methinks Bromwich considers Obama bloviator-in-chief. but unlike me, he seems to side with putin's view of the us:
"According to the bipartisan consensus, the U.S. never does wrong but with just cause, and with good effects in the long run. Obama in Brussels supplied the latest gloss by treating Iraq today as a liberated country, free to determine its fate. Even in that case, as he explained to Europe, America proved its underlying greatness: if the war was launched on a fraudulent pretext, nevertheless it spurred a "vigorous debate." Doubtless this meant that people who opposed the war may have been spied on, or, if they were foolish enough to protest at a national party convention, they may have been rounded up by police, but few have been kept in prison. We are superior to Russia in that respect, and should not be sparing of self-congratulations.
In the silliest sentence of the speech, Obama regretted the attempt by Russia to return to "the old way of doing things [in order] to regain a foothold in this young century." We are the young and good, he meant, and we must expel the old. It is true that Vladimir Putin's act of annexation by military force was an old story. The strong do these things to the weak; they do it because they can: this was written long ago in the Melian dialogue of Thucydides. As applied to the years since 1990, when the U.S. has become the most feared country in world, few outside the United States would find it self-evident to suppose that we generally side with the weak, the young, and the good, for the reasons we avow, driven by the love of peace and a respect for human dignity.
From the top of the government on down, is it too much to ask that we stop telling these stories? As we look forward to the 100th anniversary of the beginning of the First World War, might it not instead be a time to tell ourselves the truth about any nation that wants to live in peace in the world of nations?"
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-bromwich/ukraine-and-iraq-a-remind_b_5044749.html
for myself, when push comes to shove, i'm more worried by putin's ambitions. but the us really could use bromwich's mirror. the us invasion of iraq was a more troubling thing than the russian invasion of crimea.
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