"The actual strategy behind his (Putin's) Middle East push and why the NYTIMES might be obscuring it

[Comrade Grumpy]

6. This "Putin apologist/cheerleader/bootlicker" schtick grows increasingly lame.

It seems to be applied to anyone who not sufficiently one-sidedly critical of Putin. And it reveals a black-and-white "Putin bad/US good" mindset.

Name calling isn't argument; it's just name calling. And the quick resort to name calling instead of argument suggests you have no argument.

Now, I will grant that there are crazies out there, like those who refuse to accept that an old Buk shot down that airliner, but criticism of US policy and analysis of Russian policy is another thing.

Putin appears to have a plan to put Syria back together again. Does Obama?

Oh, and here's your "Putin cheerleader":

Patrick Smith is Salon’s foreign affairs columnist. A longtime correspondent abroad, chiefly for the International Herald Tribune and The New Yorker, he is also an essayist, critic and editor. His most recent books are “Time No Longer: Americans After the American Century” (Yale, 2013) and Somebody Else’s Century: East and West in a Post-Western World (Pantheon, 2010). Follow him @thefloutist. His web site is patricklawrence.us.