WASHINGTON – Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) wrote an opinion piece for a Russian news website last week in which he condemned Russian President Vladimir Putin as an abusive totalitarian, mostly because of his opposition to U.S. war in Syria.
“President Putin and his associates…don’t respect your dignity,” wrote McCain. “They punish dissent and imprison opponents. They rig your elections. They control your media.”
“And to top it all off,” continued McCain, “they will not allow the U.S. to start a war anytime, anywhere. But if there is one thing the Russian people deserve, besides legitimate elections and freedom of speech, it is another open-ended U.S. war in the Middle East.”
Although he asserted that war in Syria would be good for all Russians, McCain also targeted different demographic groups, explaining why each should support a U.S. war in Syria.
“[Russian leaders] write laws to codify bigotry against people whose sexual orientation they condemn,” wrote McCain. “I myself am not necessarily opposed to this. But let me be clear: You are probably not going to overturn these laws any time soon, so in the meantime, just please let us go to war in Syria.”
“[Russian leaders] throw the members of a punk rock band in jail for the crime of being provocative and vulgar and for having the audacity to protest President Putin’s rule,” continued McCain. “But you don’t deserve that. You deserve a president who is punk rock enough to approve war in Syria.”
After reading McCain’s op-ed, members of Pussy Riot came out immediately in support of military action in Syria.
“I found McCain’s appeal to feminist punk rockers totally convincing,” wrote Pussy Riot member Nadezhda Tolokonnikova from her prison cell. “By the end of his article, I not only wanted to storm into Syria with Senator McCain, I wanted to go back in time and vote against the Lilly Ledbetter Act with him.”
Though the reaction to McCain’s op-ed from the Russian general public was overwhelmingly positive, it did receive its share of trolling in the online comments section.
“Notice anything ironic about McCain’s defense of Russians who expose government law-breaking, or his statement that ‘no one should be above [the law]’?” wrote SnowedIn83. “Maybe if I spied on Putin they’d let me go home.”
“LOL, is this an Onion article?” wrote V.I.Putin52. “I could write better stuff in a Gulag camp.”