Link

"...given the long list of US involvement in coups and assassinations worldwide – the agency was forced to cut back on such killings after a US Senate investigation in the 1970s exposed the scale of its operations. Following the investigation, then president Gerald Ford signed in 1976 an executive order stating: “No employee of the United States government shall engage in, or conspire in, political assassination. Link

Today the CIA doesn't call their actions 'assassinations,' which would technically be illegal, but rather uses the term targetted killings.
...from aerial bombing of presidents to drone attacks on alleged terrorist leaders. Aerial bomb attempts on leaders included Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi in 1986, Serbia’s Slobodan Milosevic in 1999 and Iraqi president Saddam Hussein in 2003. Link

Of course, the Russians have always favoured assassination and continue to murder 'enemies' that not only include foreign politicians but those opposed to Putin's rule.

And then there is outright invasion, a tactic used by the United States in Iraq, Panama, Grenada and Cuba, just to name a few and Russia in Hungary, Czechoslovakia and parts of the Ukraine.

So what are the lessons to be learned from Russia's interference in the presidential election?

None.....
As long as there is a capability, governments like the United States, Russia, France, Great Britain, and Israel will interfere.
The higher the capability, the more the interference.
The United States has developed the world's most potent apparatus for spying both through signals and human intelligence and is wont to make good use of its investment.
Ask any American if it was right for Russia to interfere in America's presidential election and you would get a resounding No for an answer.
Ask any American if it is right for America to interfere in Israel's election or any of the dozens of other foreign elections and you would perhaps be surprised by the answer.

The Russian presidential-election interference caper should serve as an eye-opener for all us and help Americans understand that if you live by the sword, you die by the sword.

And so to America, I say...stop whining.

Most of what I've written above isn't news to those who keep up with current events but I would like to point out the media's complicity in selling the idea that somehow Russia is evil for doing what America is expert at... interference.

I watch Russian TV news, CNN, FOX and surmise that none lie, but rather shade the news by selecting stories that fit their narrative.
American media acknowledges that America is the world's biggest election interferer, but shades the story by seldom if ever running stories about it,
Don't you think it would be a great and relevant story for American media to run a feature on American interference in foreign elections?
Why hasn't it happened?

Fake news is easy to dismiss, but slanted news isn't.
Whenever you hear an American politician go apeshit over Russian election interference remind yourself that what's good for the goose, is good for the gander.