Please explain if there are any Russian murders or military attacks that you might object to.

Do their killings count, or are they all just purely defense against the awful United States, thus justified?

Does Assad (son and father) share any blame for the humanitarian disaster on their soil, or is it just the US's (and perhaps Israel's) fault?

What's the worst thing you've seen Russia do since 1992, the action that bothered you most?

You ask four thinly disguised but highly prejudicial rhetorical attack questions after refusing to even be civil when evading and then refusing to answer a single honest question about something you stated. 

[1] I object to any murder anywhere by anybody.  Any military of any country that has seen any significant amount of combat has engaged in actions I would strongly oppose including murder. War is ugly and dehumanizing and it turns many otherwise decent people, at least temporarily, into sub human killers. I have never in any conversation anywhere at any time suggested that the Russians or their leaders are beyond reproach.  I have rejected the idea you once put forward that the crimes of the maniac Stalin somehow represent the nature of the Russian people and are an example that should guide our judgment of the current government.

I believe I can understand why Putin has such high approval ratings in his own country. The breakup of the Soviet Union led to massive suffering for the masses of Russian citizens. I have only been acquainted with a few native born Russians living in Hayward, Ca who lived through part of that time before managing to get to America. They were highly educated and had held professional positions before the fall of the Soviet Union. Their first person account as well as what I have read about that time has convinced me that what the average Russian experience was much harder than what the average American experienced during our Great Depression. The Russians who stayed home experienced a recovery from very hard times to relatively prosperous times under the leadership of Putin. It is as easy for me to see why the majority like and support him so much as it is easy to understand why my parents who lived through the depression in North and South Dakota and I think had it harder than most liked and admired President Roosevelt until the day they died.  That is not a favorable comparison of the character of the two men so don’t go nuts. I don’t know Putin’s soul anymore than you or George Bush does. It is a comparison of the situations when they were their countries leaders and how the two general populations came to view them.

[2] Of course their killing counts. Do you really want to measure and compare national rectitude by comparing responsibility for unjustified high body counts over the last sixty years or so or are you really just trying to suggest that one side’s destruction and killings, no matter where or for what real reasons and by whatever methods are almost always justified and the other side’s are never justified because one side is good, maybe even “exceptionally” good and almost always acts that way and the other side is evil?

[3] I think Assad is/has been an authoritarian dictator who ruled with an iron fist and stomped on any dissent but before the insurrection did not go out of his way looking for reasons to brutalize compliant citizens of Syria. It is reported that a number of diverse ethnic and religious factions were tolerated. I think that absent outside support for the rebels, many, and most of the worst, imported from other countries, Assad's army would have crushed the rebellion hundreds of thousands of lives ago and before the destruction of vast amounts of the country’s infrastructure which will cause continued suffering for a very long time even if the fighting were to stop today. I think that despite the honest feeling of many Americans that we ought to intervene to help the Syrian people, humanitarian motives were never an honest reason for those who were actually in the position of deciding and did in fact decide to do so, largely by supporting organizations rightfully describes elsewhere they are active as terrorists. .

I believe that Assad has been, both for himself personally and for his country as a sovereign state, in an existential crisis situation since outside forces entered the conflict against him [Obama said he had to go] and is willing to kill as much as necessary to survive that crisis just like almost every national leader and certainly like ours. I have zero doubt Assad’s forces have committed atrocities against their opponents and anyone else who got in their way. I believe Assad’s opponents are at least as vicious and a significant numbers of them are worse. I do not think supporting their victory is a favor to the Syrian people and I do not believe that the majority of the Syrian people believe that either. [Saddam Hussein is said to be more popular in Iraq now then at any point in his lifetime]  I have read, and not seen it credibly denied, that at any point along the way since the rebellion began Assad would have won an honest election, but I would not bet anything significant that that is true anymore than I would have bet the odds on our own recent debacle election.

And yes to the last part of number four. I think both the U.S. and Israel and also Saudi Arabia and some of the other oil rich sheikhdoms share a hell of a lot of responsibility for the extent of the humanitarian crisis in Syria. They have paid the Assad opponents and supplied their weapons and ammunition and provided some significant air support, but never enough support to decide the issue, only enough to keep the war alive as so many died and the country is destroyed. Some Israel leaders acknowledged that as a strategy and intention but I don’t intend to search for a link so anyone can reject that if they think it is wrong or just wish to not believe it.

  All your questions have a flip side. Do you think that the United States and Saudi Arabia and maybe Israel have anything to do with the horrible humanitarian crisis in Yemen? Is it justified? I know of no such crisis that could have been more easily avoided or stopped when it became apparent. All we, the U.S, would have needed to do was quit supplying aircraft, bombs, target information, and other logistical support to the Saudis or just mid-air refueling of their attack fighter-bombers. Do you align yourself with the infamous Albright answer? Do any humanitarian interventionists from the previous administration that you might admire publicly speak out against our support of Saudi war crimes in Yemen? Do you see any moral, ethical, legal, or humanitarian consistency in our countries FP?

[4]   I’ve done my share. It is way past your turn to give an honest reply if you are serious. Play fair.  Answer your own question at least since you have so far refused to answer mine. You tell me: What is the worst thing you see that Russia has done since 1992?  Then answer if you will, is it, and if so by what metric, the worst thing done by any major power during that time? Claimed good intentions don’t count as justification for leaving out anything done by any major power unless you want to try to convince me that political leaders, even our own, don’t create propaganda that includes outright lies to justify the unjustifiable. Only the destruction and human suffering that resulted from the considered choices of the acting government should be the deciding factor of what was the worst. What if we included the entire time of my life or even the shorter time of yours? Would the answers be the same? Does relatively recent history count as something to consider when trying to judge the truth of today? 

One more thing as long as I am rambling on. Even if we are exceptionally right in virtually all of our military interventions, can we afford to keep it up? Trump’s little rocket show in Syria that first made him “Presidential” a year ago is said to have cost a hundred million dollars. Most of the damned cruise missiles did not even reach their target.