House Speaker John Boehner said Thursday he was “insulted” by the New York Times opinion piece by Russian President Vladimir Putin, who argues America is not only wrong about Syria is also but not an “exceptional” country.
Asked for his “blunt” reaction to Putin’s op-ed on Thursday, Boehner responded: “I was insulted.”
Pressed to elaborate, the Ohio Republican deflected: “I think that the president does foreign policy… I’ve probably already said more than I should have said. But you got the truth.”
In the op-ed, Putin wrote that the United States is wrong to intervene military in Syria and claims Syrian President Bashar al-Assad didn’t use chemical weapons on his people.
“No one doubts that poison gas was used in Syria,” Putin wrote. “But there is every reason to believe it was used not by the Syrian Army, but by opposition forces, to provoke intervention by their powerful foreign patrons, who would be siding with the fundamentalists. “
Making a broad point about the United States, Putin wrote: “It is alarming that military intervention in internal conflicts in foreign countries has become commonplace for the United States. Is it in America’s long-term interest? I doubt it.”
Putin took issue with the familiar claim made by American politicians — most recently by President Obama — that the United States is an “exceptional” country.
“I would rather disagree with a case he made on American exceptionalism, stating that the United States’ policy is ‘what makes America different. It’s what makes us exceptional.’ It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation,” Putin wrote.