Peggy Noonan on Vladimir Putin's Power Play

Here's Noonan yesterday, "Putin’s Audience":

Why would Vladimir Putin take such an aggressive tone in parts of a piece supposedly addressed to Americans and supposedly explaining his views on Syria and, more largely, U.S. foreign policy? Suddenly I realized: because he’s not really writing to America. That’s not who he’s talking to. He chose as a venue a major American newspaper, but he’s writing to the world. He is telling the world he knows how to correct America, tell it off, criticize it for its conceit. And he does it right to their faces, not in a Moscow interview or a St. Petersburg speech. He is rubbing America’s nose in it for the delectation of its friends, occasional friends, foes and occasional foes. He wasn’t writing to us at all. He’s attempting to show the world he’s its reliable voice, its real leader, not those other guys. Would he have done this in the past? No. A truly historic level of foreign policy incompetence on the part of the White House got us to this point.

And her longer piece yesterday is available at the Patriot Post, "Vladimir Putin Takes Exception."

HAT TIP: Carl in Jerusalem, "A truly historic level of foreign policy incompetence on the part of the White House got us to this point."